A brand new kids’s album on Smithsonian Folkways features a tune about homosexual activist and politician Harvey Milk. The album was co-written by Cass McCombs and San Francisco preschool instructor Greg Gardner.

Greg Gardner

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Greg Gardner

A brand new kids’s album on Smithsonian Folkways features a tune about homosexual activist and politician Harvey Milk. The album was co-written by Cass McCombs and San Francisco preschool instructor Greg Gardner.

Greg Gardner

San Francisco-based preschool instructor Greg Gardner says he and his good friend, singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, “have collected method too many Folkways data” through the years — by Woody Guthrie, Michael Hurley, Lead Stomach, Mary Lou Williams, Ella Jenkins and others.

The pair are big followers of the influential label based in 1948 by Moses Asch. So that they had been thrilled when Folkways agreed to incorporate their new album of youngsters’s songs to the label’s seventy fifth anniversary celebration.

A storied assortment turns 75

To say Moses Asch’s pursuits had been eclectic can be an understatement. With Folkways, he got down to, fairly actually, seize the world’s sounds, from Cajun accordion to Langston Hughes’ voice, Irish ballads to the sound of steam locomotives.

His catalogue of greater than 2,000 recordings was a becoming sonic addition to the so-called “nation’s attic.” It was additionally consistent with the Smithsonian’s mission assertion – “The rise and diffusion of data” – says Folkways spokesperson Jonathan Williger

“Information is not only phrases on a web page. Sound is a significant method that people work together with the world,” says Williger, “The Folkways catalog is filled with each the monumental and the minute, all the pieces from the sound of a stapler being stapled to the March on Washington.”

“[Folkways] data discuss of significant topics, however they achieve this in a extremely enjoyable method, that is foolish at occasions and heartfelt, and I actually connect with that,” says Gardner, “They sound fairly easy and so they’re additionally fairly stripped down. I’ve all the time liked…the realness of that.”

The San Francisco Homosexual Males’s Refrain lent their voices to the tune Wave a Flag For Harvey Milk from the brand new Smithsonian Folkways’ album Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play New Folks Songs for Kids.

Greg Gardner

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Greg Gardner

Crafting a brand new addition, holding the previous vibe

Gardner and McCombs tried to method their new album in a method that will match the Folkways’ vibe. Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play New Folks Songs for Kids ranges from foolish to critical with songs a couple of worm named Wilma, flying a paper airplane, recycling and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The lead single is Wave a Flag For Harvey Milk, a easy ode to the famend homosexual activist and politician. The tune was launched in June, throughout Pleasure Month, prematurely of the total album’s August launch.

McCombs and Gardner’s effort is a continuation of Folkways’ lengthy historical past of releasing kids’s albums similar to Woody Guthrie’s Songs To Develop On and quite a few recordings by the ‘First Woman of Kids’s Music,’ Ella Jenkins.

Folks songs for youngsters are, “simple to play and may be handed down from individual to individual,” says Williger. As a topic for a tune, Harvey Milk matches Folkways’ “lengthy historical past of social justice music.” Plus, it is “in regards to the social problems with your house,” notes Williger.

Gardner teaches at a college 5 blocks from San Francisco’s Castro District the place Milk lived, labored and campaigned. He says the tune started as “a sing alongside coloring e book” he created for his preschool college students. “I assumed they may have interaction with the coloring e book greater than they’d with me simply speaking about Harvey Milk,” he explains.

Harvey Milk “stood up for his individuals down by the Golden Gate”

In 1977, Milk turned one of many first overtly homosexual public officers within the U.S. when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. On the time, individuals may very well be fired from their jobs for being homosexual.

Milk, together with different activists, campaigned to defeat a poll proposition that will have banned homosexual individuals from working in California colleges. On November seventh, 1978, the proposition was defeated by greater than 1,000,000 votes.

Three weeks later, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated by a former metropolis supervisor.

“Harvey Milk’s message of advocating for others and treating individuals pretty and being proud to be your true self is consistent with the values that we hope to instill within the preschool classroom,” says Gardner.

Youngsters like rainbows

College students, mother and father and different neighborhood members sing Wave a Flag on the annual Harvey Milk Celebration at Kids’s Day Faculty the place Gardner’s been educating for 12 years.

What does an astronaut need to do with Harvey Milk? Greg Gardner admits he was “operating out of concepts.” However, since youngsters love outer area, “I assumed it might be enjoyable to incorporate a web page that has an astronaut that is additionally an advocate of Harvey Milk.”

Greg Gardner

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Greg Gardner

To assist preschoolers perceive Milk’s legacy of human rights, Gardner tries to make parallels with their very own lives.

“Youngsters could have totally different pursuits after which others will query their pursuits. After which the unique child will, you realize, get down and say, ‘Effectively, this particular person mentioned that I am unable to be Elsa, too, as a result of they’re already Elsa.’ And, ‘I am a boy and I am unable to be Elsa.'” Gardner says he tells them, “‘All people has their very own pursuits and all people may be who they need to be, and it is simply as much as you.’ After which they form of get that and it clicks.”

There’s one more reason Harvey Milk’s legacy “clicks” with youngsters: rainbows.

“All youngsters like rainbows, appears,” Gardner has discovered. When he talks to his college students about Milk, additionally they study Gilbert Baker, the San Francisco flag-maker who got here up with what has develop into the worldwide image for the LGBTQ motion. Because the tune says, “A flag that stands for love product of rainbow coloured silk.”

This story was edited by Rose Friedman.