Hi! Said The Elephant

New CD of children's songs from Sandra Kerr who was responsible for the music for the award winning TV programme, Bagpuss. 'Hi! Said The Elephant' is a celebration of creatures great and small in music and song - some self-penned, some traditional- performed by Sandra Kerr along with some great young musicians and singers, all recent graduates of the Folk Degree course at Newcastle University. Like the 'Bagpuss' album, which it keeps company on Fellside's 'Smallfolk' label, this new release is likely to have wide appeal, with material ranging from Charles Causley's poem 'The Dancing Bear' in a beautiful setting by Sandra , commissioned by A & C Black, to folk standard's like ' Frog Went Courting', and from the Appalachian-style 'Blackbird' to the haunting Native American cante-fable about a flock of geese, 'Quillabung'. Sandra Kerr probably best known as co-writer of the music and songs - and the voice of Madeleine, the Rag Doll - for the award-winning TV series, Bagpuss. Sandra has been involved in folk music since being a member of Ewan MacColl's Critics Group in the 1960s. She still performs and is currently a lecturer on the Degree Course in Folk and Traditional Music at Newcastle University Recently Sandra had 6 months research leave, during which she has been doing a great deal of field recording around children's oral culture. This work was inspired by a) a long-time interest in the games, songs, parodies, skipping ditties, ball- bouncing chants and counting out rhymes of children in our schools and playgrounds, and b) by the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the best-known of all such collections - Iona and Peter Opie's 'The Lore and Language of School Children'. Another aspect of Sandra's work is as a tutor training teachers ( and other music practitioners) in the use of song in the school setting. This work is done as part of the massive training programme headed by Howard Goodall, funded by the Government and administered from The Sage Gateshead, with whom Sandra has very solid and amicable connections - appearing there regularly as both performer, and workshop leader.