By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
As much fun as kids and adults have during his appearances at libraries around the country, Jim Gill doesn’t really consider himself an “entertainer.”
Maybe “instigator” is a better word.
Yes, he instigates fun and connection and learning, and silliness. “The music comes from everyone in the room clapping their hands, stamping their feet,” he said.
When Gill, the Chicago based musician and author, finishes a show, he doesn’t want his young audience to be looking at him. He wants their gazes to be fixed on the adult they are with.
Gill is no YouTube star, but he is a star of story times at libraries around the country. That includes at the Wood County District Public Library where he’s visited before.
On Saturday, June 17 at 11 a.m., Gill will return to Bowling Green to help the library celebrate another year of the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program.
The program encourages families and friends help youngsters read, or have read to, 1,000 books before they enter school. It can be 1,000 different books, or the same book read over and over and over again.
[RELATED: Reading 1,000 books to preschoolers adds up to kindergarten readiness]
More than 30 years ago, Gill came to being a musician for kids though the back door. Educated as a child development specialist, he would lead play groups for families with children with disabilities. He brought in his banjo and incorporated music, but he wanted songs that were different than the children’s music in circulation. They were about stuff – rainbows, peanut butter, even little brothers. What the kids want to do is move. So, he started strumming along on his banjo. “I started making my songs into games with lots of wordplay and rhymes. They’re grounded in moving. When you put the music on, they want to dance,” he said.
The playgroups were for the whole family, the kids with disabilities, their parents, grandparents, and siblings.
People would say: “I wish you’d come and sing at the school, like a show,” he said. “But it’s never been like a show. It’s more of participatory sort of thing.”
Click to watch video of Gill’s “One From the Left (A Finger Play).
People started asking him to make recordings they could use in their classrooms.
At the time, most of the recordings targeted at kids, were pretty basic. “I want this to sound like a real record,” Gill said. He teamed up with producer Steve Rashid, who suggested he bring in some of musical colleagues from the Chicago jazz scene, such as bassist Jim Cox and mandolinist Don Stiernberg. They gave the music a jazzy sheen.
The recordings found their way to libraries, and children’s librarians found them perfect for story times.”
“Little did I know this would become my job,” Gill said.
While the songs put a premium on fun there’s something more going on.
“Spin Again” the kids spin round and stop. These little exercises in self-control are just part of natural play,” he said. Without them the play turns into a free for all, and kids get overexcited.
He wants to get the youngsters excited, but also to have to stop and wait.
Educators call this “self-regulation, he said. “This is what kids need to be successful, so I started incorporating into my songs into my songs.”
The movement the songs encourage can be done by everyone. Wheelchairs are great at spinning. And typically, they’re done with an adult and children. That interaction is the same as the child being read to.
He expects at Bowling Green, he’ll read his music book “May There Always Be Sunshine,” based on “a sweet old folk song,” that Pete Seeger, one of his inspirations, would sing.
Gill makes room for children to come up with their own additions and variations on the words.
He was pleased to learn that Maria Simon, the library’s director of youth service, had children create their own pages based on the book.
The BG concert is part of Gill’s ongoing celebration of the release of his newest collection of recordings, a three-CD set, “Jim Gill’s Most Celebrated Songs.”
The show will be a non-stop selection of sing-alongs, dance-alongs, finger plays, and tongue twisters including his ‘Silly Dance Contest,” and his jazzy “One From the Left” finger play.
No registration is required for the event which is supported by supported by Pam and Ken Frisch.
