==:: Watoto De Afrika ::==

DAN ZANES
Performing with Watoto De Afrika
SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2008 -3PM

Two things set Dan Zanes apart from the huge and festive field of people that have begun making music for families and people of all ages. First, he is making homeade family music and encouraging similar behaviors in friends and neighbors. Second, he is always interested in singing along with people.

Zanes was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1961. In 1994, he released a solo CD, Cool Down Time, shortly after which he moved to Brooklyn, NY with his wife and daughter, where he then released Rocket Ship Beach (2000), launching his own record label, Festival Five Records. The CD was an immediate hit with families around America.

His next CD, Family Dance (2001) featured Loudon Wainwright III and Rosanne cash. His Grammy nominated album House Party (2003) is a rambunctious twenty-song collection that includes Deborah Harry, Bob Weir, and Philip Glass, as well as the Rubi Theater Company and Rankin Don (aka Father Goose).

Sea Music, a collection of maritime songs, was the first CD in the Festival Five Folk Series, and was cited in Rolling Stone's Hot Issue in the category of Hot Maritime Sounds. the next CD in the Folk Series, Parades and Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected By carl Sandburg for the American Songbag - is the disk on which Dan's scruffy troupe of musicians dragged the poet's 1927 collection of songs kicking and screaming into this century.

The 2007 Grammy Award winning CD Catch That Train is the lastest Family Series, and is the one CD in America today that brings together the Kronos quartet, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Father Goose, Dan's mother-in-law, and the children of South Africa's Agape Orphanage.

Dan is the author of two picture book collaborations with the artist Donald Saaf Jump Up! and Hello Hello, and he can be seen in the Dan Zanes and Friends concert video and DVD, entitled All Around the Kitchen! recorded in 2005 at the Knitting Factory, in New York City.

Dan plays at venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Melbourne International Arts Festival where he introduces new songs and reconnects people to songs that have always been there.

Website: www.danzanes.com

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