Barry Louis Polisar is an author and singer-songwriter who writes children's music and numerous children's books, poems, and stories.
Polisar has traveled throughout the United States and Europe as a visiting author in schools and libraries. He is a five-time Parents' Choice Award winner and has performed in The White House, The Smithsonian, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has written songs for Sesame Street and The Weekly Reader, has starred in an Emmy Award-winning television show for children, and has been featured regularly on The Learning Channel. [1] [2]
Polisar works with literacy groups, media specialists, reading teachers, and Title I programs in schools and has won a Special Library Recognition Award for his "ability to communicate with and excite children to read".
Polisar's 1977 song "All I Want Is You" was featured during the opening credits of Jason Reitman's film Juno . [3] This song is featured on advertisements of the National Lottery (United Kingdom), the Honda Civic "Date With a Woodsman", and the Del Monte Foods "Bursting with Life". [4]
A two-disc tribute album, compiled by Aaron Cohen of the Radioactive Chicken Heads entitled We're Not Kidding! A Tribute to Barry Louis Polisar was released in 2010. The album features covers of 60 of Polisar's songs by artists such as DeLeon, Rebecca Loebe, The Radioactive Chicken Heads, Tor Hyams, and Barry Louis Polisar's son Evan Polisar. [5]
Polisar was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Maryland. He began his career when he moved to Montgomery County, Maryland. [6]
The Grammy Award for Song of the Year is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. The Song of the Year award is one of the four most prestigious categories at the awards, presented annually since the 1st Grammy Awards in 1959. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is presented:
to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.
Los Lobos is a Mexican-American rock band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños. The band rose to international stardom in 1987, when their version of "La Bamba" peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, and several other countries. Songs by Los Lobos have been recorded by Elvis Costello, Waylon Jennings, Frankie Yankovic, and Robert Plant. In 2015, they were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2018, they were inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame. They are also known for performing the theme song for Handy Manny. As of 2024, they have been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards and have won four.
Harold Lane David was an American lyricist. He grew up in New York City. He was best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach and his association with Dionne Warwick.
Alannah Myles is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has won both a Grammy and a Juno Award for the song "Black Velvet". The song was a top-ten hit in Canada; it was also a number one hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1990.
Robert Lrod Dorough was an American bebop and cool jazz vocalist, pianist, and composer. He became famous as the composer and performer of songs in the TV series Schoolhouse Rock!, as well as for his work with Miles Davis, Blossom Dearie, and others.
Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are a musical duo who perform folk, bluegrass and children’s music. They have performed with Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Tom Paxton, Patsy Montana, Riders in the Sky and others. The Washington Area Music Association has recognized the duo with over 60 Wammie Awards for folk, bluegrass, and children’s music.
Bill Harley is an American children's entertainer, musician, and author who has been called "the Mark Twain of contemporary children's music" by Entertainment Weekly. He uses a range of musical styles, and his audience includes both children and adults. Harley began singing and storytelling in 1975 while still a student at Hamilton College. Much of his material is autobiographical, focusing on vignettes from childhood.
Robert Crane "Red" Grammer is an American singer and songwriter.
Alastair Moock is a GRAMMY-nominated American folk and family music performer from Boston, Massachusetts. He is known for his gruff voice, playful lyrics, and fingerpicking guitar style.
Juno is a 2007 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Elliot Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting her unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J. K. Simmons also star. Filming spanned from early February to March 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation.
Bobs & LoLo is a Vancouver-based children's music duo consisting of Robyn Hardy (Bobs), and Lorraine Pond (LoLo).
Joanie Leeds is a Grammy-award winning musician best known for her work as a children's musical artist.
Secret Agent 23 Skidooor (SAS23) is a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop musician from Asheville, North Carolina, United States. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo has been performing children's music since 2008. He performs hip-hop for children.
Louis Kevin Celestin, known professionally as Kaytranada, is a Haitian-Canadian music producer, rapper, singer and DJ. Celestin rose to prominence after releasing a series of mixtapes, remixes, and original music projects beginning in 2010 under the alias Kaytradamus. By 2013, and under the moniker Kaytranada, he began gaining wider recognition and, the following year, signed a deal with XL Recordings, with whom he would release his critically acclaimed debut studio album 99.9% in 2016. In 2019, he released its follow-up, Bubba, for which he won two Grammy Awards including Best Dance/Electronic Album. Celestin is one half of the hip hop duo The Celestics, along with his brother Lou Phelps.
Ashton Dumar Norwill Simmonds, known professionally as Daniel Caesar, is a Canadian singer and songwriter. After independently building a following through the release of two critically acclaimed EPs, Praise Break (2014) and Pilgrim's Paradise (2015), Caesar released his debut studio album, Freudian, in August 2017, which garnered widespread critical acclaim. He released his second studio album, Case Study 01, in June 2019. In March 2021, Caesar was featured alongside Giveon on Justin Bieber's single "Peaches", his first number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100. Caesar released his third studio album, Never Enough, in April 2023 as his first release under Republic Records.
Jessica Reyez is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Her 2016 single "Figures" peaked at number 58 on the Canadian Hot 100 in 2017 and was certified triple Platinum by Music Canada and Platinum by the RIAA. Her 2017 EP, Kiddo, led to four nominations at the 2018 Juno Awards, winning Breakthrough Artist. Her follow up EP, Being Human in Public, was released in 2018. It won R&B/Soul Recording of the Year at the 2019 Juno Awards and was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. Reyez again won the R&B/Soul Recording of the Year, for "Feel it Too" with Tory Lanez and Tainy, at the 2020 Juno Awards, where she was also nominated for Artist of the Year. Reyez has written songs for Calvin Harris, Kehlani, Dua Lipa, and Normani, most notably penning the hit "One Kiss", and has collaborated with Eminem on multiple occasions. Her debut album, Before Love Came to Kill Us, was released on March 27, 2020, to widespread critical acclaim, and saw commercial success, entering at number thirteen on the US Billboard 200.
Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band is the husband and wife team of Lucky Diaz and Alisha Gaddis. The Grammy and Emmy-award-winning duo plays bilingual indie music for kids described by The Washington Post as "a hip-shaking, head-bopping, Los Angeles–based explosion of 'kindie' rock." They are known for whimsical children's songs which they also incorporated into a television show. Diaz graduated from Berklee College of Music and Gaddis graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Lucy Kalantari is a Grammy winning American singer, composer and producer. She is the frontwoman and bandleader for Lucy Kalantari and The Jazz Cats.
Kindie rock, kindie or family music is a style of children's music that “melds the sensibility of the singer-songwriter with themes aimed at kids under 10.” Many popular kindie rock artists first gained fame as adult performers, including Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants. The term was first coined by Salon.com writer Scott Lamb in 2006, and has gained in popularity since. Although its original name implies a rock music style, kindie has never been purely rock music, instead encompassing innumerable musical styles. In recent years, artists have increasingly used the less specific term "kindie music" or "kindie." Playtime Playlist, a kindie directory website, notes that the term kindie “comes from merging of ‘Kid’ and ‘Independent’” and that kindie is differentiated from conventional children's music by the way that “artists are free to make music that comes straight from their heart and isn't bound by commercial formulaic rules.” As pointed out by Stefan Shepard of the kindie music blog Zooglobble, kindie artists' primary aim is to make child-oriented music with the same care and thought as adult music. It is also defined by its opposition to "mainstream" or commercial children's music. Community is also an important part of the modern kindie scene, as exemplified by the biannual KindieComm conference and the yearly Hootenanny gathering.
123 Andrés are a husband-and-wife duo that creates children's music in both English and Spanish. They have performed for audiences across the US as well as in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Mexico.
polisar Children's Jukebox.