Sammy J is one of the famous faces lending his voice to ABC Education’s Let’s Sing, writes Andrew Taylor.
Singing is one of Sammy J’s fondest memories of his primary school years.
The comedian and radio presenter says music classes with his teacher were “an oasis in the middle of a day of maths and sport”.
“He’d have the guitar out, and we’d all be there with songbooks, singing ‘Rip Rip Woodchip’ and other Aussie classics,” Sammy says.
Sammy brings another classic Australian song to life for ABC Education’s Let’s Sing collection of online music resources for primary schools.
Sammy says Ben Lee’s song “We’re all in this together” felt like “a really natural fit” for him to perform with his brother, Tim McMillan.
“It’s so unashamedly optimistic,” Sammy says. “I could see why it would be a really great song for classes to be singing along to and learning as well.”
Other well-known performers who lend their voices to Let’s Sing include Justine Clarke, Casey Donovan, Eddie Perfect and opera singer Teddy Tahu Rhodes.
Let’s Sing features short videos of a song performance followed by “Andy’s Music Class”, a lesson given by composer and music educator Andy Aronowicz.
Andy says Let’s Sing is a decades-old educational program that originally took the form of songbooks and radio programs.
These days, it is an online collection of songs, lessons and other teaching resources, which Andy says are designed to “take some of the load off teachers”.
“But also to provide a huge number of resources to use in the classroom – to teach new songs, to experience music,” he says.
The songs featured in Let’s Sing range from “Naba Guatare”, a traditional Torres Strait Islander song performed by the Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir to “Purple People Eater” sung by Kanen Breen and which Andy remembers singing in primary school.
The songs were chosen to teach various aspects of the national curriculum but also to be “appealing and fun and educational to children today”, Andy says.
At the end of each song, Andy teaches concepts such as pitch, rhythm and timbre or tonal colour as well as the lyrics and how songwriters convey emotion and feelings.
“Everyone’s got some way into music,” he says. “It’s just finding that element of music that resonates with them.”
Besides singing, Sammy also makes a cameo in Ali McGregor’s “Rockin’ Robin” video, dancing in the same bird outfit he wore many years ago.
“When Let’s Sing happened, she revealed that she had hung onto the costume and kept it in her garage,” he says. “She asked me to suffer through the indignity of seeing whether 15 years later, I could still fit into it.”