A believer in the joy and power of music

By DIANE BRONCACCIO,
Recorder Staff

GREENFIELD — When Susan Bassett of Greenfield was 4, she couldn’t wait to get music lessons in school, like her older brothers and sisters. But the preschoolers Bassett works with today don’t have to wait until grade school to learn about music: Some are even featured on CDs that Bassett recorded, performs on and has produced from her own recording studio, called “SueBass Recordings.”

“A Mother’s Open Heart,” is the latest CD of music for children that Bassett has made from start to finish. It was made for the Even Start family literacy program, using the poetry of women in the adult literacy classes as the lyrics for music written, arranged and performed by Bassett.

“Mommy loves you more than diamond rings,
loves you more than the material things...
She loves you to the moon and back ...”

This lullaby-style song is crooned with the sounds of one of the Even Start infants cooing in the background.

“Brush Your Teeth,” is a rockin’ anthem of how to do it, which set the toddlers to boogying during Even Start’s “CD release party” earlier this summer.

Like other CDs Bassett has produced for schools and playgroups, this one has been a source of pride for the local families whose poems about their children form the words of the songs. And it also is for sale locally, as a fundraiser for the Even Start program.

“Fluffernutters!” a recording named after the pet guinea pig at Valley Play School in Shelburne Falls, features at least a dozen of the toddlers and preschoolers who were enrolled when the CD was made in 2003. Their drawings are on the cover, their first names are all printed on the inside and their voices sing along with Bassett’s on the CD itself.

“This was the fun-est CD ever,” Bassett says of Fluffernutters, for children ages 1 to 5. “They named it. They did the artwork. I tried to make it look like a real thing,” she said, meaning a real recording. “And they were so proud, so thrilled. That’s what I wanted to accomplish, a sense of pride and connectedness.”

For Bassett, a singer/songwriter and musician with a day job as an early childhood educator, the preschool CD represented “the birth of an idea,” one that fused together the different elements of Bassett’s music and educator skills.

“Music was something that gave me great, great joy in my childhood, and I honestly have to say I haven’t met a little child that doesn’t love music,” she said. “They love singing, dancing, music — all that. Even babies. Even holding a little baby while swaying to the music is good for them. I’ve seen little babies trying to hit rhythm sticks together, to make music.”

Bassett, a Greenfield native, said her father always sang to and sang with his children. As a preschooler, Bassett’s first musical instrument was a little song flute, in which she picked out tunes by ear. “I couldn’t wait until I was old enough for lessens in school, like my older brothers and sisters.”

Once she was old enough for music lessons, Bassett moved on to a clarinet, playing in the junior high and high school bands.

When she was 14, she got “my first junky old guitar.” She recalled the neck was out of adjustment, and the chords were hard to play.

In high school, Bassett had her eye on a classical style guitar, with a slightly blemished finish, that was on sale at the old Gribbons music store in Greenfield.

“That summer, I was working in tobacco fields, and picking cucumbers to earn some money,” she said. “I was thinking I should use the money to buy school clothes, but my mom said: ‘I think you should buy that guitar.’ That was the best thing she could have said — it was the greatest gift she ever gave me.”

Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, were among her idols and she would listen “obsessively” to their music, over and over again, to see how each part of the music was played.

“I just got into learning things, when I started with the guitar; I would really listen to what the guitar was doing, and what the base was doing,” she said. “A lot of times, I could play what I heard.”

“My own music didn’t come until later on, when I started getting in a band.”

Bassett started playing in a band with two other women in the early 1990s. “In that band, one of the women was a gifted lyricist but didn’t know how to write the music.”

Bassett put the music together, for a song called “Smart Girls,” which is on Bassett’s own CD, called “Maitri.”

Bassett said she started writing the music for others’ lyrics, inventing the harmonies and arranging the songs. She worked with folksinger/songwriter Julia Burroughs, then formed the band, The Rooms, in 1997. The Rooms, she said, played an eclectic mix of original music and cover songs.

“That’s when I started learning how to record the music,” she said. “I started getting my recording equipment and learning how to use it.”

Bassett produced, recorded and mixed her own solo album “Maitri” in 2002.

Using a console, Bassett layers-in multiple tracks with a drum machine, keyboard, bass, guitar and sometimes other instruments for instance, a harmonica.

Bassett’s work with young children began with an after-school program in 1984. She said she started learning kids’ songs while becoming an early education teacher.

Other child-oriented CDs recorded by Bassett include “L’il Rockstars,” an album with children, a result of a workshop by the Parent Child Development Center, and “Little Voices: Let Us Be Heard,” the a former FCAC program. Bassett also produced an album of the singing of hearing-impaired students for the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton.

“Doing it was a wonderful, fascinating thing,” Bassett said of the Clarke School project. With special hearing devices, the children were able to hear their own voices, she said.

One thing that really pleases Bassett is that the CDs recorded for various groups give parents a chance to learn the songs she’s taught children — and sing them with their children, just as her parents did.

“It’s very, very important for (children’s) musical development for parents to interact musically with them, to sing to them, to dance with them, to bounce and tap (in time to music). And if there isn’t any musical instrument you can buy, there’s all kinds of musical instruments in the kitchen — boxes to drum on, or shake,” she said.

“A lot of adults have gotten the message somewhere along the line that they can’t carry a tune,” she said. “Research has shown that is not true. All children can learn music competence by exposure, by musical participation with their caregivers.”

For more information, Bassett can be reached at 413.863.9094, or at: music@susanbassett.com

You can reach Diane Broncaccio at: dbronc@recorder.com or: (413) 772-0261 Ext. 277.