Halloween Music Adventures

 

Happy Halloween to everyone! I've always liked this holiday. I enjoyed leading a Halloween themed music activity with a group at Access Arts here in Charlottesville.   We sang some fun songs like the theme song to, "Addams Family," "Love Potion No 9," "Monster Mash."  We also played a game I used to play years ago as a child. We called it "Statue." This is a group of us would dance to a record (vinyl in those days!) and someone would take the needle off the record to stop the music. When the music stopped, we all had to freeze in to a statue pose. Then go back to dancing after the needle was placed back on the record. How funny to remember those days! We played this game with the song, "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. Who can not get a thrill out of that spooky laughter at the end by Vincent Price?

We also did a Halloween madlib song. Madlibs are where you take out the main nouns, verbs, adjectives and fill them in with new words. So for example, we used the song "You Are My Sunshine." I asked for a Halloween noun with two syllables. They picked, "mummy." An adjective to replace "happy" was "ghostly." A verb replacing "love" was "scream." so here is the first verse of You Are My Mummy"

"You are my mummy,  my only mummy

you make me ghostly when pumpkins are purple

you'll never howl dear how much I scream you

please don't take my mummy away. "

Things got pretty silly there but it was fun. As a child, I was scared of vampire and mummy movies. My older sister would tease me. One night I begged my parents to let me stay up later to watch, "Creature Features, " (who remembers this?) But as soon as the theme song came on, I decided it was too scary. I then said, "I am so tired.. I want to go to sleep now. " My sister said, "You are SCARED!!" I said I was not !!  In the end, I had to watch some of it lest my sister think I was a coward. 

Having said all of this, I am hoping Halloween this year will be a safe and fun one for the young and young at heart. I know last years' was not so fun with Covid raging. I know we have been seeing some improvement this year. 

The collage above was a piece I did for Halloween that I donated to a local nursing home. They had no art in their dining room. After Halloween is over, I plan to alter it for Thanksgiving and keep it up! 

Hope you are all well and happy! Thanks for stopping by!