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[July 01, 2007]

Newsday, Melville, N.Y., On The Isle column

(Newsday (Melville, NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jul. 1--The performer known as Robbi K was enjoying a successful career singing jingles for big-name products, such as Coca-Cola, Lincoln Mercury and GE, and doing backup vocals for equally big-name stars: Mary K. Blige, Chaka Kahn, Aretha Franklin, Jewel, Diana Ross.


"I bleached my hair. I was hip. I was Miss L.A. in New York. I was very, very cool," says Robbi Hall Kumalo, who now lives in Setauket and has substantially changed her tune.

She's got a new album out, "Music Makes Me Happy," for which she's composed songs Blige, Franklin or Ross would be unlikely to record: "Eating Some Pizza ...," "Happy! Happy! Happy! Happy! Happy!" and "I Love My Teacher."

"My favorite audience is an audience of children and parents," Kumalo says. She does about 200 performances a year locally and nationally, she says, in schools, parks and other venues. With her band, Robbi K and Friends, she plays multicultural music that ranges from jazz and Caribbean to Rodgers and Hammerstein. "My music

is fun for adults, too,"

Kumalo says.

She switched musical tracks, she says, after she had her own children -- daughters Mbali, 11, and Daliswa, 8. "I just felt

empty. I said, wait a minute -- I didn't think this was what being an artist was like, leaving the children with nannies. Then 9/11 came around," and it became clear to her, she says, that her work with a puppet theater, which she had considered her fall-back job, "was the most rewarding part" of her career.

She also saw some holes in children's entertainment.

"When they're little kids, you enjoy them enjoying it." But as her children matured, her standards changed, too: "I don't want to see another juggler or another not-very-good magician."

As for music aimed at children older than about 6, she says, there wasn't much -- and most of it came from a bluegrass-folk tradition that is largely male and white. Diversity was lacking.

"Since Ella Jenkins [a much-honored 82-year-old African-American performer], there hasn't been anyone else who has made an impact or stepped up to a national presence," she says. "On the grass-roots level, there are tons of Latino, African-American and Asian performers." Kumalo is a teaching artist with the Lincoln Center Institute, which works out of the Tilles Center on Long Island, so she believes in grass roots. But she wants more.

Hence, the new recording for children, the third she has produced. She even found a recording studio in Smithtown, "so I could get home in time to meet the bus at 3 p.m." It took her a year and a half to assemble the CD, she says, partly because she had to wait for some guest artists -- such as Irish violinist Eileen Ivers and Sha Na Na singer Jon "Bowzer" Bauman -- to be available.

Kumalo's daughters and other children perform on the enhanced CD (you can see a couple of live performances if you slip the CD into your computer), as does her husband, the Grammy-winning bassist Bakithi Kumalo, whose work with Paul Simon includes the 1986 "Graceland" album. (She remembers listening to it repeatedly while she studied at Stony Brook University: "I had no idea that record would have so much to do with my life.")

A major inspiration, she says, is her older sister, who has taught music for 32 years in Brentwood public schools. They and a brother grew up in Bay Shore and Medford, children of a plumber and a nurse who taught them to be "great citizens.... They took such good care of us. I hope to pass those joyous memories on to my children," says Kumalo. "I hope that's in the music."

Robbi K performs at 7 p.m. Saturday at Sachem Public Library, 150 Holbrook Rd., Holbrook, 631-588-5024. She celebrates the release of "Music Makes Me Happy" at noon Sunday at Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, Manhattan, with musicians, food, balloons, CD giveaways, $10, 212-614-0505,

bowerypoetry.com. Robbi K and Friends performs 10:30 a.m. July 17 at Clinton G. Martin Park, Marcus Avenue, New Hyde Park, 516-869-6311. Visit hirobbi.com and balidali.com.

Novel approach to art

In "Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him," the novel's narrator comments that "it's popular sport to disparage all new collectors as hedge fund speculators, implying that the only reason they're buying art is to -- gasp -- make money."

As it happens, the book's author, Danielle Ganek, is married to a hedge fund manager. He's also a Guggenheim trustee, and they collect contemporary art.

Ganek doesn't believe art prices rise because hedge operators are in the game. "It's a global market," she says. "I have a little perspective on what goes on."

In her favorably reviewed debut novel, an artist is run over the night his first gallery show opens, launching a frenzy among collectors who want to buy his masterpiece, a painting with the same title as the book's.

Ganek, 43, her husband, David, and their three children have, in addition to their Manhattan home, a house in Southampton. They stay there nearly full-time during the summer, she says. "My husband and I can both work there, and the kids love it." They're 12, 10 and 6.

She and David have supported Southampton's Parrish Art Museum, she says, but they rarely visit local galleries.

"Not so much. We're doing family activities. We leave the art scene behind," she says. They also leave most of their artwork behind. "We live in a casual beach house. We don't live with things that are too susceptible to weather." Yes, she says, the house is beachfront.

ALFRESCO ARTS

Wine, music, song -- it must be summer. The Wine Press Concert Series kicks off on Saturday with the Swingtime Big Band at Vineyard 48, Route 48, Cutchogue. Next up is Caroline Doctorow at Paumanok Vineyards, Main Road, Aquebogue, July 21. All concerts at 6 p.m., bring chairs or blankets, picnics OK but no outside liquor; $15, 631-727-0900, eastendarts .org. On Thursday, Immersion Dance Company launches Freeport's free concert series at the Village Hall Courtyard. Next up: Multicultural Peace Mission Choir, July 12 at Nautical Mile Esplanade. All concerts 7:30 p.m., bring chairs; Freeport Recreation Center is the rain location; 516-223-2522.

PIANOFEST IN HAMPTONS

Pianofest in the Hamptons gives a concert at 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Levitas Center for the Arts, Southampton Cultural Center, Pond Lane, Southampton. Other Monday concerts follow, performed by young international artists. A reception after each concert; $10, students free, no reservations. A July 7 fundraiser, $75, and free July 25 and Aug. 2 concerts are coming up; visit pianofest.org, call 631-329-9115 or e-mail Pianofest@optonline.net. On Thursday at 7 p.m., the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, 71 E. Main St., raises funds to improve sound and seating in its lobby concert hall with

"A Concert for the Lobby," featuring 15 Long Island

songwriters, $10, 631-207-1313 or PatchogueTheatre.com.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

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