Home | Mark Shepard | K-12 Schools | Breathing Underwater

 
Breathing Underwater is available on CD & Cassette as well as live!
  • Breathing Underwater: Drums, Songs & Stories Above, Beneath and Beyond The Sea - a mix of songs with a choice of two interactive tales, Raven Stops the Rain (Siberia) or Skeleton Woman (Inuit) (Available on Cassette & CD)

Review of this Program by 7th Grader Matthew Connolly

Songs:  
Pool Rap: This is really a "DrumSongStory" because it tells the story of a day at the swimming pool accompanied by the Irish Bodhran in the form of a Rap song...

Sharks!: A very upbeat song that manages to reflect on the fact that Sharks have a lot more to fear from us than we have to fear from them...

The Silkie: My own adaptation of an old Irish story about magic seals that incidentally also shows up in the Eskimo/Inuit tradition. 

The Ballad of Nathaniel Bowditch: A Story song about the self-taught "Father of Modern Navigation" whose manual is still published by the US Government.

If I had a Boat: Just a fun song about...if I had a boat!

Whale Song: A song about whales written with a class of 5th graders.

Navigation:  a rap about navigation written with a different class of 5th graders.

Just the above songs are plenty for a one hour program! What I usually end up doing is performing three or four of the songs along with one of the following stories. The stories each use a lot of cool sound effects instruments played by the audience.

 
Stories:  
Raven Stops the Rain (Siberia) this is a creation Myth that explains how Universe created the rain, the thunder, the wind and the ocean. As well as everything else. Raven ends up being the one to regulate the weather...(I usually do this story for the younger grades)

  Skeleton Woman (Inuit) A young woman refuses all suitors in her village until a mysterious man all dressed in white arrives from the North.  She leaves her home to follow him. He turns out to be a polar bear and she undertakes a journey of profound transformation underneath the frozen Arctic Sea. (I usually use this story for 3rd graders on up to adult audiences..) 

 
Instruments Used: Djembe, Djun-Djun, Bodhran, Shaman Drum, Guitar  
Sound Effects: Wind Tubes, Thunder Tubes, Thunder Drum (the Djun-Djun), shakers, Ocean Drum, Space Phones, Zing Thing, Wind Wands & more...  
Study Guide: Presently available in hard copy.  

Home | Mark Shepard | K-12 Schools | Breathing Underwater

 

Contact DrumSongStory  at 1-800-378-4971 or 203-495-8808
E-mail us at:  mark@markshepard.com

Write: DrumSongStory  589 Chapel St., #3, New Haven, CT 06511 USA 
All content Copyright by Mark Shepard.  All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. Revised: November 08, 2007 .