Cosmo’s Corner: The Jazz Cat

Hello fellow music lovers! It’s Cosmo the Library Cat here with great news about Grand County Public Library’s next Musical Story Hour. Our partners at the Moab Music Festival have done it again and come up with a really exciting program for us!

Guest artist Pascal Le Boeuf, a Grammy-nominated jazz pianist, composer, and electronic artist, will lead us in music and lore during our first musical story hour of the new year! This event will take place on Saturday, February 1, at 10:30 a.m. at Star Hall.

Using my behind-the-scenes library privileges, I took a peek at the books that will be featured: “Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop” and “When Louis Armstrong Taught Me Scat.”

Scat singing is a type of jazz vocal style where singers improvise sounds and syllables to their own rhythms and melodies. Bebop is another style of jazz that often features scat singing. Old Yardbird and Satchmo were masters of the art form.

Inspired by those cool cats, I’m going to riff for a second:

“Me-ow-she-wow-wow-me-ow-a-wow-now!”

Can you dig it? Cats are natural scat singers–our name is right there in the word.

That’s more vocalizing than you’ll usually hear from me. (I’m more of a sax man myself. Plus, I need to save my voice for yowling at the moon.) I probably won’t be at the story hour; my combo has a jam sesh booked at that time. But I hope all you hepcats and jazz kittens will be able to join in the fun!

The Moab Children’s Librarians are hard at work right now, putting together grab-and-go craft bags for the kids to take home after the story. I think I’ll go serenade them as they work. Bye for now! “Cat-nip-bo-bip-she-bop-a-doo! Watch me for the changes, and hit that backbeat, Daddio!”