Guided by three 8 year-olds on a New York City playground, Let’s Get the Rhythm captures girls’ handclapping games as ancient as they are global, from playgrounds across the world, from every continent, and islands in between. Girls from Brooklyn to Tanzania charm us as they share their common experience of handclapping games with ever evolving variations.
Drawing attention to the social importance and genius of girls’ handclapping games, Let’s Get the Rhythm accentuates the beauty of the beat and makes compelling observations using archival footage and observations from folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and cognitive neuroscientists as well as the girls themselves about the universal ways that music and rhythm are central to our lives as vehicles for learning, self-expression, empowerment, and connection as humans.
Recommended for age 7+
Director’s Biography
Irene Chagall: Irene Chagall is a San Francisco-based music teacher who was appointed a Smithsonian Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Working with Bess Lomax Hawes and City Lore’s Steve Zeitlin, she received sponsorship from the California Academy of Sciences and obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Public Art Films and in 2014 finished the film, Let’s Get The Rhythm.
Sponsored by: