Children’s Performer Celebrates Identity/Diversity With Music That Inspires The World’s Children

May 27, 2010 - PRLog -- With Arizona ending ethnic studies and the recent CNN Studies about racial attitudes through choice of dolls, parents can be encouraged that there is one popular children’s performer dedicated to kids seeing their own identities as unique and valuable.  A five-time award-winning musician, DARIA (full ethnic name – Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou) has traveled the world to sing for kids in more then a dozen languages and over 16 different countries. Her internet byline is “music to inspire all the world’s children” so she was pleased to hear that after almost a decade and a half of touring, several American papers had dubbed her “an ambassador of song”.  Later that year, the Christian Science Monitor printed a story about her work and commented: “When Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou makes music, the world listens – literally!”  

From a mixed bag of heritages including years spent in Native American, Latin-American as well as mainstream USA, Daria has often seen “the kids that get left out” and had always performed songs from various heritages and celebrated these cultures in concert. Daria’s award-winning cd’s also feature bilingual songs – but not just bilingual English/Spanish or Spanish/English.  Daria includes songs like the South African “Here Comes Our Mother’s Bringing Us Presents” with her English words in addition to the original Zulu lyrics.  She has also created popular bilingual versions of best-loved Latin American folksongs such as La Cucaracha and Bate, Bate Chocolate and versions of various world folksongs such as the Yiddish folksong, Tumbalalaika and a version of a popular Philipino song sung in Tagalog and English.  Says Daria with a smile: “ I was multicultural before multicultural was cool”.  

To help share her music, DARIA created an interactive website that allows young children to explore world cultures, create unique musical instruments and includes a special key for parents, teachers, homeschoolers and kids of all abilities.  The website won a 2009 Parent’s Choice Award and now offers two free DARIA songs each month along with multicultural and seasonal activities, such as holiday songs in various languages and ways to celebrate Earth Day by making recycled instruments.  Winners from DARIA’s recent Earth Day Recycled Instruments came from as far away as Tokyo, Japan and Athens, Greece.

How do you get kids to like who they are?  Say Daria:  “It starts with a knowledge of where they come from.”  Since music and the arts can teach these aspects of identity in a way that is fun, educational and inclusive, Daria sees this type of activity as key to developing children’s self-esteem as well as a healthy world view. “It’s about giving people more options to understand each other, and kids more ways to appreciate rich and diverse cultural heritages.”  Says Daria: ”Once kids begin to see their own backgrounds as exciting and interesting, they like what they see in the mirror more”.  

Like many other advocates of cultural diversity, Daria feels that programs that teach tolerance and celebrate diverse identities not only serve to boost kids’ self esteem, but also create a more inclusive, accepting and productive school environment. Says Daria:  “Nothing’s more exciting then having a child come up after a concert to tell you excitedly that I sang a song from their own heritage or to get a thank you from a child from a special education classroom about how they got to participate in the show and weren’t pushed off to the side.  Celebrating children’s diverse identities brings out the best in all our kids and that’s a win/win situation for everyone.”  

Daria’s world music for kids website can be found at www.dariamusic.com.