School of Kid Rock
Source: By David Dacks
Posted: 03/20/08 12:59PM
Filed Under: Music
No doubt you’ve heard about the hot new group of TV idols whose tour can fill Toronto’s 3000-seat Sony Centre five times in two days. Best described as surf-funk-bluegrass-classical-country-Afrobeat-tango, this Fab Five’s show features choreography, extensive props and three screens of video projections.
They’re called The Backyardigans—and they’re rocking the preschool television world.
Children’s television is going through a renaissance, in large part thanks to the increasingly creative use of music. Though popular perception of children’s music in general is that of saccharine, repetitive, patronizing tunes, both big networks and small independent producers are concocting ingenious and innovative varieties of kid-friendly songs. The Sesame Street tact of placing musicians in children’s television situations has risen to new heights with everyone from Canadian indie heroes Broken Social Scene and Tegan and Sara to international stars like The White Stripes and M.I.A. joining the party. But even beyond adult pop culture riffs, children’s television contains some of the most creative soundtrack composition around. Whether elaborate or simply insanely catchy, there’s fun for kids of all ages in the family television experience.
Evan Lurie, the composer for Backyardigans, is also a founding member of no wave jazz experimentalists The Lounge Lizards and his encyclopedic musical knowledge is a major part of the Backyardigans success. The show involves five CGI characters who make-believe they have “the whole world in their back yards.” Each show features singing, dancing and top-notch animation—and takes over a year to produce. Lurie says, “[there’s] a different musical genre for every episode, so we can’t [build a library of incidental music]. Every episode has to be scored from the get go. It’s very music heavy; there are four to six songs in every 22 minute episode. So the toughest part is keeping up…”
One of the show’s strengths is mixing and matching musical genres with the settings of each episode. “I try to find something that matches in a peculiar way. If they’re surfers, it’s not going to be surf music. But there’s also no reason for it to be polka. However, if they’re surfers and the music is Afropop, that kind of makes sense.”
Look closely at the credits and you’ll spy some of New York’s finest musicians involved in the show. When the music wants to rock, it does so with authority. If it’s giving up the funk, both parent and child will be, too. Combined with a very deliberate approach to lyrics designed to maximize preschooler retention of the words, it’s no wonder this show’s CDs are bestsellers in kids music.
“There’s been a proven trend that there is no genre that you can’t cover in kids music. Often the most unlikely and unfamiliar styles of music, when they’re coupled with familiar lyrics, kids respond to it. Kids have grown up with such a wide variety of shows, that now, anything goes,” says Teri Weiss, Senior VP of Production and Development at the Backyardigans network Nick Jr., a Nickelodeon subsidiary.
“Backyardigans is interactive in that it engages a child on a musical adventure, as well as getting kids up and dancing, being exposed to all different ways to move their bodies. Kids learn information at a much higher rate of retention if they learn it with music—that element of research was a huge ‘aha’ moment.”
While networks like Nick Jr. and Playhouse Disney create big-budget quality, there are other forces bearing on children’s television which yield different creative fruit.
Kate Sanagan is co-president of Picturebox Distribution, who sells Canadian productions to family programmers in Europe and elsewhere. Their roster tends toward shorter-form productions. These types of shows are vital to kids television—if the Backyardigans is 22 minutes, there’s another 8 minutes to account for in a half hour if it’s a commercial-free network. Another key factor for Picturebox is the marketability of their shows outside North America—dubbing voices can lessen the impact of a show. Hence, music can be a very important aspect of their offerings.
Sanagan describes one of their shows, “Roll Play,” as an exercise show for kids, where a fast paced short story guides kids through different movements. “It’s 52 four-minute episodes, and 10 of them are music videos—four minutes isn’t much longer than a typical video anyways. These ten have Canadian musicians attached to them like Broken Social Scene, Kardinal, and Jully Black.” The musicians were only too happy to contribute. “The producers put the call out for the episodes and the response was excellent” says Sanagan. “there wasn’t a lot of pushing needed.”
Cooperation is essential on lower budget enterprises, and often it doesn’t get any more low-budget than the Internet. These days, children are aware that the most humble YouTube productions can be sublime entertainment. With an internet production, it’s much easier to maintain a small production team with modest but effective ideas to create quality entertainment. Online episodes need not be of uniform length, or conform to any of the expectations of television-oriented kids programming. Yeah, that’s right; we’re talking punk programming for kids—not the networks’ prog rock.
Pancake Mountain is produced for cable access—arguably even more low-budget than the net—in the Washington DC area and certain other U.S. markets, but the main place to catch it is on its website. A lineup of bands to make South-by-Southwest blush has appeared on this show to interact with a smart-mouthed goat puppet named Rufus and the spaced out Captain Perfect. Frequent dance parties get kids jumping around with Arcade Fire, Deerhoof, and, at the outer limits of what might be considered kids programming, Daniel Johnston.
Scott Stuckey is the king of the Mountain. “A lot of people don’t know how to market it. Is it for kids? Is it for adults? Is it too scary for kids? Is it just for hipster adults? I think you have to have a demographic, so yeah, it’s a kids’ show. I have a short attention span, and I’m like a kid myself, so if it appeals to me, it’ll probably appeal to kids. But is it like Sesame Street in that this is an educational thing? No, but it exposes things to kids that I think ought to be exposed, like anti-materialist concepts and not being so commercialized—messages I want kids to get, but on a show with overtones that adults get.”
The tone of Rufus’ band interviews never employs less than an adult vocabulary—although with juvenile humour—but doggone it, Stuckey is right, these segments are genuinely sweet-natured. Artists genuinely want to play along and reinforce the unobtrusive lessons of the show.
While Stuckey would love to have access to a permanent studio and regular crew, he wouldn’t change the look of the show. “During the ’90s, I kind of loved the cheap look of [cable access]. It made me think anyone could do it—like punk rock. I hope kids look at this and think “I can go out and do this!” It excites me more to do it this way.”
Networks have noticed. Since last summer, Nick Jr.’s newest and hottest property is the beatbox and chant-heavy Yo Gabba Gabba, which began life on the net. It too features unlikely but well-cast contributions by rapper Biz Markie and Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo.
Talking about the many different approaches to cool music on kids’ television, Weiss says, “there are more people getting it right than ever before. It’s great for kids out there in general. The more people who feel motivated to make hip music for preschoolers that feels appropriate for their age and feels relevant to whatever [parents are] going through is great. Even if you’re just singing a song about being silly, it’s about sentence structure for kids, learning how to phrase an idea or a feeling.”
Ultimately, any music used in a show is “kind of like the new jingles”, says Sanagan. “I mean, you are selling a show. There’s a weird grey area about the fact that it’s children’s programming and you want to make it educational and have dignity but at the same time, it’s a market”. Nevertheless, noting the experience with Roll Play, she says “I think when (kids music by adult acts) comes from a genuine place and you’re not overselling something it can turn out great.” If it isn’t genuine, well, “kids’ bullshit detectors are much higher now than they ever were when we were kids”.
Between rampant competition which leaves lesser ideas at the side of the syndication highway, and the refined and resolute tastes of the target market, indie rockers dumbing it down for the kids just won’t cut it. Besides, condescension isn’t necessary – preschool television has finally figured out that kids can handle any kind of creative situation you can throw at them. If the lessons a child learns before five are those which stay with them forever, these shows point the way to a lifetime of appreciation of weird and wonderful sounds from around the world. Just wait until 2018 or so when these kids start making music of their own.
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