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High school Musical

I can hear music

Dec 18th, 2009
by Dan.
25 comments

Tara from Sticky Fingers recently blogged about her induction to music as a child. Which set me thinking:

I don’t really remember a great deal of music being played in our house. Certainly for a long time I believed that I didn’t like music (until I discovered that it was actually just that I didn’t like 80′s music).

This musical absence is strange considering that my dad was a member of a band and was also friends with some fairly successful folk musicians. Some of whom had even been on Top of the Pops (as a member of the Dubliners).

My dads band was called Black Cauldron and basically played ceilidh music. His accordion was an ever present brooding menace in the house, with cats, dogs, and children diving for cover every time picked it up. The accordion is a noble ensemble instrument, but solo it can be a little grating. Especially when it’s playing the same jig over and over again.

Twenty five years form now Amy and Evan may well be writing on their holo-blogs about me torturing them with the ukulele – but to be honest the amount I practice I’ll be surprised if they even remember I own one.

I think I was about 15 before I really started to appreciate music, and back then it was a friend who got me into it rather than my parents. Deacon Blue were a big favourite, as was Meatloaf and Richard Marx (oh the shame). These days I’m pretty well entrenched in my Geek Rock (Barenaked Ladies, they Might Be Giants, Ben Folds), although my dad must have had some influence on me because I like a bit of folk too (although more singer/songwriter folk than finger-in-your-ear folk).

Music plays a bigger part in my kids lives than I think it did mine. Possibly because they have somehow wrestled control of every form of media from our grasp. Amy is pretty heavily into High School Musical and Hannah Montana, but I’ve also indoctrinated her with They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies’ kids stuff too. As the younger brother Evan is pretty much forced to like whatever Amy likes, at least for the time being.

At the moment however the entire family are particularly enjoying a bunch of Eric Herman CD’s I recently won in a contest over at A Family Runs Through It. We’ve been aware of Eric for a while due to his excellent Elephant song video on youtube which is one of our Kids all time favorites, have a look – I guarantee that any pre-school kid will love it:

Aspirations

Oct 6th, 2009
by Dan.
58 comments

If you ask Amy what she wants to be when she grows up she’ll give you one of two answers – either “a famous pop star” or “a horse riding teacher”.

It’s very hard not to take these responses as a indication that I’ve failed as a father. I’ve already blogged at length about my dislike of the horsey set. And as for aspirations of pop stardom – well let me assure you, if Simon Cowell or his ilk came within an inch of my daughter then I’d give them jolly good punch up the bracket.

But really Amy’s aspirations aren’t really my fault – it’s society wots to blame. Well, society and the Disney Corporation.

Hanna Montana is a bloody awful program. The acting is dire, the plotlines and humor humdrum, and the overall production values are just plain bland. What’s worse is that it implants the all pervasive obsession with fame and stardom into minds that are just too young. It contributes to that overwhelming modern pressure that drives girls towards adulthood far too early. And that is not good. It’s not good at all.

And furthermore, because it has the full force of the Disney marketing machine behind it, it can often seem like it permeates every single aspect of a child’s life. I challenge you to walk through a UK supermarket and not be able to find a Hannah Montana piece of merchandising on every single shelf. Shampoo, spaghetti shapes, tissue paper, magazines, sweets, donuts, it’s all there for the eager consumer.

I don’t approve of Hannah Montana.

So why do I let Amy watch it then? Because I’m weak, that’s why. And because I’m too liberal to start banning things in our house without a lengthy period of angst and indecision. As much as I’d love to indoctrinate my kids into liking only Peppa Pig, Laurel and Hardy, and Fraggle Rock I just can’t bring myself to enforce any form of cultural dictatorship. We’ve banned Bratz, but that was an easy one – anyone with half a clue can see though the camouflage and recognise the poisonous toxins beneath that particular product.

But Hannah Montanna, High School Musical, and all the rest are a little more complex than that. They walk their path in a very grey area, and if you start banning those you’re on a rocky road that can eventually see you smugly proclaiming that you only allow your children half an hour of television a week, and only then to watch a nature documentary hosted by that nice Mr Attenborough

So the theory is that the values that Kerry and I instil in our children should counteract any negative stereotyping she gets exposed to through popular culture. But I don’t know sometimes if that’s enough. Popular culture seems pretty big and powerful and we as parents seem pretty small. Plus we’re human, and therefore horribly inconsistent ad flawed (especially me).

As a society there has never been a time when our children have been more exposed to such powerful, pervasive, and homogenised cultural influences. I have no answers, but really hope our kids can stay kids as long as they can, and that they come out ok on the other side.

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