A mma, what does Californiacation mean?” is not exactly the kind of question you expect from your five-year-old.
“Well, first of all it’s CaliforNICation… not CaliforNIAcation” I corrected pedantically, till I realised that we had a slightly bigger problem on hand than mispronunciation.
“Well... it’s when you go to California on a vacation. So you… Californicate.” In my defence it sounded great in
my head.
Once upon a time, children sang nursery rhymes, progressed to Disney jingles and the Sound of Music (1965) before disappearing down the rabbit hole that is being a teenager and embarking on a musical journey that meandered from pre-fabricated boy/girl bands to angsty solo artists who can’t be bothered to shower. Is it just me, or are children today starting that journey much earlier? Case in point, at the school bus stop the other day, two first graders got off the bus in the afternoon and immediately burst into ‘Drag me Down’ as they skipped home arm in arm.
We once had an iTunes playlist called ‘Kids’: ‘Wheels on the Bus’, the Jungle Book soundtrack and Katy Perry songs from Madagascar (2005). But there’s only so much ‘Bear Necessities’ you can listen to before you want to cut your ears off. So we began playing the children Billy Joel, ABBA, U2… and pretty soon the ‘Kids’ playlist merged with our own and we were all trying to hit Adele’s high notes in Someone like you together.
The upside of this is that the boys listen to and sing along with anything and everything. I’ve walked by their room and heard them crooning ‘I gotta do my hair and put my make up on…’ while they trade Pokemon cards. Completely unselfconscious. (One of them came tottering up to me wearing my heels the other day saying ‘Look! I’m Sia!’) w
Of course, not everyone is as taken with their Sia impersonation as we are. Someone (my mother) occasionally sends me YouTube links of precocious young talent singing RTP in Kalyani and then expounding on it at length with an unmistakable American drawl. No accompanying text just the link. (She’s good. You have to hand it to her.)
The background score to my own childhood was a mix of Kylie Minogue and Carnatic music. While I tried to get my misra chapu taalam right I was also following Kylie Minogue’s call to ‘Do the Locomotion’(the Macarena of the 80s), beseechingly warbled that I was ‘gonna keep my baby’ like Madonna. And perhaps more disturbingly, I’d sing along with George Michael who wanted to be my ‘father figure’. So maybe it wasn’t all as innocent as I remember it to be.
As a parent it’s a strange mix of feelings I have. I love how much the kids love music but I also worry they want to know if ‘Bang! Bang’ means a shooting spree (both their understanding of the song and it’s actual meaning aren’t exactly U/A). Innocence is ever fleeting. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
I’m putting a pin in this for now and following ABBAs lead, I’m just going to say, thank you for the music, sing along with them and maybe slip some Jungle Book in every now and then.
When Baloo comes on, I’ll just plug my ears.
(The writer’s parenting philosophy is: if there’s no blood, don’t call me)
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