Review: More Singable Songs - Raffi

It is waaaay too easy to dismiss Raffi as the purveyor of bad children's music based purely on reputation.

That is, if you've never actually heard his early work. His first album, Singable Songs For The Very Young, is a landmark of the children's genre, a genre that arguably didn't exist in any meaningful way until Raffi came along. And his second album, More Singable Songs, while not earning any awards for album-title creativity, is no less vital.

The album title doesn't promise much variation from the first album, and the music bears that out, but in a good way. Raffi blends traditional kids' favorites ("Comin' Down the Chimney," "Six Little Ducks") with folk standards ("Workin' On the Railroad," "New River Train") and originals ("Shake My Sillies Out," "If I Had a Dinosaur"). There are very few "messages" in the songs, and even those are slid in ("Oh Me Oh My," which at the very end becomes as articulate an argument for self-sufficient singing as anything Dan Zanes has recorded). The instrumentation is generally simple, but bringing in, when the need arises, a tuba, say, or pedal steel guitar played by Daniel Lanois (or "Dan," as he was known in his pre-U2 and Emmylou Harris days).

The comments from my review of the first album apply here, too -- best for kids aged 2-6 and too short at less than 30 minutes. (I keep thinking that Rounder could make a lot of money by combining these two CDs into one CD and adding some bonus tracks for the completists. If there are Raffi completists, the notion of which strikes me as very odd.) This is another children's music classic. Available at the usual suspects online and off-.

Review: Singable Songs for the Very Young - Raffi

The Elvis of children's music would have to be Raffi. His own "Behind the Music" episode wouldn't be nearly as interesting as, say, Motley Crue's. But the category of "children’s music" didn’t exist in record stores before Raffi -- and this CD -- came along.

Singable Songs for the Very Young was recorded nearly 30 years ago. But it still sounds fresh today. Now, if you’re allergic to folk music, you may not like these CDs. The instrumentation is often simple -- a guitar, perhaps, or Raffi singing with no accompaniment at all. But sometimes there’s a full band playing, such as on "Willoughby Wallaby Woo" or "Old MacDonald Had A Band." The CD sounds great, and that may be due to the work of Daniel Lanois, who recorded the album. Lanois went on to do much more famous work creating a great sonic palette for U2's classic '80s era albums and, in the '90s, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan, among others. (So look at it this way -- even if you dislike Raffi, without him, maybe there's no "Where the Streets Have No Name," unless, of course, you also dislike U2, in which case I can't do anything for you.)

For the most part, Raffi sticks to classics and traditional songs. Raffi's own songs are split between "non-message" songs (e.g., "Going to the Zoo") and "message" songs ("I Wonder If I'm Growing"). With the exception of the "message" songs, kids 2 years old (or younger) through 5 years will enjoy the CD; some of the "message" songs are probably more appropriate for 3 year olds. If there's any drawback to the CD, it's that it's less than 30 minutes long. Then again, a little Raffi can go a long way.

One thing that is striking to me about Raffi's earliest albums is the utter lack of reference to the adult world. If you listen to children's artists recording today such as Ralph's World or Justin Roberts or Laurie Berkner (all very good), they will incorporate references to adult television shows or humorous lines targeted at the adults. No such thing in Raffi's work. It is all aimed at the kids' level. Not that it is ever condescending (the great error in bad kids' recordings). But Raffi is clearly not singing for the kids' parents.

I think there's a tendency to dismiss Raffi as an "annoying" children's artist. It's possible that his later work is the source of this frustration. But his earliest work, especially Singable Songs for the Very Young, are CDs your children will love and you will like a lot more than you expected. Highly recommended.