DADWAGON

In Nathan’s “I heart New York” post , our friend Tim comments:

don’t forget the brilliance that is David Weinstone and his NY-based “Music for Aardvarks and Other Mammals” empire. Best children’s music anywhere, except maybe that CD of Guns n’ Roses lullabies.

Which reminds me—we have some bad, bad music playing around our house. Okay, maybe not bad per se—Dan Zanes is actually pretty good, especially when Suzanne Vega’s helping him out—but strange.

Scarier than Iron Maiden's Eddie.

It began with “Lovely Baby,” a multi-disc set by Raimond Lap, an award-winning Dutch composer of baby music. My wife and I played these CDs all the time through Sasha’s first several months of life—until I couldn’t take it anymore. The “tunes,” such as they are, are like Brian Eno on quaaludes, a dreamy, nondirectional mass of strings and shimmering chimes and plinky piano notes, punctuated by the coos and burbles of what I can only describe as Ghost Babies. “Lovely Baby” embodies all the inoffensive horror of a Canto-pop karaoke tune sung by an Enya fan.

At some point, even Jean must’ve gotten tired of this. Or maybe it was Sasha. In any case, we moved on—to a disc of Chinese children’s songs. Often done to the tune of familiar American children’s songs, these were a great way for me to learn and practice my Mandarin. Two in particular I loved: a song about an elephant’s long nose (“Mama says only such a nose is beautiful”), and one about pulling up daikons from the ground (“Pull the daikon, pull the daikon! Hey yo, hey yo! Pull the daikon!”). I even learned them well enough to substitute lines referencing Sasha’s stinky bottom.

But others are more troubling. One song, set to the tune of “My Darling Clementine,” is all about a little girl who loves going to the market. Come on! Where’s the pathos, the tragedy, the loneliness that make the original so memorable, and what does it mean that this now-happy song is set to a distinctly eerie melody?

Another, the first track on the album, which always grabs Sasha’s attention and instantly calms her down, is about dolls. Sounds okay, right? But these aren’t just dolls, they’re soldier dolls, led by a blue-eyed, blond-bearded king who’s taking them into battle. Now, I don’t know if this is my genetic fear of Aryans here, or if it’s my knee-jerk liberal upbringing saying that if Sasha’s going to hear songs about militaristic kewpies then they should at least be Asian, but I just don’t like it.

Then again, she could be listening to this.