For the most part, my look back at the best kids and family music of 2010 has focused on specific albums or songs. This list features five ideas (or, and I hate to use this journalistic trope, "trends") that signifiy where kids music might be headed in the decade to come. That's not to say that the specific albums and artists I'm mentioning here aren't worthy of celebrations themselves (many of them are already part of the "Best of 2010" package), just their mere existence is kind of a big deal, the kind of deal that might just lead you to say a few years from now, "I remember when I read about it on.... what was the name of that blog again?..."
iScream for New Things: Readeez creator Michael Rachap's latest creation is the Readeez Folderfuls, which are single-subject collections of somewhat academically-minded topics. (The first is titled "Money Math" and deals with counting types of money.) I'm geeked about this not necessarily because the songs and videos are good (though they are), but because the potential for providing family-friendly content via this medium is huge, mostly due to a little product that begins with an "i" and ends with a "Pad." I think it would need a little more integration, and a lot of artists would need to invest a lot more effort (or cash) to come up with offerings as slickly designed as Rachap's. But I think an artist that figures out a useful $10 app could have a successful product on their hands. (And, yes, Michael, I was thinking about this quite a bit.)
Banding Together (Thinking Globally): Many words have been written about Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, the Haitian relief album put together by Dean Jones and Bill Childs. Most of those words have been written about the music (excellent) and the cause (worthy). Fewer words have been written about the album's underpinning -- it is the first benefit album originating directly out of the family music genre. Other kids' music benefit albums have consisted mostly of "adult" artists recording songs for a family audience. Prior seeds planted by events such as Kindiefest or websites such as Sprockster (plus longer-established entities such as the Children's Music Network) are finally -- slowly -- flowering into a recognition that everyone's success is hinged, at least in part, upon elevating the genre's overall visibility. And albums like Health Food for Thought, on which children's musicians are the majority of the artists, suggest that Many Hands is merely the first of many.
iScream for New Things: Readeez creator Michael Rachap's latest creation is the Readeez Folderfuls, which are single-subject collections of somewhat academically-minded topics. (The first is titled "Money Math" and deals with counting types of money.) I'm geeked about this not necessarily because the songs and videos are good (though they are), but because the potential for providing family-friendly content via this medium is huge, mostly due to a little product that begins with an "i" and ends with a "Pad." I think it would need a little more integration, and a lot of artists would need to invest a lot more effort (or cash) to come up with offerings as slickly designed as Rachap's. But I think an artist that figures out a useful $10 app could have a successful product on their hands. (And, yes, Michael, I was thinking about this quite a bit.)
Banding Together (Thinking Globally): Many words have been written about Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, the Haitian relief album put together by Dean Jones and Bill Childs. Most of those words have been written about the music (excellent) and the cause (worthy). Fewer words have been written about the album's underpinning -- it is the first benefit album originating directly out of the family music genre. Other kids' music benefit albums have consisted mostly of "adult" artists recording songs for a family audience. Prior seeds planted by events such as Kindiefest or websites such as Sprockster (plus longer-established entities such as the Children's Music Network) are finally -- slowly -- flowering into a recognition that everyone's success is hinged, at least in part, upon elevating the genre's overall visibility. And albums like Health Food for Thought, on which children's musicians are the majority of the artists, suggest that Many Hands is merely the first of many.
