Genre of music
A
children's song
may be a
nursery rhyme
set to music, a song that children invent and share among themselves or a modern creation intended for entertainment, use in the home or education. Although children's songs have been recorded and studied in some cultures more than others, they appear to be universal in human society.
[1]
Categories
[
edit
]
Iona and Peter Opie
, pioneers of the academic study of children's culture, divided children's songs into two classes: those taught to children by adults, which when part of a traditional culture they saw as nursery rhymes, and those that children taught to each other, which formed part of the independent culture of childhood.
[2]
A further use of the term
children's song
is for songs written for the entertainment or education of children, usually in the modern era. In practice none of these categories is entirely discrete, since, for example, children often reuse and adapt nursery rhymes, and many songs now considered as traditional were deliberately written by adults for commercial ends.
The Opies further divided nursery rhymes into a number of groups, including
[3]
Playground or children's street rhymes they sub-divided into two major groups: those associated with games and those that were entertainments, with the second category including
[4]
In addition, since the advent of popular music publication in the nineteenth century, a large number of songs have been produced for and often adopted by children. Many of these imitate the form of nursery rhymes, and a number have come to be accepted as such. They can be seen to have arisen from a number of sources, including:
Nursery or Mother Goose rhymes
[
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]
The term
nursery rhyme
is used for "traditional" songs for young children in Britain and many
English speaking countries
; but this usage dates only from the nineteenth century, and in North America the older
Mother Goose rhyme
is still often used.
[5]
The oldest children's songs of which we have records are
lullabies
, which can be found in every human culture.
[6]
The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacte", may be the oldest to survive.
[6]
Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of
Jesus
(including "
Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting
") take the form of a lullabies and may be adaptations of contemporary lullabies.
[7]
However, most of those used today date from the seventeenth century onwards.
[7]
Some rhymes are medieval or sixteenth-century in origin, including "
To market, to market
" and "
Cock a doodle doo
", but most were not written down until the eighteenth century, when the publishing of children's books began to move towards entertainment.
[8]
The first English collections were
Tommy Thumb's Song Book
and a sequel,
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
, both thought to have been published before 1744, and at this point such songs were known as "Tommy Thumb's songs".
[9]
The publication of
John Newbery
's
Mother Goose's Melody; or, Sonnets for the Cradle
(
c
. 1785) is the first record we have of many classic rhymes still in use today.
[10]
These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional
riddles
,
proverbs
,
ballads
, lines of
mummers
' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals.
[5]
Roughly half of the current body of recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-eighteenth century.
[11]
In the early nineteenth century, printed collections of rhymes began to spread to other countries, including
Robert Chambers
's
Popular Rhymes of Scotland
(1826) and, in the United States,
Mother Goose's Melodies
(1833).
[5]
We sometimes know the origins and authors of rhymes from this period, such as "
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
", which combined an eighteenth-century French tune with a poem by the English writer
Jane Taylor
, and "
Mary Had a Little Lamb
", written by Sarah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830.
[5]
Nursery rhymes were also often collected by early folk-song collectors, including, in Scotland,
Sir Walter Scott
and, in Germany,
Clemens Brentano
and
Achim von Arnim
in
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
(1806?08).
[12]
The first, and possibly the most important, academic collections to focus in this area were
James Orchard Halliwell
's
The Nursery Rhymes of England
(1842) and
Popular Rhymes and Tales
(1849).
[13]
By the time of
Sabine Baring-Gould
's
A Book of Nursery Songs
(1895), child folklore had become an academic study, full of comments and footnotes. The early years of the twentieth century are notable for the addition of sophisticated illustrations to books of children's songs, including Caldecott's
Hey Diddle Diddle Picture Book
(1909) and
Arthur Rackham
's
Mother Goose
(1913). The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of
Iona and Peter Opie
.
[11]
Children's playground and street songs
[
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]
In contrast to nursery rhymes, which are learned in childhood and passed from adults to children only after a gap of 20 to 40 years, children's playground and street songs, like much children's lore, are learned and passed on almost immediately.
[14]
The Opies noted that this had two important effects: the rapid transmission of new and adjusted versions of songs, which could cover a country like Great Britain in perhaps a month by exclusively oral transmission, and the process of "wear and repair", in which songs were changed, modified and fixed as words and phrases were forgotten, misunderstood or updated.
[15]
Origins of songs
[
edit
]
Some rhymes collected in the mid-twentieth century can be seen to have origins as early in the eighteenth century. Where sources could be identified, they could often be traced to popular adult songs, including
ballads
and those in
music hall
and
minstrel shows
.
[16]
They were also studied in 19th century New York.
[17]
Children also have a tendency to recycle nursery rhymes, children's commercial songs and adult music in satirical versions. A good example is the theme from the mid-1950s
Disney
film
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
, "
The Ballad of Davy Crockett
", with a tune by
George Bruns
; its opening lines, "Born on a mountain top in Tennessee / The greenest state in the land of the free", were endlessly satirised to make Crockett a spaceman, a parricide and even a
Teddy Boy
.
[18]
Action songs
[
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]
Some of the most popular playground songs include actions to be done with the words. Among the most famous of these is "I'm a Little Teapot". A term from the song is now commonly used in
cricket
to describe a disgruntled
bowler
's stance when a catch has been dropped. A 'teapot' involves standing with one hand on your hip in disappointment, a 'double teapot'
[19]
involves both hands on hips and a disapproving glare.
[20]
Game songs
[
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]
Many children's playground and street songs are connected to particular games. These include
clapping games
, like "
Miss Susie
", played in America; "A sailor went to sea" from Britain; and "Mpeewa", played in parts of Africa.
[21]
Many traditional
M?ori
children's games, some of them with educational applications?such as hand movement, stick and string games?were accompanied by particular songs.
[22]
In the Congo, the traditional game "A Wa Nsabwee" is played by two children synchronising hand and other movements while singing.
[23]
Skipping games like
Double Dutch
have been seen as important in the formation of
hip hop
and
rap
music.
[24]
If a playground song
does
have a character, it is usually a child present at the time of the song's performance or the child singing the song. Awkward relations between young boys and girls is a common
motif
, as in the American playground song,
jump-rope rhyme
,
[25]
or taunt "K-I-S-S-I-N-G", spelt aloud. The song is learned by
oral tradition
:
[
Name
] and [
Name
] sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
First comes love, then comes marriage,
then comes the baby in a baby carriage!
[26]
Pastime songs
[
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]
Other songs have a variety of patterns and contexts. Many of the verses used by children have an element of
transgression
, and a number have satirical aims. The parody of adult songs with alternative verses, such as the rewriting of "
While shepherds watched their flocks by night
" to "While shepherds washed their socks at night" and numerous other versions, was a prominent activity in the British playgrounds investigated by the Opies in the twentieth century.
[27]
With the growth of media and advertising in some countries, advertising
jingles
and parodies of those jingles have become a regular feature of children's songs, including the "
McDonald's
song" in the United States, which played against adult desire for ordered and healthy eating.
[28]
Humour is a major factor in children's songs. (The nature of the English language, with its many double meanings for words, may mean that it possesses more punning songs than other cultures, although they are found in other cultures?for example, China).
[29]
Nonsense verses
and songs, like those of
Edward Lear
and
Lewis Carroll
, have been a major feature of publications for children, and some of these have been absorbed by children, although many such verses seem to have been invented by children themselves.
[30]
Parodies and satire
[
edit
]
Playground songs can be parodies of popular songs such as "
On Top of Old Smoky
" or "
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
" in the US with suitably altered lyrics. The new lyrics are frequently highly derisive towards figures of authority such as teachers or involve ribald lyrical variations.
Zero-tolerance
rules in some schools now prevent this, although they are sometimes ignored by teachers who view the songs as harmless and clever.
[31]
Playground songs may also feature contemporary children's characters or
child actors
such as
Popeye
,
Shirley Temple
,
Batman
or
Barney the Dinosaur
.
[32]
Such songs are usually set to common melodies (a popular Batman-themed song uses much of the chorus of "
Jingle Bells
") and often include subversive and crude humor; in Barney's case, schoolyard parodies of his theme song were a driving force behind a massive
backlash against Barney
in the 1990s.
[33]
Influence
[
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]
Occasionally the songs are used as a base for modern pop songs, "
Circle Circle Dot Dot
", commonly sung in American playgrounds, has been recorded as a
rap
song.
Commercial children's music
[
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]
Commercial children's music grew out of the popular music-publishing industry associated with New York's
Tin Pan Alley
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early songs included "Ten little fingers and ten little toes" by Ira Shuster and Edward G. Nelson and "
School Days
" (1907) by Gus Edwards and Will Cobb.
[34]
Perhaps the best remembered now is "
Teddy Bears' Picnic
", with lyrics written by
Jimmy Kennedy
in 1932, although the tune, by the British composer
John Walter Bratton
, was composed in 1907.
[35]
As recording technology developed, children's songs were soon being sold on record; in 1888, the first recorded discs (called "plates") offered for sale included
Mother Goose
nursery rhymes. The earliest record catalogues of several seminal firms in the recording industry?such as
Edison
,
Berliner
, and
Victor
?contained separate children's sections. Until the 1950s, all the major record companies produced albums for children, mostly based on popular cartoons or nursery rhymes and read by major stars of theatre or film. The role of
Disney
in children's cinema from the 1930s meant that it gained a unique place in the production of children's music, beginning with "Minnies Yoo Hoo" (1930).
[36]
After the production of its first feature-length animation,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
(1937), with its highly successful score by
Frank Churchill
and Larry Morey, the mould was set for a combination of animation, fairy tale and distinctive songs that would carry through to the 1970s with songs from films such as
Pinocchio
(1940) and
Song of the South
(1946).
[37]
The mid-twentieth century
baby boomers
provided a growing market for children's music.
Woody Guthrie
,
Pete Seeger
, and
Ella Jenkins
were among the politically progressive and socially conscious performers who aimed albums at children. Novelty recordings like "
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
" (a
Montgomery Ward
jingle that became a book and later a classic children's movie) and the fictional music group
Alvin and the Chipmunks
were among the most commercially successful music ventures of the time. In the 1960s, as the baby boomers matured and became more politically aware, they embraced both the substance and politics of folk ("the people's") music.
Peter, Paul, and Mary
,
The Limeliters
and
Tom Paxton
were acclaimed folk artists of the period who wrote albums for children. In the 1970s, television programmes like
Sesame Street
became the dominant force in children's music. In the early 1990s, the songwriter, record producer, and performer
Bobby Susser
emerged with his award-winning children's songs and series,
Bobby Susser Songs for Children
, that exemplified the use of songs to educate young children in schools and at home.
[38]
Disney also re-entered the market for animated musical features with
The Little Mermaid
(1989), from which the song "
Under the Sea
" won an
Oscar
, becoming the first of a string of
Oscar
?winning Disney songs.
[39]
The twenty-first century has seen an increase in the number of independent children's music artists, with acts like
Dan Zanes
,
Cathy Bollinger
, and
Laurie Berkner
getting wide exposure on cable TV channels targeted at children.
[
citation needed
]
The band
Trout Fishing in America
has achieved great acclaim by continuing the tradition of merging sophisticated folk music with family-friendly lyrics,
[
citation needed
]
, and rock-oriented acts like
They Might Be Giants
have released albums marketed directly to children, such as
No!
,
Here Come the ABCs
,
Here Come the 123s
and
Here Comes Science
.
[40]
Selected discography
[
edit
]
- Simon Mayor and Hilary James,
Lullabies with Mandolins
(2004)
[41]
and
Children's Favourites from Acoustics
(2005)
[42]
- Mike and Peggy Seeger,
American Folk Songs for Children
(1955)
- Isla St Clair,
My Generation
(2003)
- Broadside Band,
Old English Nursery Rhymes
- Tim Hart and Friends,
My Very Favourite Nursery Rhyme Record
(1981)
- Bobby Susser
,
Wiggle Wiggle and Other Exercises
(1996)
- Various artists,
Hello Children Everywhere
, Vols. 1?4 (EMI Records, 1988?1991)
[43]
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Lew, Jackie Chooi-Theng; Campbell, Patricia Shehan (2005-05-01).
"Children's Natural and Necessary Musical Play: Global Contexts, Local Applications"
.
Music Educators Journal
.
91
(5): 57?62.
doi
:
10.2307/3400144
.
ISSN
0027-4321
.
JSTOR
3400144
.
S2CID
143319785
.
- ^
Opie, I.; Opie, P. (1977).
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
. Granada. p. 21.
- ^
Opie, I.; Opie, P. (1997).
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
(2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 12?19.
- ^
Opie, I.; Opie, P. (1977).
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
. Granada. p. 37.
- ^
a
b
c
d
H. Carpenter and M. Prichard,
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(
Oxford University Press
, 1984), p. 383.
- ^
a
b
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
(Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 6.
- ^
a
b
H. Carpenter and M. Prichard,
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 326.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
(Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 30?31, 47?48, 128?29, 299.
- ^
H. Carpenter and M. Prichard,
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 382?83.
- ^
H. Carpenter and M. Prichard,
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 363?64.
- ^
a
b
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
(Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997).
- ^
H. Carpenter and M. Prichard,
The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 384.
- ^
R. M. Dorson,
The British Folklorists: a History
(Taylor & Francis, 1999), p. 67.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), p. 27.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), p. 26.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), p. 33.
- ^
Bolton, Henry Carrington (1888).
The counting-out rhymes of children: their antiquity, origin, and wide distribution : a study in folk-lore
. London: E. Stock. p. 121.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), pp. 138?40.
- ^
"No wickets, didn't score a run but it was vintage McGrath | the Australian"
. Archived from
the original
on 2008-06-12
. Retrieved
2017-01-31
.
- ^
"Loss to England really hurt: McGrath ? News ? Ashes Tour 06?07"
.
www.theage.com.au
. 10 February 2007.
Archived
from the original on 2007-09-29.
- ^
S. E. D. Wilkins,
Sports and games of medieval cultures
(Greenwood, 2002), p. 32.
- ^
M. McLean,
Maori Music
(Auckland University Press, 1996), pp. 147?64.
- ^
T. Mukenge,
Culture and customs of the Congo
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), p. 56.
- ^
K. D. Gaunt,
The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop
(New York University Press, 2006), pp. 158?80.
- ^
Heitzig, Lenya and Rose, Penny (2009).
Live Relationally
, p. 196.
ISBN
978-1-4347-6748-6
.
- ^
A variant can be found in
Mansour, David (2005).
From Abba to Zoom: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia Of The Late 20th Century
. Andrews McMeel. p. 263.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), pp. 107?17.
- ^
Simon J. Bronner,
American children's folklore
(August House, 1988), p. 96.
- ^
Roger T. Ames
, Sin-wai Chan, Mau-sang Ng, Dim Cheuk Lau,
Interpreting culture through translation: a festschrift for D.C. Lau
(Chinese University Press, 1991), pp. 38?39.
- ^
I. Opie and P. Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Granada, 1977), pp. 37?44.
- ^
. 28 August 2006
https://web.archive.org/web/20060828020726/http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore/pdf/playfolklore_issue44_2.pdf
. Archived from the original on 28 August 2006.
CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link
)
- ^
Opie, Iona Archibald; Opie, Peter (2001).
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
. New York Review of Books.
ISBN
9780940322691
.
Archived
from the original on 2015-09-05.
- ^
Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood,
by Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf,
ISBN
0-87483-444-9
(see
"The Green Man Review entry"
. Archived from
the original
on March 12, 2001
. Retrieved
September 2,
2016
.
)
- ^
E. C. Axford,
Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicians
(Scarecrow Press, 2004), p. 18.
- ^
van der Merwe, Peter
,
Roots of the Classical: The Popular Origins of Western Music
(Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 436.
- ^
D. A. Jasen,
Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song
(Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 111.
- ^
D. A. Jasen,
Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song
(Taylor & Francis, 2003), pp. 111?12.
- ^
Educational Dealer
, August, 1997
- ^
D. A. Jasen,
Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song
(Taylor & Francis, 2003), p. 113.
- ^
Thill, Scott.
"They Might Be Giants Keeps Pop Kid-Friendly With Smart Science"
.
WIRED
. Retrieved
2018-08-10
.
- ^
"Childrensmusic.co.uk"
. Archived from
the original
on August 13, 2007.
- ^
Mayor, Simon.
"Acoustics Records"
.
Acoustics Records
.
Archived
from the original on 2007-09-11.
- ^
"Hello Children Everywhere"
.
www.sterlingtimes.co.uk
. Archived from
the original
on 2014-12-21
. Retrieved
2013-01-14
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Iona and Peter Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)
- Bronner, Simon J.
American Children's Folklore
(August House, 1988)
- Brian Sutton-Smith, Jay Mechling, Thomas W. Johnson, Felicia McMahon (ed.)
Children's Folklore: A SourceBook
(Routledge, 2012)
External links
[
edit
]