[Dixielandjazz] The musical tastes of 5 year olds...

[Katie Cavera]

This last week I was back in Bellevue Ohio visiting my family.  My parents work in Bellevue (population 8,000) at a very small Catholic School, and every time I'm home I take my banjo and play for the kindergarten class.  The last time I was there it was just before Christmas so we sang Christmas songs.  This time when I was there I asked them what they wanted to do and they starting requesting Christmas songs again (because they remembered my last visit - it's been less then a year so it's the same group of kids.)  But then I said let's think of something that's not a Christmas song and we came up with a few things like "You Are My Sunshine" and some basic songs that kids that age would know.  But the funny part that I wanted to share with the DJML was that they kept asking for Beatles songs.  Which is great - I'd rather they ask for a Beatles song then some of the other things that you hear on the radio now, but I was trying to figure out how all these
 5 year old kids were familiar with the Beatles and then I remembered: There is a video game on the market where you pretend to be in a rock band. You can pretend to play guitar or drums (for example) and you score points based on how well that you can follow along with the song that the band in the game is playing.  The version of this game with all Beatles songs came out a few months back and I'll bet anything these kids have been playing this game.  So now these kids have been exposed to this music in an interesting way and they are familiar with these tunes.  And I'm thinking, who do I need to contact so that I can have them make a "Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five" version?  Ok, so it will probably never happen, but it's a nice idea don't you think?

Also since I've been out of town and I've been playing 'catch up' with my DJML emails, I wanted to comment on Ginny's thread about songs with the kid band that she runs.  First of all I think it's great that she has such a diverse 'book' for the kids.  And second of all I think it just proves that if you give the kids a chance they will choose a fun traditional song (Codfish Ball) over something more modern that maybe isn't as musically interesting (the "Star Wars" theme.)  So maybe a traditional jazz video game isn't such a bad idea?
- Katie
 http://www.katiecavera.com
http://www.youtube.com/kcavera