5-Minute Time Out: Dan Zanes
The kiddie folk superstar is getting into gospel - and immigration politics.
by Nerissa Nields
May 11, 2009
My two-and-a-half year old daughter Lila asks for "that video with the little girl in pink" over and over again. That's the one from Dan Zanes's 2005 DVD All Around the Kitchen in which Dan ambles down the front steps of his Brooklyn brownstone with his nine-year-old daughter, Anna. Anna is holding a small banjo, and her father is playing a mandolin. As they discuss which chords are required for "Waltzing Matilda" and begin playing his original song, "Jump Up," the other members of the band known as "Dan Zanes and Friends" saunter up with their instruments, and soon the neighborhood is alive with homemade music.
Dan Zanes is one of the best-known family musicians around today (he prefers the term "family music" to "children's music"; nevertheless his 2007 CD Catch That Train won the Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children). He has inspired countless families to pick up guitars, congos, ukeleles and harmonicas and begin making music in their own living rooms and back porches.
His most recent projects, Nueva York! and The Welcome Table are inspired by his interest in the music of his own neighborhood: music from Latin America. This dovetails beautifully with his mission to bring his musical friends and his neighborhood friends together through playing music. Proceeds benefit the New Sanctuary Movement, a coalition of churches and synagogues who are called by their faith to respond actively and publically to the immigration debate. Babble caught up with Dan on the phone to talk about the his switch from rock to folk music, his immigration activism, and the importance of teaching kids the occasional depressing song. — Nerissa Nields
How do you feel when you hear a song that you know you want to do? What elements draw you toward it, or is it even a conscious thing?
We're always trying to find another way into the song, so you breathe new life into them. Great songs can take a beating . . . I grew up listening to Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. So I always felt that family music had many, many emotional possibilities. For a lot of people in mainstream music or children's music — which isn't what we're doing — anything that involves young people got a bad reputation over the years as being something that probably didn't have a whole lot of emotion or depth.
"This stuff serves a purpose that goes way beyond fun."
Or maybe only one emotion. What I've been turned off by in children's music is it's just always got to be happy, whereas you're not afraid to go to more ambiguous places.
I think kids like mystery. But I remember going into my daughter's nursery school and playing "Deep Blue Sea," and the teacher said, "Well, that's enough."
Yeah, that's a painful song.
And it's sort of like that sometimes with "The Grey Goose," that Leadbelly song. But if we throw out these songs, we throw the baby out with the bathwater, because these songs really need to be told. These songs really meant something to people for a reason, and we have to have a sense of our histories and our traditions and our cultures. If we don't have these songs, then we can't tell our stories to people from another culture. The minute we lose that stuff, we can't build the bridges we need to build to be able to connect with each other. So this stuff, it just serves a purpose that goes way beyond fun, but I think it's a lot of fun too, and you can sing along with all these tunes.
©2009 Nerissa Nields and Babble
About the Author
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Nerissa Nields is a musician, writer, mother and activist who lives with her family in Northampton, MA. She is the author of the young adult novel Plastic Angel (Scholastic), and a guide for twentysomethings called How to Be an Adult (Mercy House). With her band The Nields she has released 15 CDs, toured all over North America and performed with the top names in folk music. Her latest release is a double family CD called Rock All Day, Rock All Night (Mercy House). |
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