Born in the late '70s, I started listening to music in the '80s and really came into my tastes in the early to mid-'90s. You know, high school.
I listened to everything really. My tagger friends were into Hip Hop, I had punk rock friends who were, you know, punk rock. My fancier friends listened to Shoegazer bands. Quite the variety. And then there was the Rock En Español crowd.
Fast forward to the Oughts (aughts? 00s?), and I'm pregnant with my first child. Pregnant and married to a man a couple of short years younger than me who grew up in Chicago and was super emo in his more musically inclined days. My pregnancy was filled with lots of Latin music (good drums, baby kicks and moves) and my husband and I waxing poetic about how AWESOME our baby was going to be. I mean, how could she not with a music collection like ours?! Everything from The Cure, Shakira, and Los Lobos to Beethoven and Bright Eyes (not part of my collection, I want to be clear, far too emo for me).
So we played music to her inside me and she was born and we played music to her and we sang to her and bought her tiny instruments. Then she was able to talk and form complete thoughts and sentences, somewhere around age 2.
We were impressed.
And she told us she hated our music. And she told us she only liked ballerina music. WHAT?!
I spent much of my formative years avoiding ballerina music! After much discussion we came down to what ballerina music was. Classical. And melodic. No major cacophony.
Sigh. We clearly failed as parents.
But wait. Fast forward a couple of years and we were going to be parents again. Hurrah! So we played music to her inside me and she was born and we played music to her and sang to her and bought her tiny instruments. And she loved them. And then, in the last few months, she started speaking words and she decided that music was called "La La" and she started to ask for it. She loves to dance, I mean, really shake it.
We decided to replace our broken turntable as a family gift for Christmas. We hooked it up and put in a vinyl record and something miraculous happened. The big sister started to dance with the little sister without demanding that we change it to ballerina music. The big sister asked us, "WHAT IS THIS ROCK AND ROLL?" and we answered, "This rock and roll, and it's called Thin Lizzy!"
And they both loved it.
Sure, we spend most of our time listening to Yo Gabba Gabba, opens a new window CDs that we've checked out from our library. (They're actually pretty good. Real bands making fun kids music that doesn't make us want to pull our hair out. I highly recommend them if you can't take another Wiggles song.) But there's hope!
[Editor's Note: The Backyardigans, opens a new window are pretty good children's music as well....]
~A music-lovin' mom
