Given the mini-baby boom of the 1990s, it is no surprise that music produced for ever-younger audiences has enjoyed rising sales. Of course, children's film, TV, cartoon and MTV marketing strategy is to target ever-younger audiences. By the late 1990s, toy store chains reported that for pre-teen consumers, a declining market in traditional toys was countered by growing sales of music, video, clothing and like pop-culture accessories.

Consulting the cdroots.com cultural barometer, under the "style" identified as "Children's Music" the following helpful consumer categories appear: General, Compilations, Barney, Cartoon Music, Disney, Educational, Lullabies, Music for Little People, Pokémon, Sesame Street, Children's Music Imports (not the same as "world music," as we'll see in a moment), Indie Children's Music and (the ubiquitous, in your face) "Today's Deals."

Babies and toddlers (their parents and doting relatives, actually) represent a distinct market sector, broken out into Children's Music Classics, Classical, Lullabies, Music for Babies and Toddlers, Music for Little People, Parents' Choice Award Winners and (got you covered) Sesame Street.

Every parental over-achiever knows about "The Mozart Effect" (thesis: a child's listening tastes develop in the womb, and like everything else, it's your responsibility). But no worry, you can purchase a three-volume CD box set by that name, not to mention both children's and adults' editions of the tie-in book. But it doesn't stop there. Check out Mozart for Mothers-to-Be, Beethoven for Babies: Brain Training for Little Ones, Bach for Babies: Fun and Games for Budding Brains, ad infinitum.

But what about "The Last Poets" effect? We saw the group perform shortly before our daughter was born. Sitting in the front row, the volume was such that our prenatal wonder began rolling and tumbling in utero, and we had to retreat to the back of the hall to calm her down. This is anecdotal, but I haven't noticed any particular correlation between the experience and our daughter's tastes. She still likes hip-hop, jazz, kid's music, reggae, assorted "world" and Mozart, and then some. (This is a kid who, first time she saw a portrait of the Holy Mother, asked her identity, and brightened when informed that it was Maria: "Oh, Maria Callas," she replied.)

In any case, her personal music collection now consists of several dozen CDs and cassettes (plus a growing number of kid's literature audio CDs, soundtracks, "educational" CD-ROMs and computer games), more titles than I could claim until well into high school. Admittedly, we've fueled the escalation with red-diaper classics from Ella Jenkins, Suni Paz, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and countless pop and classical titles (yes, de rigueur, she's enrolled in ballet and music classes). Add to that the Kindermusik program popular all over the United States, the popular "Wee Sing" series, entertainment institutions such as Raffi, Cathy Fink and Tom Chapin, plus a host of artists who have at least one "kid's" release in their résumé. (Tish Hinojosa's Cada Niño / Every Child is a favorite in our household.)

The folks at Putumayo may be pleased to learn that their World Playground Vol. 1: A Musical Adventure for Kids has never been long off the CD player since it showed up in 1999. If it were a cassette or LP, it would have worn out by now. Who can resist Touré Kunda, Cedella Marley Booker and Taj Majal, Buckwheat Zydeco, Manu Chao, or Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca? The visual appeal of Putumayo's colorful album art has caught our daughter's eye such that she's surveyed all their other compilations that have filtered in via the promotional circuit. She thinks it's kid's music. Is it all in the packaging?

Going back to cdroots, searching under "Children's Music Imports" (sorted by "Top Sellers, Updated Daily"), Team Disney dominates the top ten with its All-American import titles (cheaper overseas manufacture costs, presumably; we call it globalization): Disney's Greatest Hits Vols. 1-2, Disco Donald, Pooh's Music Box, etc. Not until number nine do we get something like world music: Children's Songs from Around the World, Vol. 2: India. Number 10 is Music of Vince Guaraldi (the jazz pianist who penned the Peanuts theme nearly 40 years ago). Go figure.

So what about "world music for kids"? No such category at cdroots. Searching the children's section for "world music" yielded exactly the above ten titles. Some other recordings do appear that would fit the category, but the cdroots search engine doesn't classify them as such. Yet the material is out there. Below the radar, one of the most engaging projects (you won't find it on cdroots), developed by Felipe Pasmanick, a bilingual elementary school teacher in San Francisco, is Reading Rumba, whose snappy Afro-Cuban and funk-derived songs combine clever Spanish and English lyrics with lessons in everyday knowledge and the rudiments of music. This is a superb package for teachers looking to internationalize the grade-school curriculum, but the music also stands on its own, with young singers recruited from Pasmanick's classroom, and cool backing by the author and his rhythmically adept musical pals.

Children's world music is coming into its own in Europe too. From Italy comes Ninnananni, a diverse compilation of traditional children's tunes by prominent folk artists such as Elena Ledda, Ariondela, Trio Argia and Canzoniere Greciano Salentino. From France, ARB Music's Mamouchka is a collection of Russian children's songs (nursery rhymes, Christmas carols and lullabies), sung by two artists identified simply as Natalia and Veronika. To the spare accompaniment of balalaika, guitar, contrabass, drum kit and percussion, they present engaging if saccharine (remember, this is kid's music) renditions of Tsarist-era tunes (who said all world music has to be progressive?) kept alive by the émigré community in Paris. ARB's web site (in French) presents an array of children's music interpretations from around the globe, with sound excerpts, and often with lyrics and recipes to complement the recordings. The colorful album art recalls the whimsical feel of the Putumayo packaging formula.

Germany would appear to be out front vis-à-vis children's music education. In the classical sphere, popular Austrian-born actor Karlheinz Böhm has narrated the lives and works of composers like Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Bach for at least two generations of young listeners (Leonard Bernstein did something similar in the United States). In the multikulti (as German progressives say) realm, a fascinating and superbly executed series of CD-book packages comes from Ökotopia, a press and music house in Münster. Their catalog offers German teachers a wealth of resources to introduce their charges to the diversity of world cultures through music.

Composer, studio musician, radio theater writer, musical theater actor, children's book author and music performer, and a regular on the workshop and festival circuit, Helmut Höfele is a prominent figure on the German scene. His In 80 Tönen um die Welt (80 Songs from around the World) is a book-CD smorgasbord of kid-accessible global music. Höfele combines traditional tunes and instruments with native and adapted German lyrics. The songs are generally short (none exceeds four minutes), but the project's goofy enthusiasm and the artistry of his many collaborators of all ages make this a delightful package, and a model for world-music education. The book of the same title, co-authored with his wife, Susanne Steffe, includes music, lyrics, stories, activities and illustrations that give the project considerable depth from an educator's perspective. Altogether, the project constitutes a superb teaching and learning resource.

I asked Höfele about his musical background, and how he became a music educator. As he tells it,

Not that the parents of Germany's children today seem especially concerned. Höfele's modus operandi is to travel with his DAT recorder and some instruments, and see what happens. Regarding a trip to China and India, some results of which can be heard on the album, he relates:

Höfele's collaborator Biber Gullatz is "one of the most famous German theatre and film musicians. He is also one of my best friends. We've known each other from the early days." Of his collaborators more generally, he says, "My co-musicians are all professionals. In my wild years I played trippy rock music with them. Today they work with artists like Herbert Grönemeyer, De-Phazz and Söhne Mannheims. I call them into my home studio and then we have some fun." An upcoming project will focus on the music of Namibia (coincidentally, the former German Southwest Africa), "with my best friend, Werner Piper, a big mind and a big heart. He writes crazy books and knows a lot about music. We like to travel around the world and find new music." He has also just released a new collection called Europa in 80 Tönen (Europe in 80 Songs).

Another prominent figure in German children's world music is singer-guitarist Pit Budde, whose four CDs offer kid's-eye views of the music and culture of Australia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Each has a companion book designed for teachers, replete with music, lyrics, dances, folk tales, games, handicraft projects, recipes and illustrations. The CDs mix rock-tinged music and traditional tunes, often sung by natives in the original language, accompanied on folk and western instruments by an array of musicians from Germany and the featured region. Contextualizing narratives by Budde and others bridge the songs, over a background of found sounds from the music's home environment.

Purists may object, but authenticity is not the issue so much as exposing young listeners to the idea of human otherness via music. The song narratives make that idea (if not the reality) of cultural difference more palpable by presenting engaging sounds quite distinct from those available on the domestic menu of children's music.

The Australian CD title summarizes the formula, Didgeridoo und Känguru, a kind of National Geographic approach to cultural and geographical difference, rendering it accessible, non-threatening and indeed, interesting and entertaining, through a copious blend of aboriginal vocals, didgeridoo, world hand percussion and folk tales. The mix is diverse, the lyrics catchy, the narratives intriguing, and the music infectious. As a gauge of his talent, Budde's Middle Eastern CD, Iftah Ya Simsim, which features the considerable talents of several Turkish musicians, with an ambient background of Middle Eastern street sounds, earned a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Prize) listing in 2000. Just as engaging are his titles for Africa (Karibuni Watoto: Kinderlieder aus Afrika) and Latin America (Karneval der Kulturen: Lateinamerikanische Lieder, Tänze und Geschichten für Kinder).

While monolingual English speakers, teachers included, will have little use for the books, the CDs can stand alone, from a child's perspective not the least because of the many confident young voices heard throughout. International schools will find a superb resource in the Ökotopia children's world music series. An enterprising children's press in the English-speaking world would do a real service in translating the series. It would require writing English-language lyrics to the songs, translating the texts and bridging spoken narratives, and recording and mixing in the new vocal tracks, none of which is beyond the capacity of publishing and multi-track recording technology.

Short of that, the Ökotopia example, its attention to production quality, cross-cultural awareness and the celebration of human diversity, should inspire like projects in many tongues. Time perhaps to tool out on the disinformation highway and pester the likes of cdroots & Noble to make it real on the virtual shelves. We're talking the next generation here. Culturally speaking, deporting Disco Donald from the "Children's Music Imports" top-ten list (cuffed and blindfolded to Guantanamo, perhaps?) might be one small step toward keeping hope alive, toward some kind of radically humanistic new world order wherein Iraqi children won't be the next collateral victims of the real and terrifying consequences of old Donald's rummy, smart-bomb, go-it-alone imperialist rage. � Michael Stone

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