YO MAMA: A toddler's old school music experience
OPINION
Music has always been a big part of my life. In my teens, I kept my beloved CDs (Avril Lavigne, Green Day, Evanescence, and other favourites) stored meticulously in a zippered folder filled with bulging plastic sleeves. Later, I got my first iPod and marvelled at how my life now felt like a movie, a soundtrack playing everywhere I went, a tune to fit my every mood tucked into my pocket.
In my mid-20s, my husband and I got swept up in the resurgence of record players and we got into vinyl. Thrifting for old records was an addictive hobby and we both loved the ritual of putting on an album and listening to it in its entirety.
Somewhere along the way, the record player became more decorative than functional. Our phones and bluetooth speaker had simply become too convenient. We would throw the occasional record on, but it was rare and spontaneous when we did.
Then, along came our son, and with him, some major changes to our listening experience.
Our Spotify account became populated with channels like Nursery Rhymes, Disney Hits and Upbeat Songs for Kids. What we listened to, and how we listened to it, changed drastically.
Because we played the music primarily off our cell phones, this drew major unwanted attention to our devices.
Our one-year-old son wanted to be the one to turn the music off and on. We were committed to not allowing him to play with our cell phones, so we started using the Spotify App on our TV. While there were no moving pictures, the big screen glowed with the album art of each song.
Pretty soon, he demanded that songs be changed before they’d barely begun, just for the sake of watching the screen change. He also begged — loudly — for the Xbox controller, which we used to select songs.
Listening to music became anxiety-inducing, to say the least.
Around this time, our son discovered our collection of vinyl records, which we kept alphabetized and neatly stored on a bookshelf in the living room. He pulled himself up to stand at the shelf and happily pulled them all down. He loved dumping them out of their crinkly sleeves and rolling the big black discs across the floor.%
We were horrified. Our beautiful record collection, so clean and organized, now covered in sticky baby fingerprints.
But the day we dropped a needle onto his first record — Yellow Submarine by the Beatles — the awe and wonder on his face changed everything. He was mesmerized. We began listening to album after album. The floor was tiled in album covers and the house was filled with (good) music.
Every evening after dinner became music time.
All we had to do was ask our son, “do you want to go put a record on?” and he would run to the living room. Getting the records was his job, and he ceremoniously selected them from the shelf. We ended up listening to many forgotten records and many that we’d bought and never actually listened to before. Because there was no digital component, we were all able to just focus on the music.
Some of our eclectic family favourites included Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, The Best of Tchaikovsky, Infidels by Bob Dylan, and the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar.
We danced to folk songs, rock ballads and classical music. I’d forgotten what it was like to listen to an album in its entirety. My default had become Shuffle All or some kind of Coffee House playlist. These albums were works of art, and by routinely listening to them I felt like we were bringing some culture back into our home (sorry, Baby Shark).
We also discovered there are some amazing vintage albums for children. At our local second hand shop, we found treasures like The Wizard of Oz, Snow White and Pinocchio. The voice acting and storytelling are incredible.
After playing hundreds of albums, our son is still awestruck each and every time we put a record on, exclaiming “aha!” the moment the music comes on. He is absolutely transfixed by the needle and loves to watch the record spin. It’s like magic, for him and for us.
— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.
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