john and jana

Father Goose

It’s up for dispute whether Mother Goose was really a woman in Boston or just a legend that wouldn’t die — Father Goose, however, is a much more tangible person and he grooves a lot harder than his famous ancestor. Also known as Rankin Don, Father Goose is a Jamaican dancehall rapper and dj whose career took a strange turn when he hooked up with musician Dan Zanes and entered the world of children’s entertainment.

I had the opportunity to interview Father Goose for a story recently — a nicer fellow you could not imagine. Here is the text of the interview:

JM: How did you first become involved with creating kids’ music.

FG: Dan and I were hanging out and he had this idea to make a tape and asked me to sing on the tape. And I was joking around and I did the “Father Goose Medley,” the ABCs. To me it was just clowning around.

JM: What were you doing at the time musically?

FG: I was still in the dancehall band as Rankin’ Don, doing more hardcore stuff. I was a doing a lot of that, I had a couple records out, I was touring.

JM: How long did it take you to transition into the kids’s stuff?

FG: It took a while. At first, it was “Can I do both of them?” and then “If I choose one, which should I choose?” I actually gave it a lot of thought after the passing of my father. I took some time in San Francisco just to clear my head. Thinking of the type of person that he was, the obvious choice was with kids, because he was the type of person who liked to bring kids together, join them, do teams like cricket, soccer teams, he liked to do that sort of stuff. I figured somewhere along the line it was probably my calling.

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Dan Zanes

In the 1980s, Dan Zanes fronted the Boston band, the Del Fuegos, but in the 21st Century, he has found a second life singing music for kids, with the understanding that music can bring families together. Zane’s CDs are a mix of traditional and new songs filtered through his own experimental and homemade roots John Doe, Lou Reed, Sandra Bernhard, and Debbie Harry. He’s also done slightly more adult-themed CDs — really slightly — covering the tunes of Carl Sandburg and collecting a number of bawdy traditional sea chanties. He won a Grammy Award for the album “Catch That Train” and has authored two children’s books. Most recently, he produced an album for his musical co-hort, rapper Father Goose.

JM: When did you first begin to drift toward children’s music?

DZ: In 1994, 95. My daughter was born in 1994, and between the time of leaving the Del Fuegos and my daughter being born, it was mostly a time of retreating, really. I stopped listening to the radio and reading rock magazines, listening to rock and roll. I just lived upstate for awhile, did some gardening, and just pulled back really. Got out of the lifestyle of it all and got interested in other things.

I didn’t know the landscape of children’s music, but I was really excited that she and I were going to have this shared experience of listening to music together, so imagine my disappointment when I went to the store and it looked as though everything was tied into a TV show

The whole thing has been step by step. My first thought was where are the updated versions of the records I listened to when I was growing up - Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Ella Jenkins, Burl Ives, folk music. Where’s the handmade music for kids and grown-ups now? And I was able to find some really good music that I still enjoy and I’m not someone who’s really spending a lot of time complaining about the state of childrens music, but I didn’t find the handmade sound that I was after. That’s what inspired me to make a tape for kids in the neighborhood.

What I felt happening was that people would have the same experience I would have, they would go in and they would buy records and, for whatever reason, they wouldn’t connect with the things they were finding in the mainstream stores and they would just put on their Beatles records, for example, and I thought the kof romantic love, something gets missed. I was thinking why can’t there be more music that grown-ups and children can listen to together? Why does it have to be so segregated, that there’s this children’s music that the grown-ups can’t sink into, then there’s this grown-up’s music that’s predominantly about romantic love that children don’t really understand at the age of three, and can’t there be music that fits the bill for everybody?

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