CD Review

Harper, Jessica
Rhythm in My Shoes
Rounder

There are some good songs on this children's disc, and the production values are excellent. I especially liked "Boy Meets Drums" and "Girlquake"; both tell stories, admiring their untamable subjects from a distance without pretending to be them. "My Baby's a Genius" also stands out - a child's imagination may run rampant with reptiles and ice cream, but the true sign of genius is to know one is loved. As promised in the blurbs, the lyrics throughout are unusually well-crafted, and there is a genuine warmth here and feeling for the small joys of childhood. But though these strengths have understandably won her many parents' awards, Harper's consistent "delightfulness" is also a limitation.

The songs written from the child's point of view - and there are several - are less successful. They portray kids as cute and loveable dolls in a candy and chocolate world. Even moving to Little Rock holds no real terrors for the boy in "I Like Where I Am," whose former friends and favorite haunts are quickly replaced by new ones - painlessly. Despite the catchy music, most of the songs here boil down to the usual lessons that adults want kids to know, even if they're not completely true. But kids do not experience the world as lessons any more than we adults do. That's what school is for. Music is for telling stories, for praising, for naming things without explaining them and giving voice to ambivalent, subconscious drives. So, a song like "I'm Not Going to Chase the Cat Today" is very good until the last verse, when, after dog, cat, and mouse have all renounced their baser instincts, the lady announces "let's all shake paws" and serves cake.

The liner notes also make a point of how musically eclectic Harper is, but although handled skillfully, that doesn't always ring true either. Any writer - black or white - who is unwilling to explore the urban experience, or at least the pain of youth that underlies it, has no business borrowing rap/hip-hop tropes; "Nora" and "Brianna" will never be "in the house."

In the end - as the liner notes make clear - this is another album aimed at the "children's market," reminding one of a certain purple dinosaur. I guess what I'm looking for is a children's album that does NOT "present the world as a child knows it, encouraging a sense of self-confidence and self-worth," as this new effort from Harper promises to do. I want a children's album, like good children's literature, to tell a story, to show a world the child is only coming to know: an exciting, confusing, sometimes dangerous and always ambiguous place. A place where nonsense is not just silliness, but startlingly close to truth and where "lessons" and "morals" ring false until discovered through lived or deeply-imagined experience.

I'm open to recommendations... -HB