Music for Airports (not Babies)
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
First it was Grups in New York Metro, and now the Village Voice is publishing articles on how this guy is programming his kids to like his music.
Quote:
The soundtrack to my daughter’s first three months has been a comical representation of class-adjustment emotional paralysis. I have a pink iPod Mini docked to a Tivoli iSongBook above her crib—yes, you should be laughing—filled to its 4GB brim with amorphous, meditative ambient music from Brian Eno, Gavin Bryars, Aphex Twin, Andrew Chalk, Stars of the Lid, Ekkehard Ehlers, and others. I can tell you most of this stuff works like fairy dust (at least on our girl), but this is not traditional “baby” music. I contend that the long-form nature of ambient music and its recurring phrases strengthen recall and provide a comforting, auditory assurance of constancy. The wife is basically amenable to that rationalization, but we’re not kidding each other. We both know I’m programming my kid.
I of course have no problem with trying to get your kid to like the same music you like, but Gavin Bryars? Andrew Chalk? Ekkehard Ehlers? Why don’t you just start that kid’s MySpace page right now and pre-load the obligatory sullen photo with coiffed jet-black hair and “Nobody understands me” quote as the tagline.
Somebody get that kid some Beatles, Desmond Dekker and Harry Nilsson, STAT!
