Child Entertainment; the Untapped Job Market

CantaJuego, Spain's answer to The Wiggles

I’m pretty sure that everyone has the same reaction when they watch their child’s favourite children’s singing group performing.  It goes along the lines of, “I could do that.”

The Wiggles and Hi-5 earned $45 million and $18 million respectively in 2008, according to BRW.

Earning the same money as rockstars and moviestars by dancing around, making idiotic facial expressions and producing music that appears to require no specific skill set, while not having to cope with the paparazzi selling pictures of you to magazines for feature articles on “Stars without Makeup” or those articles that zoom in on cellulite and then enlarge the offending area and accompany it with large letters saying something like “Urggghhh!” seems, like, well, quite an appealing career choice.

Seriously, while I’ve read that The Wiggles apply principles of children’s education and psychology to maximise their appeal to children and possibly have some song writing talent that’s particularly appealing to the kids, there are an awful lot of child entertainers who seem to be equipped with little more than a passable singing voice, a pair of denim overalls and no shame.  Spain’s most popular children’s entertainers are a group called ‘Cantajuegos’.

Check out these clowns.

The graphics on the videos are amateurish to say the best (at the beginning of the above the clip you get a taste of what the DVD graphics are like).  As far as I can tell they haven’t written a single tune – everything is either a well-known local nursery rhyme — maybe worked over with a bit of instrumentation — or foreign nursery rhymes with rewritten lyrics.  All they bring to the table is an ability to hold a tune and a willingness to spend time with large groups of small children (admittedly not an easy task).  And they’re huge.

Even a singing voice probably isn’t all THAT necessary.  I have an appalling singing voice and children have not run from my English classes with hands over ears in response to my rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus” as one would expect they should.  On the other hand, parents do have to be able to stand having your music played fairly repetitively if you want to get some CD sales on the board.

The tunes seem simple enough to play, so you probably wouldn’t need to know more than primary school recorder to throw an entire concert or put together a few CDs.  Indeed, it would appear that mastering the xylophone might suffice.

On the plus side the lyrics to any jingle you compose, or borrow, need not make any sense whatsoever.  So a grasp of language isn’t really required.

I don’t understand why more people don’t try their hand at this stuff.  Musicians for instance.  Sure, giving up dreams of hot groupies and a life of illicit drugs and invitations to all the best parties has to be tough, but money and an end to constant rejection has to be appealing to some.  And singing to large, enthusiastic audiences has to feel good, even if they are mums and tots rather than a room full of people quite keen on sleeping with you.

Possibly it’s the requirement to wear denim overalls that’s the real barrier to people entering the industry.  I don’t know who is enforcing this particular rule on the child entertaining fraternity but they are VERY powerful and VERY effective whoever they are.   From Australia to the UK, Spain to China, child entertainers are clearly being forced to don denim dungarees.

Energy? Sure, looks like it takes a bit, for like AN HOUR AT A TIME. Then you can sleep for the rest of the day.  Except for maybe needing to practice for five minutes tunes you’ve heard all your life and wash out your overalls.

Come on musos and out-of-work actors, buck-up, opportunity is calling. Is that Top 40 album, artistic recognition or big movie break really going to come? Besides, it’s not all pushy parents and crying children – the kids just LOVE a bit of singing and dancing. Seeing their little faces light up, eyes go wide and little bodies start to wiggle in time to the music whenever they see you must be really very rewarding.  As of course would be the billion dollar DVD, CD and merchandise deals.  I suspect it’s not bad work if you can get it.

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