Dance Baby Dance

For the most part, I think we generally let Celeste be a bit omnivorous when it comes to music. More often than not, in the car, she is listening to whatever we are — be it NPR, JACK-FM, some random station or CD. We do have some specific kids' music — Sandra Boyton's Philadelphia Chickens and Rhinoceros Tap, a few Trout Fishing in America CDs, They Might Be Giants's kids' discs, some Elizabeth Mitchell, etc., oh and Dance Baby Dance — and Evelin did put together a CD of mostly kids music, but most of the time she hears what we hear and Celeste seems to be okay with that.

However, a few weeks ago, because of my job, I encountered Radio Bem Bem, a Dutch–Flemmish kids' radio project that's currently Web-only although they're looking to get on the air via FM, DAB, whatever, across the Netherlands and Flanders. I like it as background music for Celeste on Tuesday/Thursday afternoons because it's not just Disney's Greatest Hits or anything (although hearing "The Bare Necessities" in Dutch is a trip), there's a mix of clearly kids' music mixed with guilty-pleasure Eurovision-style pop music and other songs. And it's in a range of languages — English, Nederlandic, Spanish, French, German, ...

Of course, there are a lot of child-oriented radio stations and programs out there, many of the with either streams or podcasts. Guide to Children's Radio has a really good list of stations/programs around the world; it's primarily designed, I think, to help artists find outlets for their music, but it does list webcasts/podcasts, too, and some of them look like they might be pretty good, like "Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child" on WXOJ-LP.

If I ever get that Roku SoundBridge, I imagine I'll be subjecting Celeste and Sibling-to-Be-Named-Later to Radio Bem Bem, "The Big Toe Radio Show" (BBC 7), "Playground Radio" (ABC), WDR5 Lilipz, Radio Enfant, Fun Radio, RadiJoJo!, and other such stations for a while to come ... (actually, that'll probably happen without the SoundBridge).

Technoarti tags: children's music radio