Dyson 2003 Welcome to the Jam.pdf - Oncourse

“Welcome to the Jam”
anne haas dyson
Like Marcel and Wenona’s Space Jam song, the children’s textual toys —
their appropriated symbolic material — had origins in their participation in
various institutions, dominant among them family, neighborhood, and
school. Through this participation, children found human and electronically
mediated material to reframe in their unofficial worlds. In so doing, they
authored — or brought to voice — the times and spaces of their own childhoods.
In this section, I sample these resources and textual processes, featuring
variations and combinations of the practices of group singing and dramatic
play.
Singing Childhood Times and Spaces
Group singing was the practice most revealing of the breadth of children’s cultural
landscapes. For example, children appropriated officially sung songs for
their own use more than any other kind of school material. One child would
loudly begin a song, like the Mother Earth song for Earth Day, and that singing
would recruit other children, who would fold into the ongoing rhythm.
The children also appropriated songs (like the Space Jam songs) first experienced
in family activities, activities carried out with parental approval. More
dramatically, they appropriated and played with songs that were not directed
to six-year-olds but to “teenagers.” They reported (and parents confirmed)
that they were learning these songs primarily from radios that played in multiage
households during morning routines and school commutes, in community
center offices and public parks, and in the company of adolescents —
cool people whom children admired.
The children were quite aware that these songs were not intended for them.
They could enact voices that suggested (and the parent session demonstrated)
caregivers’ concerns about the content of certain “teenager” songs
and the images they connoted. When Denise drew herself as Tina Turner in
high heels and a slinky gown, Vanessa said,
I’m not putting high heels on me cause that’s too fast, Denise. That’s too fa::st.
We’re only 6 and 7. And that is too fast (with definiteness). ’Cause, Denise, I’m
sorry if I’m breaking your heart . . .
As Vanessa’s comments suggest, teenager music was associated in part with
ideologies of age, and so, in fact, was music associated with preschool shows.
Teenager music, though, had gender and racial reverberations that preschool
songs did not. Consider, for example, the following scene.
The children are making Earth Day crowns, decorated with nature scenes
and sayings. There is a great deal of cutting and coloring, the sort of activities
that lend themselves to group singing. Elizabeth, Denny, Cedric, Marcel,
Wenona, and Noah are all sitting at the same table. (Elizabeth and Denny are
European American; all the others are African American.) Marcel begins singing
the Mother Earth song and others join in. Then Marcel moves on to a different
song, which he sings in a soul-full style:
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