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No Praise Music for Kids? No Problem!

Author:	Various
Published By:	Kevin Mayhew (Stowmarket, Suffolk)
Pages:	150
Price:	£99.99 - CD se
ISBN:	1 84417 3110

Reviewed by Ian Wilson.

This collection has been designed for children’s churches and classrooms that lack the resources to facilitate worship through music. It consists of  150 songs that cover a range of themes from Christian values to God in Creation. Each song is recorded on the accompanying CDs as a performance and as a backing track.

My review is based on a sampler CD that consisted of 4 songs. I was pleased to see ‘My God is a Great Big God’ in the collection. This song, with its strong gospel feel, goes down well in multi-cultural classrooms. The accompaniment was quite idiomatic, if a little anodyne, and the singer on the demo track was accurate but rather precious. For the backing track, the vocal is replaced by an uninflected midi trumpet sound. The result lacks any sense of style. Unfortunately, this song, and its treatment, are the pick of the sample collection.

‘I Watch the Sunrise’ is a slow, reflective song with an unexciting melody, far too many verses (more than 5 minutes long) and an unvarying accompaniment. ‘Peace, Perfect Peace’ and ‘Sing a Song’ are nice choices but the vocalists sound very prissy and the accompaniments have a sterile computer-generated feel.

Children today (even at primary level) are sophisticated and image conscious. They listen to highly produced popular music. If backing tracks are going to appeal to my McFly loving year 3 son, they need live instruments, played by skilled musicians (or a good deal of careful midi sound editing), peppy vocals and much more edge.

I found myself pondering whether, after 17 years of school teaching across the age spectrum, I could imagine myself standing in front of a class of children armed only with this resource. The answer, I’m afraid, was no.