Fine By Them: Erin Lee and Marci Make Kids Music Inclusive

(In my analysis of Thursday’s HRC/LOGO Presidential Forum, I mentioned that schools should teach about LGBT families and the acceptance of diversity from day one. It’s coincidental that I wrote this piece for Bay Windows this week, but I think it’s appropriate.)

The song “Fine By Me,” by children’s musicians Erin Lee Kelly and Marci Applebaum, could be an anthem for LGBT families:

My family doesn’t look like the families do in picture books
And that’s fine by me
’Cause my family has a lot of love to give
We’re happy with the way we live
If you try more you’ll see
That you really aren’t that different from me

It’s no surprise the duo, who have been called “the Indigo Girls of early childhood music” by Susan Salidor, host of a popular children’s-music radio show in Chicago, are three-time performers with R Family Vacations, the LGBT-family travel company. They began collaborating, however, at Applebaum’s musical theater company in New York City. Their goal was to target the 5- to 10-year-old age range they felt was underserved. “There are a lot of kids who have completely outgrown Laurie Berkner and Raffi,” says Kelly. “Now they want something that rocks and they’re looking at the Pussycat Dolls. We’re trying to write songs that are hip and fun and kids can relate to, like ‘How do I get through second grade?’ as opposed to ‘How do I find a boyfriend?’”

Topics like baseball, haircuts and loose teeth make their songs relevant; but the pair go a step further. “We were working with kids from foster families, with kids who were dirt-poor with two parents in jail, living with grandma, with extremely wealthy children who never saw their parents but were living with their nanny,” Kelly explains. “We were trying to find things that spoke to everybody.” This meant the many existing songs with “mom and dad” in the lyrics wouldn’t do. ”Most of the kids we work with, whether they’re rich, whether they’re poor, whether they’re black, whether they’re white, don’t have mom and dad. It’s not that way anymore.”

The two took a different approach: “We leave the family either non-specific or we’ll mention a mom, or ‘Uncle Victor,’ or ‘Grandma,’” says Kelly. Applebaum clarifies that one song has a mom and dad, and another has a grandma and a grandpa, “because that’s a family also.” Kelly affirms, though, that most of the time they’ll mention “dad and a brother, or mom and an aunt, or a grandma. It doesn’t mean they don’t have other family members, it just means the kids can put in the rest of the family in their own heads.” The songs also use non-gender-specific names like Jamie, Chris, and Jessie, so children can decide the protagonist’s gender for themselves.

It helps that all the songs are first-person narratives from a child’s point of view. “We really want to give kids a voice,” Kelly says. “We were highly influenced, both of us, by Free to Be You and Me [the 1972 classic by Marlo Thomas and Friends] and I don’t see that for today’s world. I was the only kid in my Catholic school who had divorced parents, in a little tiny town in Ontario. I remember that feeling, so when we have kids in our classes that have two dads or two moms or one mom and a grandma I remember how Free to Be … You and Me helped me because I said ‘I’ve got a voice. I’m not the only one. There are other people out there with the same types of families and the same types of differences.’”

While all of their songs strive to convey this, “Fine By Me” does so most explicitly. The song evolved from a conversation with a gay dad in one of their classes. He was frustrated that although there were books explaining LGBT families, “there wasn’t something really easy for his 4-year-olds to grab on to,” recalls Kelly. She started thinking “There are so many great books, how come there isn’t any music?” Kelly told Applebaum ‘We’ve got to find a song.’ By the time Applebaum got home to search, however, Kelly had called to report “I finished the song!”

Applebaum adds: “It also came out of that idea of the family members and what we were not addressing yet. We had started talking about ‘being okay with who I am.’ Then this conversation came up and expanded on what we were already talking about.”

“And then I waited for somebody to notice it. Nobody did,” Kelly recalls, until Alan Muraoka [“Alan” from Sesame Street], who had entertained on a previous R Family cruise, heard it and said “‘This is it, this is good, this is an anthem for the boat,’” and agitated to get them on board.

The song isn’t just about LGBT families, though, Kelly says, and that’s part of its appeal. “When we say our family doesn’t look like families in picture books, that is a really vague statement. Someone who’s in a foster-care situation or lives with their grandparents, that speaks to them, too. We had a foster-care worker who was helping interracial adoptions, and she said ‘I need this song.’ I think that more often than not, people will read their own situations into our music. We love that, and this way it speaks to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons and probably a lot of reasons we don’t even know about.”

“Fine By Me” is on Kelly and Applebaum’s Someone’s Gotta Wanna Play album. Find both of their award-winning albums at Amazon.com or their Web site (along with booking information), www.gottaplay.org.