One of the benefits of doing kids music  for those of us who do it, is that we can continually access that joyful, inquisitive, full-of-life child within us that gets dried up, beaten down and squeezed out of most other adults in our society.  As a psychologist, I'm constantly reminded that adults  are simply little kids  in big bodies.  So each day I juggle the thousands of kid-type questions that bubble up from within me.  For instance, the Children's Music Network calls this magazine PASS IT ON!   So my kid-question bubbles up and asks,  When we say Pass IT On!, what does IT mean?

            Good question!  It's the sort of question that adults don't often ask.  I've been thinking about IT.  What does  IT mean?  What exactly is the IT that we're passing on to children?

            Some people think IT means Information Technology.  I don't think that's what us kid's artists  mean.

            I'm sure that one time or another, many of us have thought, What does IT all mean?  It's very human to search for meaning in our lives.  Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, wrote a book, Man's Search For Meaning, about how important it is for humans to have a sense of meaning in our life, to give relevance to our existence.

            But wait!   you say, Do we really need to sing songs about death with children in order to find meaning in our lives!?  Will that help us find the IT?

            Maybe.  As I grow older, I see that the precious moments of our lives are a limited resource.  Maybe that's IT.  Many of us have written songs that bring up this very subject, and it helps kids and families talk about how we are spending our lives, in a non-scary way.  Music is great for helping kids go through all the sorts of losses they face every day; a blanket, a shoe, a divorce, a grandparent gone.

            Actually, I got some help figuring out what IT means from my old friend Tom Hunter who died this past spring.  He was a wonderful philosopher, songwriter, performer and teacher, and a master at using music to pass on healthy life skills.  I didn't get up to visit him during his last days as he was losing his speech, but my friend Linda Allen told me he would say to his visitors,

            Keep IT goin'!

            There's that word IT again!  I don't think when Tom said Keep IT goin', he meant we should shop more, as in keep the economy going.  I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to keep the war  goin in Iraq, or anywhere else.  And I don't think he was encouraging us to attack people we don't agree with by labeling them with nouns, like redneck  or hippy  or Republican  or Liberal.  I think Tom knew he was dying, and he used the word IT to mean LIFE;  as in keep the game of LIFE going, the game we all play on this planet.  LIFE is a limited resource and we need to keep IT going.

            Game theorists say some people want to win a game so badly, they don't care if IT ends.  They just want to win.  We label some of these folks with names like capitalist  or corporation  or neo-conservative,  but these folks are not them, they are mostly us.  It's what they DO  that needs to change.

            Using nouns to label people isn't very helpful.  What we need is verbs;  action words that clearly describe what's being done; that is of great help!  Because many of us believe we CAN'T change who we are (nouns and labels), but we CAN change what we do!  (verbs)  Keep IT going,  and Pass IT on  are action phrases that encourage us to do something now.

            Tom, like most of us human parents and kids and teachers and nurses and polar bears and dung beetles and kittens and giant redwoods and kid's artists really want to keep the game going.  Us humans are capable of having a great time, even when we struggle, but we don't want IT to end for ourselves or for our children, or for other people's children.  We are not really interested in winning at any cost or ending up with the most, or vanquishing our foes, because all of that, - ends the game!  We just want to keep the game of life  going on our little planet as long as we can.  And we want to Pass IT On!  in our songs. 

            IT's like someone said.  IT isn't whether you win or lose, IT's how you play the game.  IT's how you sing the song!  Keep IT goin' and Pass IT on!  It's what we do with kids music!

Peter Alsop

July, 2008