The new concert album (along with the video version) is Disney’s follow-up to the eclectic and witty first “For Our Children,” released in 1991. That studio album-with Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Barbra Streisand and James Taylor-became the gold standard for a highly successful entertainment trend: pitching music for young children by way of their parents’ favorite performers. Children’s music is a $234 million industry; recent albums include “Shake It All About” by Little Richard, “Country Music for Kids” and “Reggae for Kids.” With 900,000 copies sold so far, the earlier “For Our Children” has raised almost $3 million for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
The new album and video, recorded at LosAngeles’s Universal Amphitheater last September, should appeal to older children and teenagers as well as their young siblings. “Some children’s music is aimed just at kids, and it can be very childlike,” says Dawn Steel, the former president of Columbia Pictures who produced the benefit concert for Disney. “My goal was to consider my own boredom level as well.” But little kids are also included here. The result is a potpourri of styles and content, from wonderfully silly kid fare to hard-hitting rap versions of “This Old Man” by Salt-N-Pepa and precocious nursery raps by Kris Kross (“Little Jack Horner sat on the corner/Peeping out the female selections”).
Although there’s a dazzling Hula Hoop performance (only on the video version) and a tender rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” by heartthrob Michael Bolton, the unquestionable show stopper of this concert is a tour de force by one-man band Bobby McFerrin. In a medley from “The Wizard of Oz,” McFerrin turns into a musical Robin Williams, giving us Dorothy, the Good Witch, the Bad Witch and the Munchkins in rapid-fire succession.
“For Our Children: The Concert” is a product of love and commitment to a cause; all the artists and executive producers donated their time. “As a creative endeavor, this concert could stand alone,” says Elizabeth Glaser, the HIV-positive mother of two infected children (one died in 1988) who cofounded the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and conceived the first album. “We hope it will bring a lot of people joy and raise a lot of money for AIDS.” The success of the earlier Disney venture will be hard to follow. But maybe not impossible: stores around the country have already ordered half a million copies of the new one.
