Introducing: The Kindie Beat

[From the August 2025 issue]

Children’s Music was born in Canada. Folks have been making music for kids for centuries, and singular artists like Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger and Allan Mills made important early contributions. But as a cohesive genre with a dedicated community of artists, it began in Canada and then reverberated around the world. The late-1970s and 1980s can be considered the Golden Age in Canadian Children’s Music. In 1976, Raffi released his Singable Songs for the Very Young and quickly became an international celebrity, showing that making music for children could be a viable career. Sharon, Lois & Bram hit the scene in 1978, and Fred Penner followed one year later. These artists set a standard in child-oriented songwriting, recording and performance. They made Canada into a world leader in Children's Music.

In the 1970s and 1980s, pioneering artists benefited from the growth of numerous organizations and events that helped cultivate a dynamic Children’s Music scene. The Mariposa in the Schools program helped launch the careers of Sharon, Lois & Bram, Raffi, Ken Whiteley and others. Under the initiative of Sharon Hampson and Lois Lilienstein, The Mariposa Folk Festival became the first folk festival to add a children’s area in 1975 and was soon emulated at festivals elsewhere. The Vancouver International Children’s Festival began the next year, the first of its kind in North America and Europe, and today it has the distinction of being the longest-running professional performing arts festival for young audiences. Canadian Content quotas on radio and television and a nation-wide broadcasting network also helped foster an integrated Children’s Music industry that far surpassed the patchwork of small-scale, regional acts in the United States.

By the 1990s, dedicated Children's musicians began popping up in other parts of the world. Today's towering figures of international Children's Music—The Wiggles, Laurie Berkner, Dan Zanes—all showed up decades after the phenomenon hit Canada.

Despite the leading role that Canadian artists played in this Children's Music revolution, today the country's Kindie scene is lagging behind. In the US, New Zealand and Australia you can find radio programmes, podcasts, and music awards events entirely devoted to Children's Music. In Canada, not so much. We have countless excellent artists, but we don't have the cohesion or global leadership that we once did. The recent attempt by CARAS to put the JUNOS Children's Album of the Year category on hiatus shows how neglected the genre has become in Canada.

With this in mind, the Canadian Children's Music community needs to invest in its infrastructure. I've spoken to artists from Vancouver to St. John's, and there is widespread interest in building up the community. Like any small town, a community need a newspaper. The Kindie Beat aims to keep the scene informed about what's happening from sea to sea to sea, including new releases, tours and events, collaborations and more. We'll throw in some music reviews, anecdotes and a bit of Children's Music history and philosophy for good measure.

Matt Robertshaw, editor