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Our Daily Green Life Yobo Member
April 8th, 2011

Credit: Bradley Shaver/WikiMedia

To any parent of a child in the last 25-30 years, the name Raffi is synonymous with happy toddler music that didn’t grate on the ears. Raffi is an international sensation among children’s musicians, with his happy folk songs that never spoke down to children, but instead lifted them and their world up. Fun songs like Down by the Bay to encouraging songs like Baby Beluga, there are few parents and children who aren’t familiar with Raffi. You may even be humming one of his songs now in memory.

As my children grew, their taste in music evolved and I only remembered Raffi’s joyful music when I needed to buy a gift for a little one, hoping to share the same infectious laughter that I had with my own children. Raffi stood out among many entertainers for children with his stringent policy to not sell to children. Raffi never did commercial television and subscribed to the belief that children are not a market segment, but little people filled with potential. From his biography:

Because of his belief that children should not be exposed to too much television viewing and that they should not be directly marketed to, during his thirty year career as a superstar of kid’s music Raffi refused all offers for commercial television shows and commercial endorsements. Even recently, when approached by a Hollywood production company to do a film based on “Baby Beluga,” he declined when told that the film’s marketing would include direct advertising to children. This is only one of a series of lucrative deals Raffi and Troubadour have declined over the years.

His integrity is a core of his success.

I hadn’t thought much about Raffi for a few years, until yesterday afternoon, which led to this post. As is typical of social media today, the six degrees we find separating ourselves from the rest of the world shrinks exponentially. I posted a link on Twitter from Yes! Magazine, an article titled Greed is Not a Virtue, by David Korten. I looked back at my retweets a while later and saw that it had been retweeted by…. RAFFI! A series of exchanges took place when I inquired if indeed he was THE Raffi that brought so many hours of joy and happiness to my home with his music. Indeed, it was this wonderful humanitarian. It’s hard to believe an entire conversation could take place 140 characters at a time, but that is the beauty of social media. After that short exchange, Raffi actually took time to check out Our Daily Green and read a few articles. I received a lovely personal note from him last night. I admit it absolutely made my night. Thank you, Raffi for spreading sincere joy and love!

Raffi was born in Egypt and has released a new song celebrating the role of social media in the recent peaceful Egyptian revolution in his hometown of Cairo. It’s a fun and lovely tribute to his homeland and national pride. This playful satire filled with text shortened colloquialisms (such as LOL, TTYL and OMG), also reminds us that all of our voices can now be heard, and we can all become part of rapid and powerful change. I absolutely love that he still is speaking a language our children and now young adults understand. Raffi’s tribute is a powerful statement to the ways social media connects the world and I am thrilled to honor his request to promote the “Cairo Tango”.

In recent years Raffi has focused his time and resources on ecology and social justice issues,and has founded the Centre for Child Honouring. His music now revolves around these themes. Proceeds from the song sales will benefit the Centre for Child Honouring.

Story originally appeared at Our Daily Green Blogspot