Raffi Interview

INTERVIEW WITH RAFFI FROM TheCelebrityCafe.com ARCHIVES

DM) You talk a lot in your autobiography about how much you enjoy singing children's songs. I was wondering, how much of that is the pleasure you get at being good at what you do, and how much is the pleasure you get from the reaction of the children?

R) Well, I think it helps that you have a gift to communicate in the first place, if you're going to be an entertainer. I think I have that gift from inheriting it from my parents. I have my father's musicality and my mother's storytelling. But I think there are many reasons why I enjoy performing for children. They are such a spontaneous audience. A three-year-old will tell you immediately whether he or she is enjoying you or not. I also love the people that children are. Of course, they are individuals, but they share the trait of spontaneity, of tenderness, of wonders, of joyful merrymaking. And if you've got their attention and songs that involve and keep them engaged with you, there is a quality of delight that is unique in entertainment. I say all of these things now, but when I started, I didn't know any of this. Too many adult entertainers, when you talk to them about performing for a bunch of youngsters, it just terrifies them. And I think the fear they feel is due to the fact that they don't know the kind of people children as an audience are. For me, it was delightful, the process of getting to know children and becoming comfortable in entertaining them.

DM) Do you think you'd be as comfortable performing for adults?

R) Oh, very much so. Absolutely. An audience of adults is a very different experience, but keep in mind, many of the strongest singers in my concerts are adults. The moms and dads and grandparents that come along, the aunts and uncles, the grownups in general, sing the loudest of all. So they seem to enjoy the music as much as the kids do.

DM) You talk a lot in your book about treating children, especially about treating them as individuals. What do you mean by that?

R) I think that every person is alive for a person. And when we respect children, we give them love that respects them for who they are. We encourage them to find their own voice. In that way of loving children, we encourage them to hear their own inner voice, the voice of their soulful side, and I think that's a wonderful thing too. Otherwise, you're always projecting your sense of what a child ought to be. And I don't think that's what our role is as parents and guides to these young beings on this earth. I think our role is to respect them and to empower them to hear their own voice.

DM) How do you suggest people should behave around children?

R) That's a good question. Dominick, I think just as you'd accord an adult respect on first meeting, you'd treat a child with the same kind of respect. But I'm not talking about viewing the child as you would view an adult. I think it's a very human process of treating the person that you're meeting with the respect that comes from the knowledge of how that person appears to you, wherever that person is in their life journey. For example, if you met a 77-year-old person who is hard of hearing, you would make certain allowances. You would speak in a way that speaks to the specifics of that situation. If you met a three-year-old, you would also make allowances, but this isn't the same as talking down to that child. You still are speaking with a very intelligent human individual. He or she just happens to be at an earlier stage of the human journey than the 77-year-old. This sounds like generalizations that I'm making, but all I'm saying is that we view children as whole people when we think of them with respect. I think I say this in my autobiography as well that, "Children are as whole in their part of life journey as any adult is at any other age along life's journey." The journey is exactly that, a journey. It's not like you arrive when you're age 21. You're always growing, because you are whole in respect to the place where you are.

DM) When you talk about life journey, a lot of people know and understand where people in their seventies are, but the term life journey isn't often used for children. Where would you say children are in their life journey?

R) In a very exciting stage. They're at the beginning of the life journey. In childhood, play is the mode of learning; that is the dominant mode. It's the energy that is most available. A playful mode, in which they are acquiring information on playing roles, learning from the inside out and from the outside in. It astounds me that if a playful way of being at the early stage of life allows us to learn the most extraordinary things, like the gift of language, the very complex skill of reading and writing... if we do all that at a time when playful is the way we are, as beings, why should we discard playfulness as a way of being over the years. I think there's a lot to gain from reflections on childhood and reflections about how children are at that very exciting beginning stage of life. The other thing that makes childhood such a compelling area of interest is that we hear more and more from the latest brain research and the science of neurology that the early years, especially the first four years of life, are the foundational years, and that's when the brain develops in a way that will impact a lifetime of behavior. We ought to be paying more priority attention to the early years, with the view of supplying all of the nurturing and all the respect a young being needs at that age, because the way we treat a child during that time will largely affect how a child views the world.

DM) How has your understanding of children changed over the years?

R) Well, that's an easy question for me to answer, because before I began this work, I knew nothing about children. (laughs)

DM) Not the answer I expected!

R) I was "child ignorant", as I like to say. And one of the miracles in my life is the gates of understanding that have opened about children as I've done this work. So I've come from a position of total ignorance about children to a process of gaining understanding, both from being with them and reflecting about them in reading that I've done, and also conversations and observations of over two decades that I've been in this world. So I guess I can say that my understanding has truly grown over the years. It's a process that's available to anyone.

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