Forget everything you think you know about children’s music. Award-winning Canadian artist Heather Feather is bringing a fresh, jazz-infused, brain-boosting twist to the genre—creating songs that are as smart as they are fun. With a PhD in music theory and a passion for early childhood development, she’s redefining what kids (and their parents) actually want to listen to. —Noa Nichol
You blend jazz sensibility with children’s music—how does your musical training shape the way you compose for young ears?
I think that having taught university students how to understand, describe, and replicate features of music from earliest times until today makes me write quite deliberately and with great intention to the the building blocks, larger sections, and entirety of each song. I love to blend styles, textures, melodies, harmonies, and rhythms from across different time periods and cultures. As an educator, if a tune’s lyrics are more complex, I make the melody more predictable with smaller building blocks. If I’m challenging their ears with a broad harmonic palette, I’ll keep the lyric and rhythmic building blocks smaller and more clearly stacked together. Exposing kids to great sounds is wonderful, but there must always be at least one aspect of a tune that makes it catchy, relatable, and quickly understood and internalized.
With a PhD in Music Theory, you bring serious academic depth to your work—how do you translate complex musical ideas into something playful and accessible for kids
Little ears have the ability to hear, process, and understand so much! I try to present them with clear structures, patterns, and bits of relatable snippets to help them internalize the music and lyrics quicker. I also teach in this way, offering kids more complex music but breaking everything down into smaller repetitive chunks and teaching them how to find and hear the patterns. Every new aspect of music must be related to something that came before or built upon something they already know–and adult learners and listeners are no different–so that when the information comes in, there’s already a shelf in the brain on which to sort it, so to speak. That’s part of teaching anything successfully. Play is a combination of the expected and the unexpected. I’ll throw in chord, notes, rhythms, and bar lengths that aren’t expected and break the patterns. On my first album I did a bebop version of Sleeping Bunnies. It’s one of the most commonly sung tunes for littles in western culture. The pattern of sleeping and jumping is always the same. There are normally only three chords in this tune–I, IV, V in folk/pop, but I made it an unexpected quick bebop based on a I, II, V turnaround in jazz. Then, when that got too comfortable, I wrote a bridge that had a different, completely out-of-genre pattern, quick key changes in chromatic thirds. Wrong time period (Late Romantic classical), wrong keys, but a pattern that’s quirky, unique, yet makes sense in itself and is a moment of unexpected humour and joy as the bunnies jump wildly with reckless abandon!
Your reimagining of “The Cat Came Back” is such a nostalgic choice—what drew you to this classic, and how did you make it your own?
I’ve always loved the Fred Penner version, a Canadian Classic, and grew up watching the animation instrumental version with chorus by the National Film Board (because the original lyrics as a folk song are quite dark). So many musicians have covered this song and kept it in a folky style, but the descending bassline, melody and harmony to me screamed “bluesy swing” tune to me, and it seemed like a fun challenge to re-imagine it. As for the “why”, when I was a child, we could never have pets growing up because we were apparently allergic. I always wondered if it was true, and if it was, how did my mom know? So the first thing I did as an adult was adopt a beautiful kitty from the local shelter and named her Boots. That cat was my whole world for many years. But my mom was right, and when Boots was 8 and my son was 2, my neurologist and respirologist recommended we re-home Boots because she was making my MS and asthma worse. I found myself trying to explain to my child why Boots had to go and live with Auntie Shawna in Alberta. We were devastated, but Boots had a wonderful second half of her life and we visited her and my sisters in Alberta twice. When I heard The Cat Came Back last year I was reminiscing about our experience, and realized that rewriting the tune based on allergies could help other families going through the same thing. And of course, growing up in Newfoundland in a funny family, I knew I wanted the cat to have some ridiculous “tall tale” kind of escapades.
Children’s music can sometimes be underestimated—how are you redefining what this genre can sound and feel like?
Children are extremely capable. Never, ever underestimate a child at any age. For me, in terms of lyrics, it’s meant embedding several layers of meaning into songs, so that as children can get older they can can read more into them. Listeners can interpret “the lesson of the story” in different ways, and that room for individual interpretation is meant to be a conversation starter in families and in the classroom. With respect to melody, I don’t shy away from a tune with lots of syncopation and offbeats, sweeping melodies, or large leaps. It’s fun to mix genres and styles, too, like in the tune “Party,” that’s clearly funk-based, but whose hook ends with a tritone-sub, a bII (flat 2) chord. “A Fishy Tale” has lyrics that belong in a strophic folk ballad, but I’ve set it to a 30s swing style. I hope to do more with mixed meters (a classic example is the PinBall Countdown tune on Sesame Street) and quartal/quintal harmonies, polymodal and polytonal songs in the future to open the ears a little more.
Rhythm, melody, repetition—what are some of the key musical elements that actually help children learn and connect through song?
Songwriters often talk about a song having a “hook” or a few lines, even a single line, that’s catchy and memorable. That catchy bit is what draws us in, and also what we remember. When we are very young, we learn through pattern, repetition, and relation, so I also embed a fair amount of melodic and rhythmic repetition in music for young kids, especially when it’s for classroom use. The younger the child, and the faster you want the child or class to be able to understand and reproduce a tune and lyrics, the more internal repetition is needed, and the smaller/shorter they must be. The repetition can be varied and sequenced, like singing three notes stepping up in a quick-quick-slow rhythm, then doing the same stepping-up melody and same rhythm starting one note higher than the first time. Think of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, for example. The rhythm underlying those words is constantly repeated throughout the entire tune: six quicker notes on the words “twin-kle, twin-kle, litt-le”, and one longer one on “star”. These are the types of structured internal repetitions that you’ll hear in treasured classical and popular music across all time periods. Music cognition studies, for example, fascinating analytical work by music theorist Fred Lerdahl and linguist Ray Jackendoff, explain patterns and cognition in speech, music, math, etc.
You work with GRAMMY-winning collaborators—how does that level of musicianship influence the final sound of your music for kids?
It’s an absolute honour to work with great session musicians, engineers, and producers. It is an absolute pleasure and honour to work with such an amazingly talented group of musicians, and I was so happy when Dean Jones said he’d like to work with me. Every collaborator brings their own knowledge, experience, and expertise to a project and it’s a gift to have them create with me to craft something truly wonderful. Working with an experienced producer like Dean who has done so many different albums and worked with countless other children’s artists is like a magical chemical reaction. Sometimes I play a draft of a tune and we’re completely on the same page. Other times, he hears a tune in a different light and then we play back and forth to find the best way forward. Each session musician I hire brings new ideas, and when we do a session no song remains the same as I’d envisioned it. It only gets better with the amount of musical talent collaborating. The more I’ve learned, in school and in life, the more I’ve learned I don’t know, and I’ll never know. Listening to others, accepting new ideas and points of view it critical for growth and only makes a project shine brighter.
When you’re writing a song, do you start with the educational intention first—or does the music lead and the learning follows?
I always start with the intention. Always. Whether the tune or the lyrics or the harmonic underpinning comes next is a tossup. Intention, for me, is everything, because it informs style, form, instrumentation, complexity, and everything else. Once I’ve got a solid draft of everything, all the lyrics, melody, harmonic progression, overall instrumentation and sound, then I’ll stop and let it percolate. Then I’ll go back with fresher ears and start changing things. Then it’s time for someone else’s ears, Dean or the great jazz artists that join me at Alchemist Studios in Montreal to record. Occasionally there’s a melody that pops into my head without any intention or lyrics attached to it, and only some of those turn into finished songs.
What’s one musical “trick” or technique parents might not realize is quietly helping their child develop while listening?
Everything about music helps your child grow! Music creates pro-social bonds and you’re developing those bonds with your child when you play, sing, dance, and listen together. When you clap to a steady beat before your child even says a first word, you are engaging in communication. I think the biggest tip is to engage as many senses as possible. This is why “music and movement” is so valuable. In the earliest years, moving to the music while singing, especially when we act out simple lyrics, boosts cognition. We’re providing multiple inputs all at the same time. Children learning the actions will remember the tune or words or both. Some pre-verbal toddlers will show an action you’ve created, if you don’t use baby sign language, to show you what they want. Those focused on words will start doing the associated actions and better develop their fine and gross motor skills. Music and movement go together so well in early childhood education: Professional Early Childhood Educators spend much or their days doing songs ad rhymes with actions with your children.
Kids are often the most honest audience—what’s the best (or funniest) real-life reaction you’ve had to one of your songs?
Some 3yr olds once got into a discussion about bunnies not jumping the same way as humans once we jumped all over the library. Every single child then had to do their own individual version of jumping like a bunny. That kind of thing is hilarious, and there’s always ways to make it part of the show or class. We do another round and let everyone show off their skills and get all their giggles out. Once they’re in school, children’s questions are often quite thoughtful. In my most recent K-6 concerts I’ve gotten lots of deep questions about my songs, about how to help bullies learn kindness (Fill Your Bucket), ways in which we can reassure ourselves when we’re scared or not very confident (I[m Good Enough), and about the diversity of our brains (learning disabilities and neurodivergence), our bodies (abilities and disabilities), and the colours of our skin as a collective (Party). It really makes me hopeful about the level of acceptance and inclusion this generation will have. It’s beautiful.
If you could design the ultimate “soundtrack” for childhood, what would it include—and what role do you hope your music plays in that mix?
It would include a mix of songs that inspire, amuse, encourage, inform, challenge, ponder, question, and help: these are the ingredients we need to nurture children with so they will grow into their best possible future selves. I hope that my music offers each of things for each age and stage of development.
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