Happy and You Know It focuses on four children's music creators, considering the industry and cultural climate in which they work. When preschool teacher Laurie Berkner realized she couldn't reach her young students, she began writing and performing original songs, often about dinosaurs, from their perspective.
Chris Ballew enjoyed success with his 90s alternative band, The Presidents of the United States of America, but after burnout in the music industry, he released numerous albums as Caspar Babypants.
Director: Penny Lane
Stars: Chris Ballew,Laurie Berkner, Anthony Field
Musician Divinity Roxx, Beyoncé's former touring bassist, fused hip-hop with positivity in her own foray into children's music. And for children's artist Johnny Only, releasing his version of the old summer camp theme "Baby Shark" in 2011 became a legally firm signpost on the path that South Korean company Pinkfong took to unleash its own version of "Shark" into the global mainstream. Copyright drama, mess, mess, big corporations versus little guys, mess, etc.
For Anthony Field of The Wiggles, the story is a bit different, mainly because his band has become a giant of children's music. The group has been recording albums and performing concerts for decades, and they are a veritable institution that has inspired generations of fans, who now pass on Wiggles songs like "Fruit Salad" and "Hot Potato" to their own children. Happy And You Know It includes many images of sold-out Wiggles concerts, and bewildered TV reporters saying things like, "Little kids going crazy over a rock band? I've got my ticket!"
Amid all this discussion, the validity of what they do is questioned. Berkner tries to replicate the facial expressions people make when they find out he only writes and performs music for children, as if that were cute but fake. Ballew calls the children's audience punk as hell because they demand authenticity.
(Roxx agrees: “It’s not until you start doing it that you realize it’s not easy at all.”) But Happy also questions the nature of music for children in general. What are we teaching them through singing, repetition, and the central drive of rhythm? And perhaps it’s not about education at all, because the music, the feeling, was already within them, untouched by ingrained behavior. “It’s not often that adults allow themselves to be playful,” says Laurie Berkner in Happy.
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