Sometimes two elements come together to create something new – a glorious synthesis – Gilbert and Sullivan, Tracy and Hepburn, Lennon and McCartney, “Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wizard of Oz”.
OK, maybe not that last one. But you get the idea.
And every once in a while you get a third element – like George Martin becoming the Beatles’ producer – that makes this synthesis even more powerful.
Yesterday I watched the synthesis of Animaniacs and YouTube. At a family gathering, I looked on in awe as nieces and nephews discovered Yakko’s World on YouTube. Originally broadcast in 1993 in the second episode of the animated series, this song written by Roger Rogel was the first of what would become an entire menagerie of educational Animaniacal songs.
The idea of the song is so simple. Yakko is a rather manic cartoon character who sings a song with lyrics that consist of the names of all of the countries in the world – or at least, all of the countries that existed around 1992 (modulo a few mistakes, such as leaving out Wales and Northern Ireland) – to the tune of “The Mexican Hat Dance”.
It’s one thing for kids to see this on a TV broadcast. It’s something very different for them to be able to watch it over and over and over on YouTube. To witness the power of this combination is quite something. I watched as first the kids gathered around the computer and watched the song – perhaps ten times or so back to back. Then they all started singing along to it. Then they all printed out copies, one for each child, and they spontaneously made up a game to see who could sing the entire thing through – first while looking at the print-out, and then trying to get through more and more of the song without looking. They were all still completely absorbed in the project even as their parents were trying to herd them out the door at the end of the evening.
Personally, I find the video utterly mesmerizing. It’s not just the cleverness of it, but also Yakko’s almost insanely high-energy cheerfulness, all perfectly calibrated to appeal to restless young minds.
In this sense it’s both progeny and evolution of Danny Kaye’s performance of Gershwin and Weill’s Tschaikowsky (And Other Russians), as well as Tom Lehrer’s The Elements.
Kids are also fascinated by those older list-songs, but not nearly as much as they are by watching Yakko jump around like an animated maniac, rattling off countries. I think there is something about the inclusion of a manic cartoon character to act it all out that makes everything come together. It seems that the Trinity of:
Manic cartoon character Song containing exhaustive list |
creates a perfect convergence – an utterly irresistible educational formula that has kids climbing all over each other in their eagerness to learn.
Hmm … there could be a real educational opportunity here.
Maybe we should be taking notes.