There are endless debates about how best to introduce our youngest audiences to the wonders of classical music. And short of the simplest and most effective answer of all – putting music education at the heart of every child’s school experience, the solution that every government in this century has failed to grasp – evidence that classical music is a birthright of our youngest generations can seem thin on the ground.
Bluey: children's television built around music
Yet there is hope. And one of the most compelling answers is the TV show Bluey, the animated stories of an Australian dog and her family: Bluey, her sister Bingo, Mum and Dad. The show is broadcast on CBeebies in the UK, but each seven-minute episode is made for audiences of all ages.
Bluey is built around its music, and Joff Bush is the composer for each of the show’s hundreds of episodes. The show starts with a theme tune that’s an object lesson in sequential metrical diminution. It only took me about a year of watching it – and the confirmation of interviewing Joff Bush! – to realise that Mum, Dad and Bingo have bars of approximately five, four and three beats when they’re introduced, so that Bluey herself can arrive on a satisfying downbeat.
Sophisticated incorporation of classical music
But that sort of sophistication is just the start of Bluey’s world of wonders. The soundtracks use everything from rock to electronica to Carl Stalling-style zaniness, but it’s how Joff Bush incorporates classical repertoires that’s most stunning. He and the programme makers never use Mozart, Pachelbel, Handel or Beethoven for the clichés of the classical: there’s none of the pomposity and pseudo-reverentiality that’s so often the curse of how classical music is used in popular culture. Instead, he mines these sources for their musical richness and transforms their tunes and harmonies as playfully as the original composers might have done.
Bluey: an emotionally irresistible use of music
That means there’s no gear shift when classical repertoires are at the centre of an episode. So much so that when children hear Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ for the first time, it’s not The Planets, but ‘Bluey music’ for millions all over the world. In ‘Sleepytime’ (Series 2, Episode 26; watch it now if you haven’t seen it!), ‘Jupiter’ is the companion to the story of Bingo’s epic attempt to sleep in her own bed. It’s an episode that turns the mundane into the mythic, so that a mother’s love is turned into the Sun, and a father’s body is a planet-sized bouncy castle for infant feet to hypnagogically trample.
Joff Bush doesn’t just use ‘Jupiter’ as an underscore; he teases and recomposes the tune throughout the show, so that when it finally flowers at the end, when Bingo returns to Earth after witnessing the awesome blaze of her mother’s star-sustaining love, the effect is emotionally irresistible. I challenge you to watch it without a tear in your eye – and it’s the music that does it. Holst? Joff Bush? I believe that Bluey music is our future!
