Snoop Dogg performs at Masters Of Ceremony 2019 at Barclays Center in New York City, on June 28, 2019.Illustration by The Globe and Mail
Matthew, my 10-year-old son, has a huge heart, brown eyes and, like his father before him, can recite the aspirational messages on the walls of his principal’s office by heart. When he told me he wanted to see Snoop Dogg in concert, I worried about, ahem, second-hand smoke exposure. But I also worried about the lyrics.
In 1992, I listened to The Chronic, Dr. Dre’s seminal hip-hop album – which heavily features Snoop – more than I looked at my textbooks. But I was 18. Is a 10-year-old the right audience for a Snoop show? Last month Doja Cat said that she didn’t want kids at her shows: “I don’t make music for children,” she wrote on Instagram, peppering the comments with words unprintable in The Globe.
I want my kids to share their music with me, and vice versa. But the lyrics – in any genre – can introduce forbidden fruit to impressionable young minds.
Sara Quin, half of eminent pop team Tegan and Sara, says she gets it. But she still thinks live music is a great opportunity to open kids up to the world.
As a kid, Quin was proud of being able to sing Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young and Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire acapella – both songs that aren’t exactly written for the under-12 set. She grew up in a home where music was always playing and the content of the lyrics spurred grown-up conversations. Her adolescence was accelerated by Top 40 tunes, whether kicked off by sister Tegan blasting Rape Me by Nirvana (their mother worked at a sexual-assault centre and did not approve) or Sara herself belting out the sexually charged lyrics of Billy Joel from the backseat of the car.
“Growing up, music was an opportunity to have conversations with my parents and, as a child, I understood early that if I understood music, I could understand and connect with the rest of the world,” says Quin, a lifelong activist, who recently enlisted 400 artists, including Bryan Adams, Carly Rae Jepsen and Neil Young, to co-sign an open letter against anti-trans legislation in Alberta, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan regarding transgender youth.
A new mom, Quin believes music, even with mature lyrics, is an opportunity to help kids, the way it helped her, navigate the world. “As far back as I can remember, music was everywhere in my life – like a currency, a constant flow – and from my experience, music is an opportunity to have conversations,” she says. “Hiding things from kids doesn’t mean they won’t find it, or that challenging things don’t exist.”
According to Statista, in the United States 68 per cent of adults aged 18-34 listen to music every day, with a significant portion of this listening happening through streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube – also popular with Matthew and his friends. On the playgrounds at my children’s schools, they aren’t catching the latest Kendrick Lamar diss by Drake on Virgin Radio, just like they’re not following the war in Gaza in The New York Times. The music is reaching them through shared phones, passed around like contraband at sleepovers.
Children are finding music earlier than they once did and every generation seems to produce more shocking content. Kids will be attracted to entertainment deemed edgy – whether it’s Mr. Beast, Outer Banks or Lamar responding in his feud with Drake – gathering in clusters and pretending to understand what the adults say.
“I take the approach my parents did,” Quin told me. “You’re going to discover this music that’s too mature for you without us, so why not do it with us so we can be there and you don’t just get the perspective of your peers?”
Every year, concert audiences get younger, says Nick Farkas, who’s been putting on Osheaga Music and Arts Festival in Montreal since 2006. Since booking Eminem in 2011, he says his festival has continuously gotten bigger and, to accommodate parents and new listeners, he began letting children under 10 in for free. His kids, like my own, have been concert fixtures since the Barenaked Ladies outraged politicians with their scandalous band name. Farkas still believes the experience, risk aside, has been a positive outlet in his children’s lives (now in their teens, both of his children still love live music).
“Live-music fans are getting younger – that’s a good thing – and the odd festival 2 p.m. slot with F-bombs every three seconds aside, I want to establish concert-going habits in young fans,” says Farkas. “Eight-year-olds are now part of the live-music ecosystem. Festivals are geared towards young people and I love that.”
Farkas is such a believer in artistic expression that once, at a festival he booked at a public park in Halifax, he wouldn’t bow to pressure to ask Chad Kroeger to watch his mouth. “There’s stuff in music I don’t find appropriate, but as a dad, I want my kids to listen to as much music as possible,” he says. “It’s a question of weighing the pros and cons and for me, music has many more pros.”
Richard Marsella runs the Community Music Schools of Toronto – formerly the Regent Park School of Music, it was expanded to also promote music education in the neighbourhood of Jane and Finch. Marsella, who has been in his job for 15 years, knows the risks associated with exposing kids to adult music. However, like Farkas, he believes that even questionable music is beneficial and says he’s seen firsthand the power music can unlock in kids, especially around mental health.
“Often enough, it’s not even the music itself that’s so helpful, it’s all the stuff that goes with it: the relationship with your teacher, your mentor, your parents, your peers – music’s a great connector,” says Marsella, whose music had an opportunity to connect with a massive audience when Taylor Swift licensed a track from his music school in 2019 for her album Lover, which helped fund his organization. “Time and again I’ve witnessed music help a student find their voice through self-expression and that’s where creativity comes in, that’s what thriving can look like,” Marsella continues. “Troves of research have shown music is good for mental-health challenges – it’s game-changing – especially in a child.”
Jann Arden grew up in a chaotic household and says music saved her when she was a child. When she was Matthew’s age, she found her voice in a guitar.
“Music fired off something in my brain. It opened up neuropathways. Music changed how I spoke, how I articulated, how I got in touch with emotions. It was lightning,” says Arden, who recently wrapped a tour with Rick Mercer. “At 10 years old, music helped me come into my consciousness, thoughtfulness. I think it takes a long time to become a person and music made me feel capable. I think for the first time.”
Matthew and I saw 21 Savage last month at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage and the crowd loved him, but it was smoky, loud and hard to get past some of the lyrical content. But Matthew had his arm around me for much of the show and jumped up and down like his seat was a trampoline. I’ll be taking him to see Snoop; I hope things go well. We’ll bring masks for the second-hand smoke. After Snoop, maybe we’ll see Metro Boomin and Future. “We Trust You” is the name of the tour.