CHILDREN'S SONGS FOR CHILDREN!   DFO1043  12/12/80

         1. WE CERTAINLY ENJOY BO-BO & THE BLUEBIRDS & YOUR CHILDREN'S SINGING GROUPS, they're a real pleasure to hear & add real spice & variation to the Show, & I'm sure our Worldwide audience loves them. However I'm wondering a little bit about your choice of numbers for children. "Sad Day for a Poor Man" comes across when they're singing it, but I'm wondering if it's natural for children to really express such sentiments.
         2. It just seems to me that children's songs should be naturally & normally more happy songs, more childish songs, expressing more natural childish sentiments. I'm always very fond of that one about "The Time To Be Happy Is Now", & it's a simple little tune that keeps running through your head. I think that children should sing simple, happy, childlike songs, & not these big, heavy, deep, adult, sad message songs.
         3. I realise our children are not exactly natural & normal, they're unusual! They're really child prodigies, they're whiz kids, they're really brain children & they understand these deep spiritual things & deep sad things about the World etc. But I think when the general public are listening they're going to be a bit surprised & shocked by some of the songs we've had the children singing.
         4. I know some of them were almost risqu, like "Bye Bye Teacher". I love the song, it's terrific, but to have little very minor children singing about what sounds like sex, is apt to raise some eyebrows, if not a few complaints! To have our children understanding the economics of the World & spiritual things & even sex is just a bit out of character with the general public.
         5. THE WORLD LOOKS TO CHILDREN FOR HOPE & JOY & HAPPINESS & GODLINESS & HEAVENLINESS, they're like His little messengers straight from Heaven--& they are! They expect them to be happy little angels singing heavenly songs & sounding like little angels, & giving the simple little childlike messages of God & His Love from above.
         6. I think Maria feels that it distracts from the heavy message of the song, the meaning of the music, when the children sing such heavy songs. To me it just doesn't seem to fit. Out of the mouths of babes & sucklings He has perfected praise--not politics, economics & sex! "And a little child shall lead them", simply. We're to become as little children in our meekness & our love & our simplicity. In malice we are to be children, but in our understanding we're to be men. (Ps.8:2; Is.11:6; 1Co.14:20)
         7. But to find songs of sex & politics & economics & deeply spiritual sentiments in the mouths of little children--in other words, what the general public would consider adult sentiments--I think the average Systemite would find them even offensive, many of them. I don't believe it's really God's Love to deliberately try to offend Systemites & try to rub them the wrong way with the wrong kind of songs that they can't possibly identify with & they can't even understand--particularly coming out of the mouths of tiny children! You could make some people pretty mad! They can call it all kinds of things, corruption of minors or molestation or God knows what they'd call it! That's how the System is.
         8. I HOLD YOU ADULTS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT KIND OF SONGS YOUR CHILDREN SING, particularly on the radio, & your choice of songs etc. If they want to sing those songs to themselves or to the camp or to groups of radicals & revolutionaries & hippies, well, fine, they might be really wild enough to receive it! I just do not think that the general public is going to receive such songs from the mouths of children & I think they're going to find them strange. Well, PTL, there you are!
         9. Maybe listen to some of Ho's children's tapes & see what you think about some of them. He's been quite successful in putting over his children in a very difficult, strange, foreign situation amongst the Chinese. He is dealing there with very important high officials & I think he was quite wise in his choice of music for little children in Christmas songs & simple little happy songs & even funny songs like "Yellow Submarine" & things like that.
         10. So please keep that in mind & please try to have the children singing lighter, happier, simpler, more childlike, more loving songs, instead of those very deep & radical & sexy songs which would just simply not be expected of children & may even be offensive & objectionable to some. Amen?
         11. Maria's mentioning that sometimes you should give greater attention even to matching the adults or the performer or the singer, musician, to his or her music. Singing is such an emotional thing, music is so emotional. It should be a true expression of your own personal true emotions, the way you feel yourself personally when you sing it or you play it. Remember, I was in the music business most of my life. It had to be the personal expression of my own personal emotions & the way I felt about the subject. It had to be me!
         12. SO LET'S PLEASE LET OUR CHILDREN BE CHILDREN AS LONG AS WE CAN, SHALL WE? We're to be like little children ourselves, & we're to be loving, sweet, simple, easy believers & childlike in faith, believing, receiving, loving & happy. We feel that these types of numbers do not particularly fit children, but if you want to sing'm, fine! I love'm! When Amminidab used to sing "It's a Sad Day for a Poor Man", it used to make me cry--the expression of what he really felt.
         13. My own poem "Spirit Tree" that you put to song has tremendous depth of meaning. I believe it was from the Lord, it was His own disgust & revulsion of His Spirit against the tinsel & tinniness & ridiculousness of the Christmas tree! In the hands of children, the Christmas tree looks fine, but for my adult daughter to be staying up all night & making herself sick just decorating a Christmas tree was a bit out of character.
         14. So let's be honest, let's let the music be the expression of our own personal sentiments & those of our children, & not something just put in our mouths by somebody who assigned us to the song on the Show or put in the mouths of our children by adults. Whatever it is, you must understand it, believe it, receive it & sing it with feeling, & it must be the expression of your own personal testimony & your heart, & come straight from the depths of your soul with real conviction--amen?

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