Second Childhood

A child’s journey has a thousand detours. A walk around the block becomes a down-on-all-fours inspection of a caterpillar. A hurried turn through the supermarket frozen-food section dissolves into a finger-painting session on frosty glass doors.

Such wanderings can be hugely frustrating to adults. We wail, we plead, we all but nip at their heels like collies on a herd of recalcitrant sheep, but still they won’t get down to business.

Here’s some advice from none other than the granddaddy of contemporary children’s music, Raffi:

Watch and enjoy.

Because when a child stoops to inspect a bug on the sidewalk or doodles on the pages of your day planner, he or she is down to business. The business of being a child.

“The work of children in early years is to wonder and dream of taking their place in the world,” said the 49-year-old singer from his adopted home in Vancouver, British Columbia. “From the beginning of life, we’re trying to make sense of the world.”

He paused, then added with a rueful laugh: “I guess we’re trying to do that in our older years too.”

Although he has no children of his own, Raffi (born Raffi Cavoukian to Armenian parents in Cairo, Egypt) has spent most of his adult life mulling over youngsters’ emotional and psychological development.

Recognized around the world for championing the cause of children and children’s music, Raffi is continuing a tour that marks the 20th anniversary of his first recording for youths.

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His show, which stops tonight at Anaheim’s Freedman Forum, targets children ages 2 to 8 and their families and harks back to the early days of his career. It will include a blend of such Raffi oldies such as “Baby Beluga” and cuts from his latest album of new material, “Raffi Radio,” released in 1995. His Rise and Shine Band will be absent, as will a lot of the splashy visuals and hyperactive pacing that characterize many types of children’s entertainments, but which Raffi has largely avoided.

“It’s Raffi unplugged,” he explained. “Me, my guitar and my kazoo.”

Not to mention a few studiously bad jokes.

“I like bad jokes because they’re innocent; they don’t hurt anybody,” he explained. “Really, somebody ought to study them in a psychological way because they’re a wonderful thing. . . .

“I say, more guffawing and less Prozac.”

Raffi’s sunny-side-up outlook hasn’t come easily. Since strumming and crooning gentle, playful tunes for his first preschool audience in 1974, the folk singer with the Bambi eyes has known triumphs and pitfalls in his personal life and career.

At the height of his U.S. career in the mid-1980s, his recordings and concert tickets sold phenomenally. He was a recipient of three Grammy nominations and top sales awards from both the American and Canadian recording industries.

But in 1990, when he tried to parlay that international recognition into a new career with the release of “Evergreen, Everblue,” an adult-oriented album with heavy pro-environment themes, listeners responded with an almost audible yawn. The media paid it and a companion video little attention, although he said both have been recycled for teaching conservation in the classroom.

“It’s a crossover that didn’t quite work,” he said.

What’s more, retailers, irked by his refusal to package any of his recordings in the then-popular CD long-box, avoided stocking his stuff. (Although Raffi lost that battle, he apparently won the war, as the long-box went the way of the dinosaurs in 1993, replaced by the more environmentally friendly jewel box.)

In the midst of this, his marriage broke up. It was January 1993, when he performed at the Inaugural Celebration for Children at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., before he really resurfaced publicly.

By ‘94, the “old” Raffi made a recording comeback with the popular “Bananaphone” album, followed in ’95 with “Raffi Radio,” an innovative take on old-style radio shows.

In 1996, he marked the 20th anniversary of his first children’s release, “Singable Songs for the Very Young” with a boxed set of his first three recordings.

With no new releases since ‘95, none planned for the immediate future, and a limited touring schedule, one might wonder: As Raffi looks his 50th birthday in the face (it’s coming in July) is he contemplating another career shift?

Yes and no.

Raffi expects to see the publication of his first adult’s book next fall. (He has 18 children’s books--either songbooks or illustrated story versions of his songs--to his credit.)

“The Life of a Children’s Troubadour” is the working title, and it features stories of his own youth and family, his career and “the choices I made along the way.” No publisher has been named for the book, which he said has taken nearly two years to complete.

He also plans to write another book chronicling his thoughts on child development. But he has no thoughts of surrendering his guitar for the pen, despite the fact that he was named for an Armenian author. The way he sees it, there are still thousands of detours he wants to travel with children through his songs.

“Singing, like reading, is the ideal form of stimulation for a young child,” he said. “Both allow the imagination to be stoked.

“There’s nothing but goodness in singing for a child of any age.”

BE THERE

Raffi sings tonight at the Freedman Forum, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. 7 p.m. $17.50-$20. (714) 999-9599 (box office) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).