Lyricism of a younger generation

Do these song lyrics mean anything to you?

“I got hit so hard I was blindsided. Capsizing on the outside of the inside of my world.” How about this?

“I’m writing for no apparent reason, other than I have something to say. I’ve got to write a song. I’ve held it in too long.” Or maybe this?

“I fell into a hole. It was filled with dreams.”

If you’re still drawing a blank, don’t feel bad. While these lyrics and melodies sound like the stuff of successful pop songs, they were only written last week. By fourth- and fifth-graders.

“They (the songs) really do stick in your head,” said Paul Reisler, a white-haired singer/guitarist and co-founder of the Kid Pan Alley project that made its second visit to R.S. Payne Elementary in Lynchburg. “I wake up to them sometimes.”

Reisler and Lynchburg singer/songwriter Paddy Dougherty spent a week with the fourth- and fifth-graders at Payne, helping them write nine songs. Their creations were then unveiled at two performances in the school auditorium last Friday. I attended the afternoon show, and the peer audience (all the other kids at Payne) was loud and appreciative. But let me back up a moment. Reisler, Dougherty and the budding songwriters at Payne put their production together from scratch in a week. Imagine what the average Broadway show would sound like with just five days of preparation.

“It teaches them a lot of things,” said Dougherty, “and not just music. It teaches them to cooperate, to work together on a single goal.”

Here’s how it works.

Reisler and Dougherty come into a classroom and write a list of song topics on the board. The students vote, and the winning subject becomes the focus of the song. Next come the lyrics, and then Dougherty asks: “Can anyone sing that? What do you think it should sound like?”

So they sing, a melody is arrived at and Reisler manages to find the appropriate guitar chords for background.

“That’s sometimes a problem,” Reisler admitted, “but generally it works out fine.”

Reisler also has to steer the ship away from music ideas not suitable for an audience of younger kids and parents.

Nevertheless, the Kid Pan Alley duo didn’t seem to mind that a little hip hop and rap crept into some of the tunes.

“I wanted to do a little more of that (rap),” said fifthgrader Stephanie Williams, author of an earlier Kid Pan Alley song that was performed by the Lynchburg Symphony, “but I think it worked out OK.” Kid Pan Alley started out in 1999 when Reisler wrote songs with 600 children in rural Rappahannock County and turned them into a CD titled “Tidal Wave of Song.”

Since then, he and co-workers like Dougherty and Payne music teacher Lyn Long have squeezed 1,700 songs out of 27,000 children. “It was really fun,” Payne student Emporia Brown said of her Kid Pan Alley experience. “I’d like to do it again.” Classmate Dion White, a natural showman who wore red glasses, already has decided to make a career out of music.

“It’s not that hard,” added Jaylah Mayo. “We just do it.”

Asked what type of music they enjoyed, the five kids I talked with didn’t stop with the obvious.

“I like a lot of the old music,” Martique Lovelace said. “Like Michael Jackson.”

“I’m always surprised by the seriousness of what they sing about,” Dougherty said. “At that age, you’d think a lot of the songs would be silly, but they’re all about changing the world.” Good for them, because the older generations haven’t had much luck with that so far. Maybe the youngsters will do better.

At least they’ll always have new music.