Let me rap to you this holiday season
Mar
The world has never marched to the beat of the same drum! So why should we start now?
This holiday season I decided to celebrate again. I am Lucky both literally and figuratively. I would like to rap to you about what’s on my mind this holiday season. I am a rapper but I’m using rap in the other sense of the word. Rap is an expression that has been used in “urban” communities throughout the United States for as long as I can remember. It pre-dates the references to music. When a speaker prefaced a statement with the words, “Can I rap to you for a minute?”, the listener knew that the speaker had something important that he/ she wanted to convey. Rap could be light conversation but it usually came from the heart. In that spirit, I would like to rap to you about what I do.
There are infinite pedagogical approaches to language teaching. There are also many approaches to creating music. I do both from a place of love. I would go as far as saying that love is the component that makes my method so potent. During the holiday season, it’s usually deemed ok to speak sentimentally or from the heart. At Lucky Mushroom, it’s like the holiday season all year round! The key component in all of our endeavors is love. We unapologetically love what we do. Lucky readers and learners are familiar with this philosophy. To those of you that are new to Lucky Mushroom, let me explain our concept a little more closely.
Communication and a deep love of communicating is what drives the Lucky Mushroom character. Unfortunately he can not communicate in different languages so he has set out to teach the children of the world his language. He is does not have an imperialistic or capitalistic world view. He simply teaches kids so he can communicate with them and they in turn can communicate with each other no matter what language they speak with their mothers.
Entertainment and a deep love of entertaining is also what drives the Lucky Mushroom character. He can’t play a musical instrument but he loves music. He is not a trained actor but he loves acting. He entertains by using what he knows best and that’s the use of English. He loves words. His love of words runs so deep that believes that the 26 characters that make up the English alphabet all deserve their own song. Just like the children of the world, no two letters are the same though they sometimes make the same sound. Each letter of the alphabet deserves its own time in the spotlight. So he has made a song for each letter of the alphabet!
Freestyle is a term that is used in the rap community that means “rapping spontaneously” , in other words, making up the words as you go along. Like playing a musical instrument or acting in an improv session. An improv session is a session where nothing has been practiced or prepared. That is how the Lucky Mushroom ABC songs were made! Lucky heard the beat and only had one set of instructions; be the letter of the alphabet. So during a session Lucky simply turned on the mic and his love for words and heard the beats and personified each letter of the ABCs. Here’s a sample of what happened.
Now that we have that out of the way let me tell you what I really want to rap to you about this Christmas.
I would like to rap about how I don’t care about your political persuasion the color of your skin let alone your hair. I don’t care if you took your jab or you’re paranoid and think the bug was concocted in a lab. I don’t care if you lean to the left or lean to the right if you work the day shift or clean the streets at night. I don’t care if you call yourself an Arab or you call yourself a Jew. I don’t care if you don’t care what I say if you pray one time a year or five times a day. I don’t care if you so full of hate that you will never get this. I love you anyway and I wish you Merry Christmas.
That was a little freestyle that came from out of no where. I don’t care about a lot of things as you may have noticed. What I do care about is keeping communication open and constantly reminding the kids that it’s ok to love and believe in something good. Even if that means that reindeer can fly and an overweight bearded white man breaks into houses by way of the chimney with nothing in his heart but love, a sack of toys, and good intentions.
Merry Christmas from Lucky Mushroom!
