Melancholic kid's song

Last night I had to put up with another primary school kid's concert. The novelty of these wears off sharply after each kid has done their first two or three, and in all honesty, some teachers really struggle to come up with good ideas.

When I were a lad, it was simply a matter of each class learning off a couple of songs by heart (at least one of them probably of Irish origin,) standing on a couple of precipitously stacked long benches, and belting them out to the piano accompaniment of Sister Lawrence. (Actually, it may have been a different nun, but Sister Lawrence sticks strongly in memory due to her general reign of terror over Grade 1 and 2. Have I mentioned before that it was one of the most depressing days of my educational life to find on the first day of Grade 2 that I had her again for another year?)

But the point is - I am sure this was a relatively painless experience for the parents, and it was probably over with much quicker than what primary schools get away with now. Primary school teachers be aware: 6 year olds do not do choreography well. You don't do choreography well. Give it up - get them to sing some 2 songs while stationary and get off the stage.

And as for other content - look, even a climate change worrier like me gets sick of every year having one or two classes do some sketch or something or other related to recycling, being kind to the planet, etc. Do something cheerful.

Anyway - where was I? Oh yes: one thing one class did last night was to the Unicorn song (Irish Rovers, 1968.) I hadn't heard it for years, but you would have to call it a bit of melancholy Irish folk for kids. And this got me thinking of other melancholic kid's songs from my childhood, and how the genre seems to have gone away.

Surely the biggest of them all in the genre was Puff the Magic Dragon, which I see was by Peter Paul and Mary from 1963. Being Australian, I associate more it with The Seekers, the group for which every song strikes me as melancholic.

There was another sad sounding kids song that I thought about this morning, but it escapes me now.

In any event, how come we have environmental concern now at least as great as that in the 1960's, but we don't have a sad sounding kid's song about it? Maybe it's just that folk doesn't have the airplay that it used to have in that decade? I mean, it may be unfair, but I suppose I do usually associate "folk" with serious or depressing situations. (It's a bit like the image of Country & Western, I suppose, but my impression is that it is more "pop-y" in both sound and topic now.)

So get to it, songwriters. Some good, depressing songs about carbon dioxide, the rising sea levels covering the old holiday home on the beach, grandma being taken to hospital due to heat exhaustion; politicians too stupid to do anything: there's plenty of material. But I still don't want to hear it at a school concert.