Mother Jones illustration; Billie Woods
The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.
Forget the YouTube sensations Ms. Rachel or CoComelon: My household still blissfully lounges in the sweet cocoon of Raffi, the purveyor of gentle, folksy children’s songs and covers made popular in the 1980s. Few days go by when my almost-2-year-old son doesn’t request a round of “Baby Luga,” Raffi’s cheerful 1980 hit “Baby Beluga” about the “little white whale on the go.” My kid has christened his plastic whale toy “Baby Luga,” and it’s as if this moniker has imbued it with magnetic charm, transforming it into his go-to pick of companions during bath time.
For me, this is all very comforting. I’m a so-called “Beluga grad,” a millennial whose early childhood memories come with a Raffi soundtrack. Many of us Beluga grads are now having children of our own, as writer (and fellow grad) Emma Silvers pointed out when she interviewed the Canadian musician for Mother Jones earlier this year. In her piece, Silvers caught us up on Raffi Cavoukian’s whereabouts and recent releases:
Though he’s faded a bit from the limelight, Raffi, now 75, has never stopped making music; his 24th album, Penny Penguin, dropped April 19. In the last three decades he’s also become a vocal climate activist, performed for Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, rejected an offer to make ungodly sums of money with a Baby Beluga movie from the producers of Shrek, and established the Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring, a nonprofit organized around the singer’s “children-first” vision of sustainability.
In other words, aside from crafting catchy but not obnoxious singalong hits, Raffi is clearly a stand-up dude. That’s not all, Silvers writes. On X/Twitter, “he maintains perhaps the most earnest, sweetly radical feed in the history of the internet.” His posts condemn income inequality and the destruction of Gaza, opine on the importance of nurturing children, and muse poetically about ice hockey. In December, eight months after we ran Silvers’ interview, he posted a message about the toppling of Syria’s dictator, urging us to “tune your heart to all you hold dear. to all that is precious. stay strong.”
But none of that really explains why Raffi is my hero this year. In these uneasy times of political turmoil and anger and fear of violence and climate disasters, Raffi’s peaceful and soothing songs have become a kind of bulwark, a necessary reminder that simple tunes sung together can connect us and elevate us above the chaos.
Perhaps more importantly, they can occupy my son enough to prevent him from falling asleep in the car and upending nap time when we arrive home. We listened to “Baby Beluga” on repeat eight or nine times in a row the other day, while stuck in traffic, with that purpose in mind. It worked.
Which brings me to a slight fear: Although Raffi is currently my hero, will all the repetitive listening soon transform him into a monster? Only time will tell. For now, there’s “The More We Get Together” and “Down by the Bay” and “Apples and Bananas.” Put simply, I’ve got the whole world in my hands.
