When my nephew Zundel was 5, he was already quite a good drummer. Inspired by his drummer dad and singing mom, he loved making up songs to drum to. One of the songs was called Bananas and it quickly became our favorite song at meal time.
Zundel was a picky eater. He was more interested in playing with his food than eating it and he needed some encouragement. On a camping trip, we started adding more parts to the song, including foods that were good with bananas such as peanut butter, cookies, and milk, and before long we had several verses about different foods that you can hear in the song today.
One of the things we enjoyed doing in the car on that trip was singing together. We sang folk songs and children's songs and contemporary songs too. There were two songs we knew we could sing at the same time and they would sound good together, but they had different melodies and different lyrics.
It was a little tricky, but we were up for the challenge. Learning to sing those songs at the same time was so fun! It passed the time and made us laugh so hard each time we would make a mistake and start over again!
When I finally went to arrange and record the Bananas song, I wanted to capture that same energy of overlapping and different lyrics, so listen closely and see if you can sing the different lyrics and melodies at the same time with your friends and family.
