Music: From Dancehall Rapper To Nursery Rhymer

IF you’ve never heard of Father Goose, just ask a kid. As part of the eclectic family music ensemble Dan Zanes & Friends, Father Goose, a k a Wayne Rhoden, is the boisterous, big-bellied Jamaican guy who routinely steals the show with his gruff renditions of “Georgie Porgie” and the “Hokey Pokey.”

Mr. Rhoden was born in Jamaica and began his career in New York.

“When I say Father, you say Goose!” he commands, and hundreds of little voices obey.

Mr. Rhoden has appeared on all five of Mr. Zanes’s children’s CDs, including the 2006 release “Stop That Train!,” which won a Grammy Award for best musical album for children.

“I notice a lot of people say they’re doing kids music, and they try to water it down,” Mr. Rhoden said in an interview. “Just be yourself.” (He will perform with Mr. Zanes in two shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next Sunday.)

But Mr. Rhoden’s act wasn’t always so kid-friendly. Just as Mr. Zanes was once the lead singer for a 1980s rock band called the Del Fuegos, Mr. Rhoden’ had a musical career with an even more unexpected first act. During the 1980s and ’90s Father Goose was known as Rankin Don, a hardcore dancehall rapper (or “D.J.” in reggae parlance) from Brooklyn. His best-known release was the 12-inch single “Baddest D.J.,” a brazen declaration of lyrical superiority punctuated with gun-slinging hyperbole: “The 16 ’pon me back, the Desert Eagle ’pon me hip.”

Small wonder then that some of his old friends gave him grief when they saw him goofing around with Mr. Zanes on the Disney Channel. “Oh gosh, I’m still hearing about that,” Mr. Rhoden said.

Still, he said, he has no regrets.

“The dancehall thing is more rough,” said Mr. Rhoden, who’s still following his boyhood passion for music at 41. “But 9 times out of 10 I’m not that rough. As Rankin Don, you have to be so hard or whatever. Now I can just lay back and be me.”

Since the debut of “Sesame Street” 40 years ago, grown-up musicians from Stevie Wonder to Tony Bennett have dabbled in music for children. The trend appears to have accelerated with Alicia Keys singing on a 2007 episode of “Backyardigans” and the old-school rapper Biz Markie supplying a Beat of the Day on the children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba!”

The alternative rockers They Might Be Giants recently released their third record for children, “Here Come the 123s.” And on another new CD, “Baby Loves Hip Hop,” a posse of middle-aged rappers — including Prince Paul, De La Soul and Lady Bug Mecca of Digable Planets — join forces as the Dino 5. At this rate, it seems, purple dinosaurs and hand puppets could soon be driven out of work by aging pop stars.

But nobody has made the transition more successfully than Mr. Zanes, who long ago abandoned singing “songs about old girlfriends and drinking,” as he said in a recent interview, in favor of a loose, homespun sound he calls “all-ages music.”

Mr. Rhoden has come a long way since he was known as Rankin Don, but he hasn’t tried to play down his rough-and-tumble dancehall days. His recent children’s album, “It’s a Bam Bam Diddly!,” released late last year, is a return to his reggae roots. The disc offers infectiously fresh interpretations of traditional West Indian folk songs along with a few originals performed — in authentic patois and kreyol — by Father Goose and a galaxy of Caribbean stars who live in Brooklyn, including Sister Carol, Screechy Dan and Ansel Meditation of the harmony trio the Meditations. (Sheryl Crow and Mr. Zanes also contribute.) The album’s title track was the most-played song on XM Satellite Radio’s children’s program and has also cracked Billboard’s Reggae chart, an unprecedented feat for any dancehall artist.

“Father Goose is bringing back straight old-time Jamaican music,” said the Jamaican journalist and broadcaster Dermot Hussey, who is program director of a reggae program on XM Satellite Radio. “There’s nothing risqué in there, and no violent imagery whatsoever. It’s great, and I think it opens up another side of our culture for people. As we say, ‘the half that’s never been told.’ ”

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Mr. Rhoden’s album is the way it reconnects dancehall with its roots in songs like “Chi Chi Budoo” and “Long Time Gal,” which were first popularized by the folklorist and poet Louise Bennett, a Jamaican national hero better known as Miss Lou. Even as late as 1980 Jamaican dancehall pioneers Michigan & Smiley adapted one of their biggest hits, “Rub a Dub Style,” from the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” Such innocent themes eventually fell out of favor in the dancehall, but as Mr. Rhoden said, “Sometimes you have to go back to go forward.”

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