Name: Hippo in the Wondarium
Duration: P00H03M23S
Description: Hippo lives in the Wondarium beneath the African mud. She considers visiting rhinoceros with her friend the red-billed oxpecker. She also considers crossing The Great Limpopo to see her cousins, the whales, swim past the shore. She collects treasures and songs from the sands.

Hippo in the Wondarium

from The Wondarium: Songs For Kids by Jeni Hankins

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The Wondarium started with a dream. I dreamed I was combing the beach for shells with my friend Alfred then a message came through the air from his wife Sarah. She said, "The Hippopotamus says bring her back some treasures."

The next morning, I told my dream to Alfred over the telephone who later sent a chorus to me about Hippo. But before I'd heard his chorus, I'd written two verses about her as well. Once I listened to his chorus, I realized that my verses fit in with the rhythm of what he'd already written.

Alfred and I call this ESP (extrasensory perception) songwriting. We write a lot of songs this way. Once we realized that both of us enjoyed making up songs that would suit children, we wrote another and another and another. We didn't think about them in a methodical way; they just dropped into our minds over the course of about a year.

What makes these songs particularly for kids? Well there's something free about them, something nonsensical, and something playful. These are things which I always loved in songs I heard on Sesame Street or on Pete Seeger records.

Not all adults are open to a song about the virtues of string, whereas kids seem to understand. But I was pleased to meet an adult after the first public performance of these songs who said, "I know you wrote that string song for kids, but I like it too." Perfect.

Songs for kids, songs for free thinkers, songs for nonsense-lovers, songs for socks, songs for bears, boats, beans, and hippos.

Come one, come all. Take your chances in The Wondarium.

Includes unlimited streaming of The Wondarium: Songs For Kids via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of String Unraveller Demo May 2021, The American Dream (Harlis and Freda), Voice Memo Demo, I'm Letting Go of You – Kitchen Single, The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, A Body is a Delicate House, I Fell Into the Fire, The Loneliest Snowman, I Fell Into The Fire – Limited Edition Handprinted, and 18 more. , and , .

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about

Hippo lives in the Wondarium beneath the African mud. She considers visiting rhinoceros with her friend the red-billed oxpecker. She also considers crossing The Great Limpopo to see her cousins, the whales, swim past the shore. She collects treasures and songs from the sands.

lyrics

HIppo’s Wondarium

“Fill your horn with plenty,” said Hippo in the sun.
“I need your pearls of wisdom to fill my Wondarium.
Comb the dunes for jug band tunes and dive beneath the waves
for precious shells and sliver bells – the treasures that I crave.”

Down in her cool Wondarium, beneath the steaming mud,
Hippopotamus turns her periscope to spy the veldt above.
She seeks the red-billed oxpecker who makes a sprockety talk.
Perhaps she’ll rise to meet him and they’ll pay rhinoceros a call.

Remember the two of us turning stones by the sea
’til hippopotamus made three.

Down in her cool Wondarium, Hippopotamus dreams of whales –
her cousins of the salty seas with their slippery flippery tails.
Perhaps she’ll leave Great Limpopo and journey through Mozambique
to invite her cousin cetaceans for a cup of gamgee tea.

credits

from The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, released December 13, 2022
Music and Lyrics by Jeni Hankins, Lulu Wall Music, BMI,
and Alfred John Hickling, Sweet Pea Music.

license

about

Jeni Hankins London, UK

Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.

In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.” ... more

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