Taylor Swift has been called a “musical chameleon,” managing to cross over from country darling to pop sensation. Her diverse repertoire is why Josh Rifkind, founder and executive director of Songs for Kids, decided Swift’s music would make the perfect backdrop for their upcoming festival. The “Every Taylor Song Ever Fest” features kids and young adults with illnesses, injuries and disabilities performing, well… every Taylor Swift song ever made. “City Lights” engineer and contributor Shelley Kenneavy caught up with Rifkind via Zoom to discuss this weekend’s upcoming festival.
Interview highlights:
Songs for Kids, a haven for free music education:
“We’re in our 16th year of playing music, rocking out with kids with illnesses, injuries, and disabilities. And we’re often bedside, over a thousand times a year, with kids in children’s hospitals across the country,” said Rifkind. “But we opened our Songs for Kids Center in 2018, which is a pretty magical place where kids and young adults through age 39 can come down right by the ferris wheel in Downtown Atlanta, right by CNN Center, and families can come down and for free, absolutely no charge. Kids get weekly music mentorship from our really extraordinary Songs for Kids Music Mentors, and at the Songs for Kids Center, we’ve got a full recording studio, stage, light, sound, everything you could dream of doing musically. Kids with disabilities and illnesses can take that journey with us.”
One-on-one guidance and inspiration from mentors and performers:
“We have just the best people who come in and meet with a family, and meet with a kid, and depending on their skill set… we pair them up with what the kids want to do. So if it’s a kid that wants to write some songs in the studio, we bring in one of our awesome mentor engineers and producers,” said Rifkind. “It could be someone that wants to learn to sing on the stage, and we have wonderful vocalists and singer-songwriters who are part of the Songs for Kids team. So we really make sure that the kids are getting the exciting care that they need to really, actually have a great experience here.”
“I’m lucky to have a lot of friendships with a lot of [musicians], and it’s great to kind of color them into the festivities. It’s cool to turn them on, you know, to have friends kind of in music who are very successful in their own right for years, to kind of come and see what we do,” said Rifkind. “They might be used to playing in front of 20,000 people at night, but when they come to our center, they’re the guests, they’re the visitors, and they get to learn this musical magic that’s happening.”
An all-Taylor-Swift concert by Songs for Kids performers:
“This weekend is ‘Every Taylor Song Ever Fest,’ and we love putting on just really massive, super-complicated events, and just love to dream up stuff that brings people together, and this one is no exception. ‘Every Taylor Song Ever Fest,’ it’s gonna be over a hundred of the kids in our program performing every single Taylor Swift song of all time – which right now sits at about 194, I believe – and the kids have been practicing and rehearsing for months with their mentors,” Rifkind explained. “It’s kind of an indescribable celebration, and it’s just the collection of kids and young adults, I’m talking unbelievable performers, and it’s really, for us, allowing these kids to be stars. And why shouldn’t they be?”
Rifkind’s journey from making music to sharing access to music skills:
“While I was a music manager, I decided, really, that I was hoping my purpose personally would be for something greater, whatever that might mean to you. I felt like there was a real power to bringing people together, and having music serve a greater purpose than for super-talented artists per se,” said Rifkind. “My father is, or was, a surgeon for over 50 years, and he was my idol. So I thought, ‘Okay, if he’s my idol, what could I do to bring all of these elements together – music, him, medicine?’…You don’t have any idea when you start something, what it will be. In 2007 we did 17 hospital visits, but before the pandemic, we were finally doing over a thousand. So a big jump, obviously. And then with the Center, the Songs for Kids Center, we’re now serving kids in sessions that are in the thousands every year.”
The Songs for Kids “Every Taylor Song Ever Fest” takes place Nov. 12-13 at Monday Night Garage in the West End. Tickets and more information are available at https://www.songsforkids.org/
