This was originally posted in October of 2011.  Not much has changed – still can’t let my kids watch 99.99% of Caribbean music videos – no matter what genre!  If you know of good, child friendly soca, reggae, dancehall, and other Caribbean music, please share it in the comments section. We’d love to hear about it!

Okay, so Soca isn’t the most child-friendly genre of music.

I want to keep my kids connected to Caribbean culture and the music that I grew up with even though I lived in the US.  When they listen to the music, they don’t understand much, but I do.  I understand that MOST of the current, popular songs are about sex.

So I decided to go back to the songs that I grew up listening to… um… looks like lots of those were about sex too.  So I said, okay, I guess I need to go all the way back to Calypso… wow… some of those too!  Granted, most of the songs from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s are less overtly sexual, and use a lot of hidden messages and double entendre – but it is still there, and my kids are good at decoding whatever I don’t want them to.

There are a few songs that I have found that are fun for the kids to dance to, and have reasonable lyrics, but when I load them up on Pandora or Rhapsody – the album covers are insane!

I have to hurry up and minimize the screen or keep my phone on the home screen so that the kids don’t see it.  I am not a full on prude, but seriously, some just have naked women… that’s it.  And THAT is not a recent thing.  Some of the explicit covers date back over 25 years!

I have a few current favorite artists from whom I can get some good, reasonably clean music that the kids and I can dance to after dinner.  I don’t necessarily let them watch the videos, but I can’t have EVERYTHING, can I?

I have created a few kid friendly playlists for the Youtube channel.

FAMILY FRIENDLY CARIBBEAN TUNES PLAYLIST

Feel free to suggest more in the comments. Do you let your kids listen to soca?  What clean(ish) songs are in your playlist, that your kids love?