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Children's music is used here to refer to music composed and performed for children by adults. In...

Children's music is used here to refer to music composed and performed for children by adults. In European influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Children's music has historically held both entertainment and educational functions. Children's music is often designed to provide an entertaining means of teaching children about their culture, other cultures, good behavior, facts and skills. Many are folk songs, but there is a whole genre of educational music that has become increasingly popular. The growth of the popular music publishing industry, associated with New York's Tin Pan Alley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the creation of a number of songs aimed at children. These included 'Ten little fingers and ten little toes' by Ira Shuster and Edward G. Nelson and 'School days' (1907) by Gus Edwards and Will Cobb. Perhaps the best remembered now is ‘Teddy Bears' Picnic', with lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy in 1932 and the tune by British composer John William Bratton was from 1907. Recordings for children were intertwined with recorded music for as long as it has existed