No More Clapping Hands: RAFFI

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If you are the parent of a preschooler, suffice it to say that Raffi, in the throes of middle age, is shaking his sillies out. If you have no children, or live with them on the moon, it might be easier to explain that the most popular children's singer in the English-speaking world has chucked a multimillion-dollar career, ended his 16-year marriage and stopped eating nearly everything that tastes good, all in order to carry out an uncompromising and very grown-up mission: to alarm the rest of humankind into taking better care of Our Dear, Dear Mother. Mother Earth, that is.

If it were merely Placido Domingo announcing that henceforth he wished to be regarded as a rap singer, folks might understand. But this is Raffi, the Canadian folk singer who has mesmerized more preschoolers than anyone else since that piper from Hamelin. His defection from the marketplace of kids' music is comparable to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's departure from the Lakers -- he leaves behind similar, smaller shadows, but none to take his place.

His full name is Raffi Cavoukian, but during his 14 years as a troubadour to the nursery-rhyme set he achieved the type of international renown that allows people to become known only by their first name. With his throaty voice, chocolate-sweet eyes and zippy rhythms, he provided intelligent amusement to millions of boys and girls who might otherwise be transported to the Saturday- morning cartoon swampland of death rays and superheroes. In the process, he was amply rewarded: his 10 albums sold 6 million copies, and he was awarded Canada's highest civilian decoration.

Strumming out rollicking melodies on an inexpensive guitar, he educated as well as entertained. When he sang about a giraffe named Joshua pining to leave the zoo, children learned to wonder about the feelings of animals. Thanks a Lot offered gratitude to a generic deity for the everyday goodness of life. His paeans to the peanut-butter sandwich, the horn on the bus, tooth brushing and bathtime were comforting confirmation to millions of squirming dissidents that while each of them is unique, their frustrations and fears are not.

Why, then, when he was doing so much good for so many, did he turn his back on the generation of tomorrow? For something he considers even more important. His latest album, Evergreen Everblue, is not merely inappropriate for toddlers; it is a warning screech of apocalypse. Its cover portrays a haunted Raffi with death's-head stare, his beard spiked with acid-laden pine trees. Instead of warmly promising, as one of his favorite children's songs did, that Everything Grows, the new Raffi howls piercingly, "Why are we poisoning our children? What's the matter with us?"

Raffi now refuses to play for children. He calls himself an eco-troubadour. Sitting on the terrace of his modest Vancouver apartment, he sighs over the resentment his act of conscience has created. "I know some parents feel I've abandoned their children. But I've come to realize that unless I do my utmost to stop the destruction of the earth, there'll be no world for those young people to grow up in."