March 18, 2019: "Now We Know What Rhinos Know," by Zeke Hill-Halvorson
Zeke Hill-Halvorson is a rock star, dancer, scientist and ninja living in Seattle. He is also the four-year-old son of Rise Up Music Project founder Matt Halvorson, and this is Zeke’s first fully original song.
A note from Matt:
Zeke made up this entire song himself. He described how the song should start and taught me by making the drum sounds with his mouth and hands. He knew what drum beat he wanted to use on the family’s kid-size orange-and-black Casio keyboard, and he scrolled through until he found the organ sound he wanted to use. He even came up with the idea to make his vocals sound like a robot in the beginning.
From there, he freestyled probably 45 minutes of vocals and it was one of the happiest, funniest things I’ve ever been a part of. He would go long stretches of using completely made-up words. He sang about aliens, eyeballs, his friend Theo, and all sorts of other things.
Zeke has probably been the most avid listener of the Rise Up Music Project so far. I think he’s listened to every episode. In fact, most days, he’ll ask at some point, “Whose turn is it?” I’ll usually ask what for, and he’ll say, “For the music (pronounced moo-vick) project.” And then we’ll listen to that day’s song.
So, his intro is completely him speaking off the cuff and mimicking all of us music projecters. For whatever reason, he said that it’s January 9, but otherwise, he nailed it.
To help translate Zeke-speak into something everyone can understand, there’s an answer in the lyrics to the song’s obvious question: what do rhinos know? They know to smash stuff.
It seems fitting to close the same way that Zeke closes out his intro:
“Enjoy. Booty.”
