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By Donald H. Harrison
 SAN DIEGO—I used to watch “The Wiggles” on the Disney Channel with grandson Shor, today 8 – and now I’m watching Wiggles tapes with grandson Sky, 2. Every so often, the program rebroadcast the Wiggles singing “Havenu Shalom Aleichem” while children, dressed in costumes that don’t look at all Israeli, dance. Where did that come from? I always wondered.
With The Wiggles coming to San Diego for two concerts this Thursday (at 3 p.m. at 6 p.m.) at the Civic Theatre, I had the opportunity to ask one of the four-member group’s singers, Anthony Field, whom Sky identifies simply as “the Blue Wiggle,” how “Havenu Shalom Aleichem” got into their act. I was surprised by the answer he gave me Tuesday in a brief telephone interview.
Back in 1990, when he graduated university, Field became a pre-school teacher and “the first job I got was working in the kindergarten at Temple Emanuel in Woollahra, Sydney,” he told me. “I was the first teacher they had there who was not Jewish at the preschool and I had 2 ½ years of the best education in that culture. I learned all the Sabbath songs, and ‘Havenu Shalom Aleichem’ was one of the great songs.”
The Wiggles are popular around the world, and Field said he was delighted that “children all around the world like that song now. It has a beautiful meaning to it – ‘we bring you peace—and it is a beautiful song. I learned a whole lot of other ones too.”
“You’re Jewish?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam,” (Blessed Are You, O Lord, King of the Universe) he chanted over the phone. I nearly reached for my yarmulke.
He said that he worked at the preschool from 1990 through 1992, and did not leave until the Wiggles as a group really started taking off. “It was a hard decision for me, because I really enjoyed my time there,” he said.
He recalled that Rabbi Brian Fox asked him not to let on that he wasn’t Jewish, and “everybody thought I was anyway. It was just a great experience. I loved every minute of the job, and I made some incredible friends out of working there. I really got an insight into the culture that you have to experience to know what it is all about.”
But, about those costumes?
The sequence, he responded, was filmed early in the career of the Wiggles, when the thought was to do folk songs from around the world. They rented some costumes for the children and --
“Were the costumes, Swiss?” I asked.
“Italian, “ he said. “It was all wrong, but it was early on.”
It was clear he was looking back on the Wiggles start-up with fondness. He recalled before the group became nationally, and then internationally famous, a standard date for them might be a party for kindergarteners, some of whom were drawn from his roster of ex-students.
Today those yeledim (Yes, he knows the Hebrew word for children) are in their early 20s and are parents themselves –
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the parents of a whole new generation of Wiggles fans.
The Wiggles’ attachment to education is apparent in the request they have made to members of the audience to bring new children’s books to the performance to be distributed through a program called “Reach Out and Read.”
The books will be distributed to pediatricians throughout the country and in turn placed in the hands of parents. The doctors, nurses and their staffs will inform the parents of their young patients how important it is to their children’s development to be read to while they are young. “Having parents read to them is something that will stay with children throughout their lives,” Field said.
This concert will be different from the two to which I had taken Shor on previous Wiggles visits to San Diego. Called “Go Bananas,” this concert is far more athletic and acrobatic than previous ones, the performer said. Its effect in other cities has been to encourage little children to exercise. The Wiggle told me I should not be surprised if I see children—and maybe even some granddads—doing headstands against walls after the concert is over.
As new as the concert is, some of the old Wiggles standards will remain, he added. While he didn’t say which ones would be in the show—such songs as “Yummy, Yummy” and “Big Red Car”—are so identified with the Wiggles, it’s hard to imagine a concert without them.
“If we didn’t put some of them in, the audiences would want their money back,” Anthony said.
Greg Page, the original “yellow Wiggle” and lead singer, had to leave the group in 2006 after being diagnosed with a condition known as orthostatic intolerance, which induces fainting but is not life threatening. He was replaced as the “yellow Wiggle” by a long time understudy, Sam Moran, a change that Anthony Field said has required the group to undergo some changes because Moran’s singing style is different from Page’s.
Recently, said Field, the group has done a “relaunch" with Sam by accepting a three hour daily show, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., on the Sprout Network, which is carried as Premium Channel 348 by Cox Cable. Attendant to the switch from Disney has been a Sprout campaign to persuade Cable companies that parents in their areas want to see the Wiggles.
Before I began the interview, I told Shor that I would ask any question he might have for Anthony, the Wiggle. He wanted to know which of the Wiggles—Sam, Anthony, Jeff Fatt (the purple Wiggle) or Murray Cook (the red Wiggle) was the boss Wiggle.
I put the question to Anthony and he responded that for different things, different Wiggles are bosses. For example, he said, “if someone is really passionate about something, then we will go ahead and do it, you know. Like, for example, if someone were really passionate about doing 'Havenu Shalom Aleichem,' they will say if you’d really like to do it, we’ll do it.”
Perhaps I should have ended the interview by asking Anthony if he were really passionate about “Havenu Shalom Aleichem,” but I’d rather be surprised. Instead I asked what he thought about the description often given to the Wiggles as being “the Beatles of the pre-school set.”
“Ah well, that is very flattering,” he responded. “I don’t know about the Beatles, maybe we should notch it back a bit. We’re not the Beatles, just the Wiggles.”
You got to love that comment. “Just.”
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