The backstories of those favorite albums that still frame our memories
It all started when I received a very long-distance phone call from Kivi and Tuki’s parents asking me if I could babysit them for a few hours because they had to go to a wedding. I quickly agreed, not realizing that due to the Einsteinium time and space differential, five hours on their planet was five years on Earth. Boy, was I in for it!
But the truth is, I always wanted to do a project geared to little kinderlach. One day, while studying the Hebrew/English dictionary, I came across the word Tuki, which means parrot. Wow, I thought, that would be a great name for a character. If only I could think of another cute name, I would have the perfect duo. Just then I heard my next-door neighbor calling out the window to her son, “Kiiiiiviiiii!” Boyng! A light went on in my head! And so, Kivi and Tuki were born.
When we got the first volume out there in 1982, we were overwhelmed by its immediate acceptance and popularity. I write a large selection of songs, both parodies and original, and my partner Heshy Walfish and I choose the best ones and weave together a storyline, adding funny intros and outros, divrei Torah, humorous interplay, and of course, a little mishugaas in order to achieve our goal of teaching Torah, middos, and mitzvos. But because we do this part-time, some albums take years to complete.
Heshy does the voices for all the characters, while I write and sing the songs. Heshy also plays all the instruments, edits and arranges the songs, and engineers the whole production.
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