The World's Lullabies

Chukie Tethong, one of the most respected folks singers from Tibet, spent 11 years with Tibetan singers, learning traditional songs of live, faith and nature. This song (the title translates to The Jewel of the Land of Snows) is a chant. In Buddhism, practiced widely in Tibet, chants help you relax and feel calm. This song is courtesy of Putumayo's Asian Dreamland album.

Marta Gómez first started singing her the church choir in her native Cali, Colombia. She often writes her own songs, but this one, "Heavenly One" is a famous classic song from Mexico. The song translates, roughly to "Ay, ay, ay, ay / Sing and don't cry / Because singing makes the heart happy, my heavenly one." It's often played faster, by mariachi bands, but Gómez has turned it into a lullaby. This song is courtesy of...

This is a French lullaby every parent -- and kid -- knows. ("Il etait un petit navire" or "There was a little ship.") My kids, who are half-French, grew up hearing it all the time. But here's the wild part: the lullaby itself sounds soft and soothing, but if you listen closely the lyrics are actually about a young shipwrecked sailor who is about to be eaten by his fellow sailors!  (You can read the English lyrics...

Our daughter was born 13 weeks early.  She weighed 2 lbs, 2 oz.  And we didn't know from one day to the next,  whether she would survive.  Whether she would thrive or come home with medical issues.  She was kept in an isolete in the NICU, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, one of the largest and best in Boston. 

We were told by the doctors that reading, talking and singing to her would go a long way to her recovery. 

So every night, my husband would...

So serene and beautiful.

A mongulu is an egg shaped dwelling made of a framework of branches covered with large overlapping leaves. Here six women in a mongulu have transformed a melody from a ceremonial framework into a beautiful simple lullaby.

Not really a lullaby but I like to play this Irish tune late at night when I'm sleepy. It's called Drowsy Maggie.  

Famoro Dioubaté hails from Conakry, the capital of the African nation of Guinea. He grew up in a family of musicians and learned to play the balafón — a sort-of African xylophone. Douyoré is a tradition Mandingo song that translates roughly to "My child is crying for something. What siw rong? Is she hurt, or hungry? Did she have a bad dream? I don't want you to be upset." The song is played on the balafón, as well as the bolon, a three-string African bass, and...

It is an old lullaby my grandparents and parents used to sing to me. It talks about 2 kittens playing and being mischevious, and helping put the child to sleep. Enjoy. :)

My friend Maddie Welch used to sing this song to her children, just as her mother sang it to her when she was growing up in Puerto Rico. The lyrics are about a cute little seashell hiding in the sand, and if the sea sweeps it away, "I'll never be able to find you again!" The first phrase, "Who made you?" reminds me of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, both "Tiger Tiger Burning Bright" and "Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?" Maddie gave me permission...

My father played his guitar and sang a very politically incorrect drinking song to my brothers and me as a lullaby. It begins (and you have to imagine this sung in a soft, loving tone) "Oh, the night that Paddy Murphy died, I never will forget. We all got stinkin' drunk that night and some ain't sober yet" -- and it gets worse from there! But Daddy's soothing voice sent us off to dreamland every time.

I sang the same song to my children when they were...

This type of lullaby is often sung not by the mother but by the child's elder sister.  The words refer to such a situation: the elder sister asks the baby not to cry because its parents are dead and there is no one else to hear it.  This lullaby was used by the group Deep Forest in a mashup.

Choral director Kristina Boerger commissioned composer Edward Rubeiz to write "Lullaby" in Spring 2009. The piece is written for male voices only, which is unusual: most lullabies have tended to be written for either women's or mixed voices. This performance is by the men of Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, a New York City chamber chorus, with the composer and the conductor (Nathaniel LaNasa) performing two whistling parts at the end. The text, a six-word mantra...

Seamus Egan was born in the US, but moved to Ireland. His parents were Irish natives and decided to move the family back when Egan was 3. He's moved back to the US, but his music in trditional Irish. This song features a melody played on the tin whistle — an instrument common to Irish music. This song is courtesy of Putumayo's Celtic Dreamland album.

This is Johannes Brahms' Wiegenlied, performed by Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1915, as shared at Wikimedia Commons.

Quoting from the liner notes

There are innumerable songs mothers hum toput their children to sleep.  While lullaby melodies are part of the community's musical heritage, their texts, which are greatly varied and voluntarily influenced by poetry, are open to broad individual improvisation. To lull her child to sleep, this mother compares him to the moon of the winged termites and beseeches him not to leave her later on once he has grown up.

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Lullabies are often sung by the child's big sister or by an old woman who stays behind at the house whilst the mother is working in the garden. If two girls or women stay home they can sing the lullaby in two parts.  In this lullaby the singer asks the baby to stop crying and sleep quietly as the mother has gone to work in the garden.  The same short phrases are sung in two parts to another melody in the second lullaby.  Recorded in Malaita, Solomon Islands in...

Last month Irish poet Micheal O'Siadhail gave a reading at my Boston-area college which included this poem on the nonsense syllables of lullabies in the world's many languages, sung to the world's many darlings.LullabyStains are in, stains are in, The instant our songs beginTo rockabye my darling baby Dreaming up worlds of maybe.Then byssa, byssa barnet Beddie byes my snowy Arne,Quieter now and slumber-bound, Rest in lulls of milky sound.Ninna nanna, ninna...

My friend Tyler just had a baby a few months ago. I shared on my Facebook page that we were doing this project with lullabies — and he mentioned he'd recently been browsing iTunes for lullabies. He said he kept coming across songs from bands like Led Zeppelin, Metallica and Pink Floyd — but turned into a lullaby. So I went looking and found Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, in lullaby form. Take a listen. And if you're wanting to compare,...

A woodwind quintet performs this historic Irish lullaby, courtesy of Richard Kearns at Wikimedia Commons.

No one in my family knows when "Old Grumble" came into the family.  Over 4 generations know this song, now.  We know it is a dark song, odd, and not really suitable as a lullabye.  The very youngest children sometimes request that we NOT sing this one at nighttime.  Old Grumble is a ghost, after all, who rises up and knocks an old lady down. The last verse about "if you want any more, you can sing it your self" seems to be the perfect tired parent's response...

This song was written about my little brother when he was just a baby- here are the lyrics: Close your eyes and let sand sprinkle inDrift away let your dreams beginTake a ride and journey inside your imaginationand I'll be by your sideyes I'll be by your sideso sleep little child Close your eyes and count floating sheepLose conscious though 'til you fall fast asleepDon't make a sound and don't move around 'til you're dreaming deepTomorrow's far awaySo far...

This song is about a girl whose boyfriend is very sick.  She sends for the doctor to save him.  His name is Vaiao.  Recorded in Samoa in 1978.

I don't have any children of my own, but thinking of these tender little ones inspired me to write a lullaby or two for the day that I will.

Beautifully simple & sweet! :)

The cycle of life passes from lovers, to married with children, to grandparents and then oblivion.  (You can sing the last part as sadly drawn out to the point it makes the child laugh at the ridiculousness.)My mother did not like singing this one to us, as the song kept us awake too long.  We'd anticipate the next funny sounds she might make to entertain us through the cycles.  But we pressed her for the song and she obliged enough times that I remembered it...

I wrote this song in late 1998, when my kids were nearly grown. It's one of the few songs that I wrote from the guitar notes, rather than starting with a lyrical phrase as I usually do. The notes suggested a lullabye, and that's what it became. For me, it was deeply resonant with that feeling of love for my children, and brought memories of when I did, indeed, hold them and sing and rock them to sleep. I hope its a universal lullabye that brings that feeling...

I learned this from my mother-in-law after my first child was born in 1978. She was Jewish from New York, but I think it's American. She may have learned it from her involvement in the folk music revival of the 50s and 60s.I just met my twin 2 month old granddaughters for the first time - they liked this lullaby too!

This is one of two lullabies I wrote for the children I may someday have.

Barely a night goes by when our 4 year-old daughter doesn't ask us to sing her "Over the Rainbow" after we switch off the light. We usually comply but each often slip in something else as well. One is something I've been singing her at bedtime since almost day one--Paul McCartney's "I Will," from the Beatles' White Album, which I never realized till I had a kid is just the perfect bedtime song. But wanting to bring her lullabies/musical education more into the...

I made this up one night when I needed to calm both me and my kid down. I composed it to match the rhythm of my rocking chair. I was feeling desperate for some rest and making a plea to God for help.