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.

This 'Prairie Lullaby' was passed down from my great grandmother to grandmother to mother to me, now to my daughter. As the story goes, this was sung to babies in our family back to the time we lived in a sod house in Western Nebraska. My Aunt also sung this quietly to my Mom the day before she passed away.

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.

...

In this lullaby, a mother, Wewa Miriewa sings a hypnotic repetitive lullaby to put her child to sleep.

Translation

Ao, ao, ao, your mother went there, there, there,

To collect shells, to collect shells, to collect shells,

To the garden, to the garden, to the garden,

To the creek, to the creek, to the creek,

Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

This lullaby was recorded in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1950 and is sung by Vera Hall Ward

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 is what my mother sang to us every night before we went to bed. 

Sweet! :)

Beautifully simple & sweet! :)

This lubally is typical in the provinicia of Granada, Andalucia.Federico García Lorca took it and put it on Bodas de Sangre,one of his most famous plays for theater.

My mother sang this song to us at night.  We requested it often.  I loved the image of the old baboon combing his hair by the light of the moon.  And we always laughed gently about the poor monkey's mistake.  

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.