The World's Lullabies

This is in response to @PRI's tweet to me. Here is a lullaby from Maestro Ilaiyaraaja, from the Tamil movie titled "Thalapathy" (Commander), released in 1991. This song is a lullaby for a teen-mom, whose child was abandoned due to a mishap beyond her control. Maestro Ilaiyaraaja's tune captures not only the birth pangs of this Mom reminising her loss at a later age, constantly in search...

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...

Lalayee, a lullaby in Farsi, by Mahsa Vahdat

Julieta Szewach performed the vocals for this song, with lyrics written by Silvia Schujer. Both grew up in Argentina. The pair worked with Mariano A. Fernández on a book of lullabies, including this one. The lyrics translate to "There was a little bunny / Who wouldn't go to sleep / At night he waited / For the day to arrive. / Softly the mama rabbit sang to him / Sweet little bunyy go to sleep / If you close your eyes / You will float into the clouds / And a...

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.

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...

As far as my personal experiences with lullabies, I remember my Mom singing My Grandfather's Clock to me to get me to sleep as a child.  I also remember hearing her sing Daddy's Little Girl to my sister in the other room.A few years ago, I had the idea to record a lullaby album as a gift to my family and friends. I'd previously...

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...

Señora Santana is a lullaby that's popular throughout Latin America.  I know it as a traditional song from Mexico, but people sing it in other countries too.  My wife and I sang this every night to both my kids when they were little, hoping to start them on their way to speaking Spanish.

Spencer the Rover, a song by the Copper Family from Rottingdean, Sussex, England was a popular song of the folk circuit in the 1960s and 70's, popularized in the US by the duo John Roberts and Tony Barrand.  In a previous life as a folksinger I sang it on stage, full voice.  When my kids were screaming infants, I would sing the song slowly and softly to calm them at bedtime.  At a slow gentle pace, it takes 5 minutes to sing all 7 verses.  It helped to have...

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...

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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Dear PRI,             To live is to have a positive effect. Enjoy this original! Best Regards,Nathan

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. :)

This is one of the fantastic lullabies scored by Maestro Ilaiyaraaja, in the mid 1980s. This particular link I have posited above is from the Telugu original. It is from the movie Swathi Muthyam. This movie went on to win several awards. This song is also sung by one of the legendary singers of Indian cinema, Ms. P. Susheela. This song has been tuned in other regional languages, including Tamil and has been one of the meed of...

Karen Matheson is the lead singer of one of Scotland' most popular bands. She's been eprfoming Gaelic musics since she was a child. This song, (pronounced in EE-jag ar-ah-gitch) is translated to mean The Silver Whistle. It was written in the 1700s originally. In it, Matheson sings "Who will play the silver whistle? Since the song of my king has come to Scotland on a great ship with masts of silver. Welcome, welcome, may you be desired and famous. May...

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

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.

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

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...

I was one of 10 children and my mother used to sing this as a way of giving comfort.  Before she died, I did a little video of her sharing a snippet of it.

It's Rickie Lee Jones singing, but it's her father Richard Jones who wrote this wonderful song.  Rickie Lee often plays this today.  It just shows how lullabies are passed on from generation to generation.

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...

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.