Topic: Lullaby - Definition
Lullabies commonly are thought to have been written in 3/4 or 6/8 time. These were the meters used by Brahms, Chopin, and Schumann. [1] Albert Doja noted, in Albania, the rocking movement was asymmetric, that "the energy consumed in the ‘push’ is more important than that consumed in the ‘swing back’." That is, the beginning of a 6/8 measure was the push of the cradle, with the apex on the quiet fourth beat, and the remaining two beats the return of the pendulum. [2]
Like most aspects of lullaby genres these rhythmic preferences were culture bound, but may have had roots in infant experiences. Barbara Ayres headed a team that selected adult songs from 54 culture areas for which it also had information on the ways they handled infants. [3]
It uncovered three general patterns. In the Americas and much of Eurasia, the young spent the day confined in portable devices like cradle boards and cradles that were carried to a location where they remained while the mothers left to work. In sub-Saharan Africa infants were carried in slings, while they were secured within women’s clothing on their hips or backs in southeast Asia and on Pacific islands. [4]
Ayres’ group then looked at the rhythms used in their adult music and found those with simple or regular meters were the ones where infants were held, while those who used irregular meters were ones where infants were placed in cradles. The area stretching from North Africa to the far east utilized free rhythms that were tied to syllables. [5]
The last group was not mentioned by Ayres, but Sandra Trehub and Rebekah Prince visited women in a remote part of Turkey where
"the mother sat on the floor with the supine infant on her outstretched legs. After covering the infant’s face with a thin scarf, she began rocking her legs from side to side and singing." [6]
Trehub and Prince found their adult songs had "free rhythms, which are difficult to represent in Western notation" that were "linked to the syllabic pattern of lyrics, which followed a general form within each phrase." [7]
The relationship between infant experiences and adult music was thought provoking, and suggested that it was perpetuated when adults sang lullabies in the meters they had absorbed as infants. Gaye Soley and Erin Hannon discovered by the fourth month, infants had so internalized the musical patterns in their environments they preferred them.
The two exposed infants in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and two Turkish cities to music with regular rhythms from western Europe, to irregular ones from the Balkans, and to arbitrary ones in synthetic tunes. The American children preferred western music, but the Turkish ones, who had heard more types of music, accepted both western and Balkan rhythms. Neither heeded the arbitrary ones. [8]
Ayres noticed an anomaly in European tradition. Her group’s research suggested infants should prefer irregular rhythms, but in fact responded better to regular ones. She believed there had been a break in musical practice when the Baroque music of Bach and Handle introduced orchestras that enforced regularity. Gregorian chant had been free form, depending on the syllabic length like the rhythms found in the Old High Culture areas of the east, while Renaissance meters shifted frequently. [9] This change occurred sometime between the emergence of the two lullaby genres mentioned in the post for 7 January 2018.
When I was a child, infants still spent time in buggies or strollers that could be rocked, if they had springs, or pushed back and forth. Since then, child carriers became the norm. Their rhythms were irregular, stemming from changes of speed in traffic, and the awkwardness of carrying them. The only times many modern American infants felt regular rhythms were when they were being held by someone who was walking, an experience they might have found more satisfying than the carriers. Bess Lomax Hawes noticed most of the lullabies in Berkeley’s folklore archives were in 4/4 time, which was a walking cadence. [10]
Kumbaya was transcribed in phrases composed of two 3/4 measures. This made it amenable to being treated like 6/8. However, many sang it in the more familiar 2/4, and almost none of the commercial versions have a lilt that would match the flow described by Doha.
Dany Rosevear sang "Kumbaya" while playing the guitar, but used neither her voice nor the accompaniment to set the rhythm. Instead, she rocked from side to side. Once in a while, when the playing required concentration, she paused briefly.
While she said "this version of the lullaby sent my baby grandson off to sleep in no time at all!", [11] her experience teaching children four- to seven-years-old probably made her aware of the egocentrism of that age group. She sang "children are sleeping," not someone.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Dany Rosevear
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
One person asked "Is this a lullaby from Africa?" [12] She wrote back " I believe so." [13]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: when she introduced it, she said kum BY yah, with a falling intonation on yah. She sang COME by yah,
Verses: Come by yah, night, moon, stars, sleeping
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none; she used children with sleeping
Term for Deity: none; she used ah ah
Special Terms: her version was based on The Weavers, but her verses were all natural descriptions of sky elements seen in the night. Her moon was shining, not smiling.
Basic Form: four-verse song framed by come by yah
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxxA
Ending: none
Unique Features: AAABB line repetition pattern
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note. She got very soft at the end.
Solo-Accompaniment Dynamics: she played a chord and single notes pattern both while she was singing and in the pauses between verses. They were soft and regular.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: making a video to support her Singing Games website.
Location: indoor or outdoor garden room with tropical plants near and shrubs in back.
Microphone: none
Costume: she was wearing a lavender, long-sleeved sweater and long lavender-and-green flowered scarf. Her hair was collar length and loose.
Notes on Movement
She swayed from side to side while she was singing.
Notes on Audience
Several earlier posts described women in audiences who rocked their infants while a group was singing "Kumbaya." One in southwestern England was mentioned on 21 September 2017. Another from Ontario, Canada, was noted on 15 November 2017.
Notes on Performers
She was born in 1946 in Brighton, England, to a Polish refuge and an Irish immigrant. [14] She came of age during the height of the commercial folk revival. She said, in her youth, she went "to international work camps (Poland, Finland and Turkey) where youngsters from many countries came to work, socialize and sing together." [15] Then she taught four- to seven-year-olds from immigrant neighborhoods in Birmingham, before moving to Oxfordshire. [16]
She also "sang regularly with my three children when they were younger." [17] She observed: "young children are much more comfortable than adults singing in an unfamiliar language even if they do not always understanding the meaning. So many songs and rhymes have nonsense words in them, just think of the pleasure these words give even us older souls when these words rhyme and have rhythm. Young children greet foreign and unknown words with the same interest and alertness! I remember stopping my older child as a three year old from persisting in ‘naughtiness’ with words that he had not heard before – it worked a treat." [18]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Dany Rosevear on 22 September 2015.
End Notes
1. Johannes Brahms. "Wiegenlied." Opus 49, number 4, published in 1868 in 3/4. (Wikipedia. "Brahms’ Lullaby.")
Frédéric Chopin. "Berceuse." Opus 57, published in 1844 "begins and ends in 6/8 time" (Wikipedia. "Berceuse (Chopin)."
Robert Schumann. "Schummerleid." Opus 124, number 16, written in 1842 and published in 1845 in 6/8. (Blair Johnston. "Albumlätter (Album Leaves)." 1219 in All Music Guide to Classical Music. Edited by Chris Woodstra, Gerald Brennan, and Allen Schrott. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2005.)
2. Albert Doja. "Socializing Enchantment: A Socio-Anthropological Approach to Infant-Directed Singing, Music Education and Cultural Socialization. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 45:115-147:2014. 131.
3. Ayres was working with the Cantometrics Team at Columbia University that produced Folk Song and Culture. Edited by Alan Lomax. Washington: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968. It drew its ethnographic data from the Human Relations Area Files organized at Yale by George Peter Murdock.
4. Barbara Ayres. "Effects of Infant Carrying Practices on Rhythm in Music." Ethos 1:387-404:1973. 393.
5. Ayres. 395.
6. Sandra E. Trehub and Rebekah L. Prince. "Lullabies and Other Women’s Songs in the Turkish Village of Akçaeniº." Refereed E-Journal, October 2010. 5.
7. Trehub. 13
8. "Gaye Soley and Erin E. Hannon." "Infants Prefer the Musical Meter of Their Own Culture: A Cross-Cultural Comparison." Developmental Psychology 46:286-292:2010.
9. Ayres. 401. The William Byrd madrigal-lullaby mentioned in the post for 7 January 2018 used fluctuating time signatures.
10. Bess Lomax Hawes. "Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby." The Journal of American Folklore 87:140-148:1974. "American parents seem to rely heavily on a straightforward, non-complex, swaying meter, normally 4/4, to produce a suitable quieting effect." 142.
11. Dany Rosevear. Comments on YouTube. 2015.
12. Ruth Barron. Question posted on YouTube. 2016.
13. Dany Rosevear. Response to Ruth Barron on YouTube. 2016.
14. Danuta Rosevear. "Life Story: A language story that spans two centuries." Posted to Raising a Trilingual Child website by Galina Nikitina. 1 December 2014.
15. Dany Rosevear. "About the author and the project." Singing Games for Children website. Last updated 2 September 2017. She established this website after she retired as a repository of songs, poems, and games for primary-school teachers. She wrote much of the material herself.
16. Rosevear, Trilingual Child.
17. Rosevear, Singing Games.
18. Rosevear, Trilingual Child
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