Topic: Lullaby - Context
Lullaby genres are cultural artifacts that last as long as they are useful. Mari Sarv noted the oldest Estonian lullabies were runosongs that began disappearing when serfs were freed between 1816 and 1819. They then were under the power of the Russian Empire, and identified themselves with the local elite, the Baltic Germans. German music replaced traditional styles. [1]
Kreshnik Duqi found in Tirana, Albania, "lullabies or cradle songs, are being forgotten because they are no longer used." He noted they had been sung by grandmothers, but "nowadays the couples choose to live apart from their parents" and they find it "almost impossible" to spend time singing "as a result of a long and tiresome day at work." [2]
Sarv and Duqi both suggested lullaby genres could not survive changes in ways parents responded to the needs of newborn infants. In our country, two innovations have altered the ways infants are calmed. One was the introduction of the clock as the arbiter of working life.
When people lived on farms, and an infant with colic kept everyone awake, it was not a serious problem if cows were milked a little later the next morning. In the mills and mines, tardiness meant dismissal. People, who lived in cheaply built, congested company housing, had little tolerance for late-night noise from other families. Opium-based patent medicines like paregoric were sold to treat teething infants. [3]
Its use was not restricted to the working poor in urban or industrial areas. Gary Shattuck found complaints in Vermont in 1827 that "well-intentioned mothers dosed their infant children without consulting a doctor ‘with paregoric, or Godfrey’s cordial [containing morphine] or laudanum, to make them sleep and be quiet’." [4]
The second innovation was the transfer of maternal training from older women to professionals in hospitals. Margaret Mead described a typical stay in the 1950s when the mother was heavily sedated when the infant was born and not allowed to see it for hours, and then only for the "appointed number of minutes." [5] She added:
"During the nine or ten days that follow, the mother handles her baby clothed, and only at regular hours. The father does not handle it at all. Breast feeding is frequently abandoned altogether, and by the time the child goes home, the mother, if not the baby, has learned that contacts between mother and child have a certain form." [6]
Nurses and pediatricians today train mothers to put their infants on a schedule of regular feedings and sleep times. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia warned mothers, they may "want to rock or breastfeed a baby to sleep," [7] but to
"be sure that the baby does not fall asleep while eating or in your arms. This may become a pattern and the baby may begin to expect to be in your arms in order to fall asleep." [8]
As suggested in the post for 5 January 2018, many of methods used to calm infants are reinvented every generation. The songs that constitute a lullaby repertoire, on the other hand, need to be learned. As Yaghmaei noted, babies do not learn the words to their lullabies [9] the way they do the play songs used when they were awake. More elaborate transmission channels are required.
The post for 11 January 2018 mentioned the way patrilocal Alevi Islam villages in Turkeys initiated young mothers into the traditions of their husbands’ families. Stephen Hunter suggested a way lullabies were trasnferred in this country through the very media that were displacing mothers’ singing. He said his whole family liked a CD by Leslie Abdallah because
"Even my 9 year old daughter easily recognized the songs, and was singing happily to the lullabies, especially to My Bonnie!" [10]
The need for lullabies extends beyond the first few weeks, and, as mentioned in the post for 5 January 2018, the ones that work change as children develop new cognitive skills. Bess Lomax Hawes remembered:
"In my experience with putting two- and three-year-olds to bed, I found that at that age they actively resist anything that smacks of lulling." [11]
Thus, there is a market for records like Abdallah’s that use more complex forms of music: a harmonica played the melody between verses in her version of "Kumbaya." These are the songs children may sing to their younger brothers and sisters, and later to their own infants. Abdallah’s version might have been particularly effective because she sang with her own children and their voices may have invited participation by children like Hunter’s daughter.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Leslie Abdallah
Vocal Group: Abey Belle Abdallah, Geoffrey J. P. Abdallah
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano, Liz Toleno; [12] harmonica
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Copyright: 2015 Leslie Abdallah
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: comb by ya, with no accented syllable
Verses: kumbaya, sleeping, dreaming,
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: verses restricted to those related to sleep
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Seekers
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: vocal with instrumental accompaniment, introduction, and interlude
Singing Style: one syllable to one note, except for Lord; last line was sung slower
Solo-Group Dynamics: unison throughout
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the piano played arpeggios with chords to suggest the melody in the introduction. In continued the arpeggios during the verses. An harmonica occasionally played a few notes between phrases, and played the melody during the interlude. It only played single notes, with some consistently louder than others.
Notes on Performance
Cover: light-blue background for photographs of scattered daffodil heads of various sizes and varieties.
Notes on Performers
Abdallah graduated from New York University’s musical theater program and worked in regional and touring productions of Broadway shows. After her marriage she worked as an instructor for Music Together in New Paltz, New York. [13]
Music Together was the logical extension of the professionalization of maternal training. It "began as an educational project of the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, NJ. It pioneered the concept of a research-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood music curriculum that strongly emphasizes and facilitates adult involvement." [14]
Availability
CD: Daffodil Dreams. 22 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by CDBaby on 29 November 2015.
End Notes
1. Mari Sarv. "Traditional Estonian Lullabies: A Tentative Overview." 2:161-176 in Estonia and Poland. Edited by Liisi Laineste, Dorota Brzozowska, and Wladyslaw Chlopicki. Tartu, Estonia: ELM Scholarly Press, 2013. 2:162.
2. Kreshnik Duqi. "The Cradle (Lullabies) Songs in the Villages of Tirana." European Journal of Language and Literature Studies 6:40-53:2016. 51. Beyond the usual upheavals caused by industrialization, he also alluded to problems ensuing from politics in the post-Communist world. He found researchers could not even preserve the lullabies that survived because people "don’t like to be recorded."
3. Paregoric was introduced in the early 1700s to treat asthma, and soon was used with coughs, especially those related to tuberculosis. It also was used for diarrhea. The original formula included a number of herbs, but, by the mid-1800s, was simplified. The opium was mixed with camphor and anise. The similar, but stronger Laudanum, was dissolved in alcohol. (Wikipedia. "Paregoric.")
4. Gary G. Shattuck. "Opium Eating in Vermont: "A Crying Evil of the Day." Vermont History 83:157-192:2015. 168. He was quoting the Vermont Gazette for 13 March 1827.
5. Margaret Mead. Male and Female. New York: William Morrow and Company, Publishers, 1952. 169
6. Mead. 169.
7. "Newborn-Sleep Patterns." Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia website.
8. Children’s Hospital. Jodi Mindell of the hospital’s Sleep Disorders Center was more blunt: "If you rock your child to sleep every night for the first eight weeks, why would he expect anything different later on?" Quoted by Johnson and Johnson’s BabyCenter website.
9. P. Yaghmaei. "Lullabies, the first Iranian women’ unwritten poems." Arya Adib website in Farsi. April 2014. Reported by Azadeh Okhovat Poudeh. "Children’s Perception of Emotion in Music: A Cross-cultural Study." Masters thesis. University of Jyväskylä, 2015. 16.
10. Stephen P. Hunter. Comment of Amazon site for Abdallah’s CD. 16 December 2015.
11. Bess Lomax Hawes. "Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby." The Journal of American Folklore 87:140-148:1974. 144.
12. "Leslie Abdallah." CD Baby website.
13. CD Baby.
14. "Music Together: Babies!" New Baby New Paltz website.
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