When I was preparing to be a dad, one of the decisions I spent the most time thinking about was which lullabies I would sing to my kids.
My parents weren’t really lullaby singers, so I had no family traditions that I felt obligated to carry forward. This was freeing, but also left me without direction. Do I stick with the classics – “Twinkle Twinkle” and so on – or am I more of a mid-twentieth-Century, “What a Wonderful World” kind of dad? Or do I go full hipster and sing slower, soothing renditions of contemporary pop songs?
Five years later, I’ve ended up going in all directions at once. My bedtime repertoire is about as stylistically inconsistent as…well, as this blog. In fact, I’ve mined the songs on this list extensively. Some nights it’s jazz standards, like week 375 or week 390; other times it’s a rock classic like week 136 or an indie lullaby like week 211. If one of the kids wakes up in the middle of the night and my voice is low enough, I sometimes even try week 261.
I absolutely love singing lullabies to my kids, and although I don’t tend to live in dread, I do kind of dread the day that my kids politely tell me they don’t want lullabies anymore. So I think I’m going to keep right on expanding my set list. (In fact, I’m thinking of reaching way back and debuting a version of the song from week 16 tonight.)
I might never sing to an arena of fans, but I intend on enjoying my tiny audiences as much as possible.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Frantz Casseus’ unique and dream-inducing blend of Haitian folk and classical guitar.
2. The tempo is rubato – meaning it speeds up and slows down as the musician pleases – and the effect is like a gentle rocking to sleep.
3. There’s a melody that keeps showing up (the first time is just 19 seconds in) that sounds a lot like the “how I wonder what you are” line of “Twinkle Twinkle.”
Recommended listening activity:
Self-swaddling.