MonkeyFight

Parenting Tip #316: Lullabies

Some close friends of mine gave birth to a baby girl a couple of weeks ago. They're getting a lot of advice from all the perfect parents out there so I thought I'd add my two cents on a lesser known parenting challenge: lullabies. 

It's essential for new parents to consult with each other before comitting to the lullaby they'll use to sing the baby to sleep.  You’ll be hearing this song at all hours of the day and night so choose carefully. Not that you have to choose one song but chances are you'll have a ‘Go- To Song’ that dominates your lullaby canon.

This advice comes from my own painful experience. The Wife inexplicably chose Michael Row Your Boat Ashore as her Go-To Song. I’ve been hearing her earnestly croon, ‘Halleluiah’ since The Boy was a month old. I’ve got nothing against African-American spirituals; I occasionally pull out Old Man River myself, but I’d hardly call it my Go-To. Me, I’m split between You Are my Sunshine and Cheeseburger in Paradise. 

But there’s something about Michael Row Your Boat that’s particularly troubling. For one, we’re not exactly a religious household so it can be a bit disorienting to hear The Wife sing a song so steeped in religious rhetoric. But she also insists on singing it in the vernacular to pay homage to the slaves who are reported to have first sung the song during the Civil War. Some nights I’ll be sitting down in front of another episode of So You Think You Can Kill a Guy and I’ll hear her in the other room:

Michael row de boat ashore, Hallelujah!

See my mudder on de rock gwine home.

On de rock goin’ home in Jesus' name.

The final straw is the song’s tempo. It’s nigh on ghostly. Some nights it takes The Wife a full five seconds to finish singing the word Hallleluuuuuuuuuuuuuiah.  I've started to suspect The Boy fakes falling asleep just to make the song stop. 

I've tactfully asked her to consider diversifying her set list and to her credit she's tried. Just last night I heard her singing her Go-To karaoke song: "Ground control, to Major Tom..." from David Bowie's Space Oddity. The tempo is just as spooky and the song ends with an astronaut floating helplessly in space, but I'm grateful for the change. 

Adding a new member to the family will bring many more joint decisions. This is just one more to consider.  I suggest you each put together a song list and jointly choose according to each other’s musical tastes, vocal range, and ability to carry a tune. And after all that, if you still see a murderous gleam in your partner's eye as you sing your precious baby to sleep with the thousandth rendition of Rock-a-bye-Baby, I recommend you hum a few bars.  

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

 

The Big Busk

The Boy started moving his body to music around the age of 6 or 7 months. I couldn’t even believe that his early wiggles were related to music. I thought he was somehow engaged in some early form of Pilates, working his core muscles in preparation for crawling. I really did. 

But it's now clear that he dances, particularly when I put on The Isley Brothers. So to nurture his interest in music The Wife and I brought him to Billy Bragg’s Big Busk on Wednesday at Lincoln Center. Billy Bragg is super cool. The show was basically a hootenanny. The audience was invited to bring instruments and play along with him as people onstage held up chord charts for guitar - he called it a kind of folkie karaoke. This is pretty much what I do with my Middle Brother whenever we see each other. We hunch over sheets of music and hack away at our intstruments at a dirge like tempo to tunes like Folsom Prison Blues and Angel from Montgomery. It's fun. I wish I did it more often. And I loved seeing Bragg doing the same thing with an audience of thousands.

This was the rehearsal in the afternoon.

 

And this was the performance later in the evening. 

 

People who brought instruments were also allowed to busk around Lincoln Center before the show. It brought a bit of a grass roots vibe to Lincoln Center Plaza. As I watched the different people playing to the I got to thinking about how hard it is for most people to stand in front of a crowd, let alone sing to a crowd. I mean, some people might make fun of this fellow's resemblance to Molly Ringwald but I consider him a courageous man. He faced the bustling, disinterested crowds of Manhattan armed with a tiny ukele and a handful of hearfelt songs.  

I noticed some smirks on the faces of passerbys that day. It made me realize that I'm no good at busting balls any more (unless you fuck with me). It's too easy to make fun of someone when they take a risk or do something different. Besides, I wish the streets were filled with people playing ukeles and accordians.  

I've found most people, including myself, wish they would take more risks. Even small ones. Have you ever stood on the edge of a dance floor feeling paralyzed from the hips down (apologies to anyone reading this who is paralyzed from the hips down). Have you ever watched your friends fearlessly sing karaoke while you stifle the little Japanese song bird in your heart?

So I applaud all those who brought their instruments to Lincoln Center to participate in The Big Busk. And I applaud Billy Bragg for spending the time and energy on something communal and inspiring.

 Molly Ringwald would be proud.