By The Landlord
"Ragtime was my lullaby.” – Hoagy Carmichael
“The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.” – James Fenton
“Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.” – Langston Hughes
A wandering minstrel I
A thing of shreds and patches
Of ballads, songs and snatches
And dreamy lullaby.” – Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado
“Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.” – Albert Camus
“Guten Abend, gut' Nacht,
Von Englein bewacht,
Die zeigen im Traum
Dir Christkindleins Baum:
Schlaf nun selig und süss,
Schau im Traum 's Paradies” – Johannes Brahms / Georg Scherer
“I've always been musical ... Mother used to sit me on her knee and I'd whisper, 'Mummy, Mummy, sing me a lullaby do,' and she'd say: 'Certainly my angel, my wee bundle of happiness, hold my beer while I fetch me banjo.’” – Les Dawson
Trouble sleeping? Especially on hot nights when windows are open and neighbours can be heard? Too much going on? There are plenty of standard remedies around, from avoiding too much caffeine, or alcohol, or eating late, or staring at screens before bedtime, to lowering your body or room temperature before sleep.
Then there’s meditation, or not looking at the clock, or avoiding having more than one major worry at once (easier said than done). Exercise in the day helps, then there’s the so-called 4-7-8 breathing method, along to the less obvious or more scientific or indeed eccentric – eating two kiwi fruits an hour before bedroom to boost immunity and aid respiration apparently, and other foods, from walnuts to cashews, or supplements that include magnesium, melatonin, or selenium. Getting very drunk, tidying a room, slowly tapping the pillow 10 times, or as one friend does, listening to white noise as an instant barbiturate, though I wouldn’t recommend his apparent tactic of using a hairdryer as a source of this sound – lying down in bed and then leaving it switched on as you pass out. Or is this idea just a load of hot air?
Fortunately I don’t have too much trouble getting to sleep once I’m in, lying down, and the light is off, but during bathroom ablutions and other bland ceremonious rituals of faffing around before bed, my mind begins to buzz, quite annoyingly, with all the ideas and thoughts I was trying to crystallise during the day, so a notebook by the bed is a must to get those down before my head drops.
A few years ago, when I was working in night news editorial for a high-profile national newspaper and website many of you will know, getting home and trying to relax, with world events and issues all a whirl in my head after a late shift was a nightmare, and getting to sleep before first light in summer was impossible. Eventually my only formula that work had to include a gin and tonic, a paracetamol, and some valerian tea, with increasing doses of all three. Difficult, unhealthy days, crazed over-stimulated nights.
But now, mimicking my lengthly pre-bedtime preparation, let’s now pull back the covers and address this topic. This week’s focus is not soporific songs to relax or fall asleep to, or some nebulous chill-out selection you might stumble into on Spotify or find with a picture of a beach on the cover. Rest easy now – perish that thought! Nor is it quiet songs which have been handled so expertly just a few weeks ago. Nor is it songs more generally about sleep as such, or wanting sleep or insomnia, or indeed dreams, all of which have been looked at in the past. Instead this is a lyrical exploration and perhaps definition, or redefinition of the lullaby genre itself, expanding it from what is traditionally what a parent might sweetly sing to a child to something broader that applies to all of us, and in various contexts. So if songs are called lullabies or mention lullabies in lyrics, then they are of relevance for start, or deeper still, are about capturing or inducing that transition into a state of repose. And of course that rockabye song could easily be loud. So while we may metaphorically close our eyes, this week we an also open your ears, expanding to any song that uses such terms, or any song that encourages, in any style or volume, the act of drifting into a state of the unconscious.
The fruits of sleep?
Entering our establishment, our precious Song Bar, that, judging by the scope of visitors around the world, never actually sleeps, we have a crowd of quite restless new punters eager to have more of a say on this subject. And from them, a lullaby’s definition and genre, is bigger than we might imagine. Some like a lullaby, others don’t.
Tom Waits includes the lullaby in one of four big song categories. “Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs.” And Billy Joel slides next to him on the old Joanna, and says: “Someday we'll all be gone, but lullabies go on and on. They never die, that's how you and I will be.”
George Shearing is also in the house, and the others have made space for him to to be tinkering on our piano. Though he has mixed feelings about the idea. In 1952, he wrote a famous lullaby alongside lyricist George David Weiss, for the New York club in which he played, Birdland, one owned by Morris Levy, who got the publishing rights, while George got the composer’s rights. Apparently he wrote it in 10 minutes, but must have played it thousands of times, with many guest singers guesting, but so much so, perhaps to the point of oblivion. As he puts it: “I always tell people, it took me 10 minutes and 35 years in the business. I get tired of playing it, but not of collecting the royalties.” Well, it’s still money while you sleep, George. Don’t knock it.
George Shearing
Some musicians have used the lullaby in different ways to write or expand their performance repertoire. “I make up new lyrics to well-known lullabies. Mostly because I don't actually know a lot of the lyrics,” admits Alanis Morissette.
“Well, I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music,” adds Patti Smith. Not your usual stuff, Patti.
Author Dale Carnegie, who knows how to win friends and influence people, suggests that “if you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.” So perhaps a form of lullaby, isn’t specifically about sleeping, it is first one that dissolves worry.
But John Cage is not a fan of the traditional lullaby. A specialist in alternative silence, he says “it's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.” And a very restless Pete Seeger is not falling for it either He reckons that “a lullaby is propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it.”
Adding to Albert Camus’s quote above, and joining Brahms for a beer, the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has walked in, with a cheeky remark on another form of inducing the unconscious. "Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep,” he says with a smile.
However, books themselves are a great source of lullaby. Reading a book at bedtime does relax the mind and is definitely healthier than a light-emitting screen. Glenda Millard, Australian writer of children's literature and young adult fiction, reckons that: “Books are many things: lullabies for the weary, ointment for the wounded, armour for the fearful and nests for those in need of a home."
Are lullabies just for humans? Echoing the experience of what many of us have managed to hear more of in lockdown, Suzanne Collins, the American author of The Hunger Games, likes to put the genre in more poetic terms, says: "Birds are settling down for the night, singing lullabies to their young."
Can art also be a lullaby? John Berger thinks so, in this description of one of the greats: "It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.”
Matisse: “He clashed colours together and the effect was like a lullaby.” - John Berger
But let’s set the ball rolling with a small selection of songs that have come up in other subjects. Moondog, that strange magician of music who wandered New York’s streets, created his own Lullaby (2 West 46th Street):
And as shown above, The Cure’s Lullaby combines mental spidery disturbance with gothic repose, but was previously chosen for songs with whispering:
And here’s my own choice to get the ball, or indeed the boat rolling, Walter Schumann – Once Upon a Time There Was a Pretty Fly (from Night of the Hunter), one of my favourite films, directed in 1955 by the great actor Charles Laughton, his only film, sadly due to critical and Hollywood shortsightedness, a magical depiction of children escaping from Robert Mitchum’s crazed killer evil priest, floating down the Mississippi River, lulled to sleep in this song actually sung by Kitty White, watched by frogs, birds and other creatures in a dreamy otherworld. I’ve written extensively about this film before, but the opportunity was too good not to mention this song:
So then, it’s time to add your own lullabies to expand this form. Singing us in and encouraging more, I’m delighted to reveal the this week’s sleep-induction expert is the excellent amylee! Place your lullaby-related songs in comments below before bedtime (here UK time 11pm on Monday), for playlists published on Wednesday. I dream of the results.
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