Lullabies

Lullabies are a distinct category of song that caregivers typically perform for the purpose of soothing, calming, and comforting infants. Lullabies can be found in every culture and historical period. The universality of lullabies is likely because of two factors: the lyrics and melodies are generally simple and repetitive, and thus are easy to remember from generation to generation; and human infants across the world have in common the need to be comforted or soothed to sleep.

[Page 658]The structural components of lullabies include features such as repetition of sounds (e.g., “loo-loo-loo”), words, phrases, and rhythms, nonsense syllables, onomatopoeia, and diminutives. The simple structure and repetitive quality may promote learning of these songs as well as use of the songs during child care, when caregivers' attention is likely focused on the child, rather than the song. Lullabies contain smooth, descending pitch contours, which caregivers also tend to use when speaking to infants in soothing contexts.

Lullabies often have similarities to laments and love songs. For example, themes of sleep, comfort, and loss occur in both lullabies (e.g., “Rock-a-Bye Baby”) and laments or mourning songs (e.g., Eric Clapton's “Tears in Heaven”). In fact, in some cultures, the same melodies are used for both laments and lullabies. Lullabies and laments are also traditionally performed by female singers in such cultures. In contrast to mothers in traditional cultures, however, mothers in contemporary industrialized societies tend to sing more play songs than lullabies. Nevertheless, the majority of caregivers in North America still include both lullabies and play songs, in addition to popular songs, in their everyday interactions with their infants.

A baby in El Salvador succumbs to a midnight round of lullabies, August 12, 2007. Although the performance styles of lullabies have global similarities, the types of songs that mothers choose to sing to their infants vary across cultures. For example, in Latin America, “Duerme Negrito” is typical of Latin American lullabies, which often depict peasant women toiling at work.

Although songs have prescribed pitch intervals and rhythms, caregivers can also distinguish songs as lullabies as opposed to play songs by their performance style. In other words, lullabies can be defined by their lyrics and melodies just as well as they can be defined by the characteristics of caregivers' performances. For example, caregivers can produce renditions of traditional lullabies such as “Hush Little Baby” in a playful style, and traditional play songs such as “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” in a soothing and comforting style. Sung performances for infants in general are characterized by high pitch, slow tempo, less enunciation of words, and loving or emotionally engaging tone of voice. Lullabies tend to be airy, smooth, and [Page 659]soothing, whereas play songs are bright, rhythmic, and sung with a smile.

Caregivers' special performances for infants are reliably identified by naïve adult listeners. Adults can distinguish lullabies from nonlullabies, even if listening to field recordings of unfamiliar lullabies sung in foreign languages. They can also distinguish lullabies from nonlullabies when the recordings are filtered, making the words unintelligible, but leaving pitch contours, timing, and some vocal quality intact. These findings suggest even more strongly that it is not simply the lyrics and familiar melodies that define lullabies, but it is predominantly the comforting, soothing, and loving performance style that relays the communicative intent of lullabies as opposed to other types of songs.

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