When I was growing up, my grandmother would always hum a song as she went about her day. As I grew older, I learned that it was a lullaby. I never had the chance to ask her about the song or learn about its origins. But I remember it fondly and with nostalgia.
Lullabies are often viewed through a narrow lens as they are only for children. A gentle sounding melody that calms a child and does little else. This prevailing view often overlooks the fact that a single lullaby can be so much more; It can be an archive of history and culture.
In South Asian households, lullabies were sung in quiet corners of refuge and devotion where women could soothe a crying child, away from the gaze of those who usually surrounded them. The song connected her to the child she was humming to, creating a space just for the two of them.
The forgotten archive
For generations, caste and gender have primarily determined who is allowed to produce and contribute to written knowledge in South Asia. Writing, printing, archiving and record keeping were disproportionately the domain of wealthy upper-caste men.
Writing, printing, archiving and record keeping were disproportionately the domain of wealthy upper-caste men.
Historical archives created by women often contain oral histories and songs, including lullabies. These melodies have been sung in all regions and cultures of South Asia, carrying lore and wisdom as well as weight and warmth. However, these songs contained much more than just melody or warmth; They told stories of hunger, grief, loss, absent husbands, fear of their own daughter being married off too young, and the exhaustion of working in the fields. They commented on wealth, housework and the Zamindaari system.
It seemed like women were calming themselves through lullabies and narrating their own realities, rather than just singing to a fussy infant. Looking at lullabies from this perspective, they are deeply private tunes that are played in dimly lit rooms while breastfeeding a baby, soothing a small child, or doing housework. And because of this they have the character of an archive held together by breath and repetition.
Historian Sudhir Kakar, writing about childhood and psychoanalytic life in India, noted how lullabies not only shape a child’s inner worlds, but also the Inner worlds of singing women. Researchers studying infant care have noted this for years Lullabies regulate the caregiver Who sings as much as the child? The rocking, the quiet hum, and the repetition benefit both. For the singing women, it may have been a refuge for everything that could not be said aloud.
Lullabies allowed women to take care of themselves by caring for someone else who was socially acceptable.
The point, however, is not to position lullabies as a form of therapy, but to bring to light the blurred lines between caring for others and caring for yourself. Lullabies allowed women to take care of themselves by caring for someone else who was socially acceptable.
What is lost today
Oral traditions, including folk forms, regional dialects and lullabies, are soon disappearing and their chains of transmission are becoming increasingly fragile. The accumulated knowledge of generations of women who represented seasons and changes in society and culture in song is disappearing.
Oral traditions, including folk forms, regional dialects and lullabies, are soon disappearing and their chains of transmission are becoming increasingly fragile. The accumulated knowledge of generations of women who represented seasons and changes in society and culture in song is disappearing.
However, there are also efforts to preserve these oral traditions. There are thousands in Maharashtra Folk songs The songs composed and sung by women in hundreds of villages were documented and recorded. There is now Archive It contains tens of thousands of hours of oral histories, some dating back to the 1930s. More recently, Lullabies in 13 languages (and more are being collected) from families across the country, an acknowledgment that these songs are more than just a bedtime ritual. Slowly, lullabies are being treated like an archive of history, as they rightly should be.
These songs are legitimate archives of women’s lives; the same lives that were shaped by patriarchy, class and caste. The women who sang these lullabies were human beings, not representatives of their time, and these songs reflect that. They offer an honest account of women’s lives and experiences, as these songs were sung during the only times when women were not surveilled. However, these stories preserved in melodies are lost over time and we need to remedy this because lullabies are a space in which women’s stories live.
