Lullabies from Anatolian Mothers
BY CANSU ORANÇ (PSYC/IV)
oranc@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
You can never know where you'll find a treasure. For me, it was in one of those huge electronics stores this time. I was exploring the small section of music CDs, trying to find something that appeals to me. (Un)fortunately I'm one of those who nearly never buy CDs since the digital audio encoding formats came out, except for Turkish albums and ones for my archive, which are mostly not available online. I always love exploring new CDs though. Anyways, after a while, I found two CDs. One was a compilation of Jewish composers' songs from the Ottoman Empire era. The second one, which I want to talk about in this column, is named Anatolian Lullabies. There are 32 lullabies in total (I only know two of them, so now I have 30 new ones to learn). Eighteen of them are in Turkish and the rest are in different languages such as Armenian, Laz and Zaza languages, Romany, etc. Some of them are from gramophone recordings from 1930s, which is always a special joy to listen to. The album is from one of my favorite record labels, Kalan Müzik, so I didn't hesitate too much to buy it even though I didn't know exactly what the music was. Besides, it's always an excitement not to know what's inside. I came home, put the CD on, and began to enjoy the thick booklet that came with the CD. Here's what I found interesting in that booklet and my Internet search about the Anatolian lullabies.
The very first thing that caught my attention was the sorrow in the lullabies, both in their lyrics and the melody. Lullabies aim for little children, so I didn't understand why they were written that way.
Explanation for this comes from the CD booklet written by Melih Duygulu, a musicologist: Young girls and women in Anatolia were not able to express their thoughts, feelings, desires and complaints out loud. For them, lullabies were a way of self-expression. The only time the young woman could speak out was when all family members, including her child, were sleeping. Through lullabies, the woman was pouring out her grief to her child, the only person with whom she could intimately communicate.
In relation to what I mentioned above, Duygulu also talks about the themes in the lullabies. Some of them express a mother’s wishes for her child (going to school, joining the army, etc.), some preach to the child, and many others. A theme that made me think was the one where a mother praises the maternal side and reviles the paternal side.
There are many tragi-comic examples for this in the booklet. Although the ultimate goal is to put the child to sleep, it's actually a way for the mother to bare her heart!
I looked up Anatolian lullabies on Wikipedia. You know the lullaby begins with "Dandini dandini dastana" and goes on with a calf ("dana"), a garden ("bostan") and some other weird non-lullaby concepts like cabbages? Sing it to yourself. OK, here's an interpretation of it related to what I mentioned above: The calf refers to the mother's son, the garden refers to life in general, the gardener refers to the father, and the cabbage refers to a girl who's not approved by the mother for her son. This is the story: The mother asks his husband to keep their child away from the girl. A creative allegory, huh?
The booklet talks about many other interesting points with good examples, but this is what I found interesting so far. My new resolution is to memorize some of those lullabies now!