Hush, little baby
Lullaby Project helps moms bond with their children through songs
Almost everybody remembers someone who sang to them.
Zakkiyya Johnson’s mother sang “Lean on Me” to her while teaching her how to play a keyboard. Linnet Early Husi’s parents made up songs about her. Dawn Marie Talos’ grandmother sang her an old song from World War I about a lovesick soldier.
So these Milwaukee moms grasped the power of the Lullaby Project immediately.
They’ve known hard times: domestic violence, homelessness, loss of custody. Sometimes they’ve questioned their fitness to be mothers.
Through the Lullaby Project, each seized the chance to create a song that would remind her children that no matter what may happen, her love is a thread that goes on forever.
While introducing her song “My Beautiful Angels” at its first public performance May 31, Talos told the audience that she beat breast cancer 11 years ago. If it returns, she said, she hopes this song will give her daughters “something to
remember me by.”
Symphony and Sojourner team up
Carnegie Hall and the Weill Music Institute started the Lullaby Project in 2012to strengthen parental bonds by pairing at-risk mothers with musical artists to create and sing personal lullabies for their children.
The founders have seeded the project around the United States by finding local artistic partners, who collaborate with organizations that serve mothers. Former education director Karli Larsen got the Milwaukee Symphony involved. When Larsen moved to another MSO post, current education director Rebecca Whitney became the point person.
A board member connected the symphony with Sojourner Family Peace Center, which serves people affected by domestic violence. Sojourner recruited moms who were participating in programs at its Walnut Street center.
In some cities, most Lullaby Project participants are expectant moms or mothers of newborns. But Sojourner expanded the parameters here.
“I think this could be really powerful with people of all ages and relationships to children,” said Julie Yeado, Sojourner supervisor of life skills & strategic partnerships.
The nine women who created songs in Milwaukee have children of varying ages, including teenagers. One Lullaby creator was a grandma.
Some of them don’t have all of their children with them, said Sojourner trauma support specialist Stephanie Birr. “I think a lot of them just felt this was a way to honor the future and the mom that they want to be … “
‘They’re a way to say I love you’
The moms met the musicians in a pair of creation sessions at Sojourner. The MSO’s Whitney, a singer and a mother of three herself, gave everybody a pep talk.
“I tell my own kids all the time, someday you’ll be a parent, and you can never tell your child I love you enough,” she said.
“That’s what these lullabies are. They’re a way to say I love you, and everybody needs to hear it and everybody needs to say it.”
Moms and composers broke the ice by sharing stories about music in their lives. Then, through some undirected process of harmonization, they paired off to work together, with composers helping moms shape words they’d written in a workbook into songs.
“As soon as Zakkiyya said that she had eight children and some of them were in foster care right now, … I just connected with that story,” said oboist and educator Meaghan Heinrich, one of the composers and the second oldest of nine children in her own family of origin.
Composer John Tanner took on the project warily, but was pleasantly shocked during the creation session when Husi shared her love of opera, including the Handel arias on her iPod. His respect grew not only for the moms’ musical backgrounds, but also for the challenges they had overcome. “Every one of them had a different story which I don’t think I could handle,” he said.
A legacy for her daughters
If not for the struggles that led her to Sojourner as a client, Talos might have been sitting in a musician’s chair for the Lullaby Project. She started playing percussion instruments in fourth grade, performed in the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra for five years and was double-majoring in music therapy and performance at Alverno College.
But in the wake of domestic violence and other problems, she left school and struggled. For a time, she lost custody of her daughters because her home was considered an unsafe environment. In the past she had played timpani, mallet instruments, harp and piano, but the only instrument she had left was a little egg shaker.
With Sojourner’s help, she took the steps necessary to get her children back. Her oldest daughter lives with her father; her two younger daughters live with her.
Her lullaby, “My Beautiful Angels,” composed with Tanner, affirms her love for her daughters with one of her favorite phrases: “I love you to the moon and back.” Knowing that her cancer could come back any time, she was determined to leave a loving statement.
But Yeado, her Sojourner advocate, told Talos she was giving her daughters much more. “This lullaby, while very powerful, certainly just scratches the surface of the legacy that you would leave your girls because you’ve shown them strength and courage and resilience … “
A bedtime prayer becomes a song
When Sojourner staff spread the word about the Lullaby Project, Johnson was living in its emergency shelter after several difficult years that included getting stabbed, becoming homeless, undergoing surgery for a serious illness and struggling with alcohol and drug abuse.
Of her eight children, the three oldest live in another city with their father; another child is in the adoption pipeline. Her four younger children, who were living with her when these difficult years began, are in foster care. “I just keep praying that God puts me and my family back together again,” said Johnson, who has completed addiction treatment and has visits with her younger children.
Filling out the Lullaby Project workbook, Johnson thought of the traditional prayer she says with her children: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep.” One child who stutters has trouble saying the words, so they sing it together.
“That’s really special to you and your kids and they remember that, so why don’t you start your song with that?” Heinrich remembers telling Johnson.
Heinrich, a mother of two herself, listened as Johnson talked about each of her children, and the rhythmic way she said their names: Mi-CHAE-la, SaMIR-a.
That’s the chorus of your song right there, just repeating your kids’ names, she said to Johnson. She sang for Johnson a little of the song “Maria” from “West Side Story,” which makes music out of its repetition of the woman’s name.
Johnson and Heinrich created their song’s chorus by listing the flowing names of her children from oldest to youngest.
Tanner and fellow composer Eric Segnitz spent many hours arranging the songs for performance. Moms were invited to the Tanner-Monagle audio and video production studio for a rehearsal.
The premiere concert filled a hall at Sojourner on May 31, with dozens of musicians onstage, including such Milwaukee Symphony players as violinist Jeanyi Kim and cellist Peter Thomas; Tanner’s business partner Bob Monagle on electric guitar; and vocalists recruited from Tanner’s extensive lists of contacts.
“One thing you’re going to notice this evening is a lot of these songs maybe don’t fit your particular idea of a lullaby because these songs are really celebrations of these moms and their children,” said the symphony’s Whitney, who emceed the concert.
Husi’s song “William & Stanley,” written with Maria Myles, was named after her two sons who shared some difficult times with her, including living in Sojourner’s shelter. “This was a really good way for me to express my gratitude and appreciation for them,” she said.
Johnson was one of the few moms who sang her own song. Earlier, the plan had been for Heinrich to play oboe while Johnson sang. But after Johnson felt anxious about singing in public, she asked Heinrich to sing with her. “It was nice to be able to have somebody to look over at and smile,” Johnson said.
They made a striking duo in front of the band: a black woman and a white woman with pink hair singing together. The audience laughed appreciatively when the list of flowing multisyllable children’s names in the chorus of “Zakkiyya’s Song” came to an unexpected stop with the name Keith.
When they were composing the song, Heinrich said the chorus was going to end with three repetitions of the phrase “I love you,” but Johnson stopped her. “If all of their names are in there they’re going to be counting. It needs to be eight I love yous.” And so there were.
Beth Mulkerron sang Talos’ “My Beautiful Angels.” In another crowdpleasing moment, Talos joined the band as a percussionist to play her egg shaker, standing next to Tanner. “This is like the opportunity of a lifetime because I got a chance to play percussion again,” she told the audience.
Tanner is producing a CD of the performances for each mother.
The Milwaukee Symphony plans to continue the project next year and, if it can line up funding, expand it.
Reflecting on the experience, the symphony’s Whitney found it even more powerful than she had expected.
Earlier in their lives, she said, many of these women had been told their voices were not important, or they had nothing to say. Now, through the Lullaby Project, “they are saying to their children I love you, you are important, and my voice is important and you need to hear it,” Whitney said.
No one promised the moms a hit, but at least one melody is finding a wider audience.
Heinrich’s husband, Rudi, a Milwaukee Symphony bassoonist, and their two children attended the Lullaby Project concert. A week or so later, Heinrich overheard her 5-year-old daughter in her room singing. Her husband heard her, too: their girl was singing her dolls’ names to the melody of “Zakkiyya’s Song.”
“If a 5-year-old can hear that song once and remember it … that means it’s a pretty good song,” Meaghan Heinrich said.