My Sweet Anatolian Lullabies

Deniz Övünç

Turkish folk singer, traditional music lover

Lullaby is a sweet little trick of the one who puts to sleep, a soft woman voice echoing from gloomy back rooms, a little song starting out of a whistle while the heavy door of sleep keeps creaking slowly. Isn’t it a lullaby that introduces us to sounds of our mother tongue, to a rich world of imagination of our traditional culture and to the music brought together within our geography for thousands of years? Not only good wills, sweet dreams, prayers of godly hearts are told by lullabies but also the singer’s disillusions, complaints, desperations, appeals, grief and loneliness steal  into it. Thus a lullaby turns out to be an unspoken word and while trying to put one to sleep, it comes back and finds the other's sleeplessness.  In fact the swinging one is the lullaby itself, in the cradle held by a baby and a woman. My homeland Anatolia is a big old cradle on which many civilizations lived. Lullabies in many many languages softly keep echoing around this old cradle.  Here are two Anatolian lullabies  sung by me. “Nenni nenni” is a Turkish lullaby  from Mersin, a city in Southern Anatolia. The mother kindly asks the baby boy to go to sleep and tries to tell him that she's a bit tired.

Lullaby from Southeastern Anatolia- Turkey

Below is a lullaby from Kapadokia region in Anatolia, Turkey, having verses in both Turkish and Greek. I learned it from a field recording made in Greece. It was recorded from Greek immigrants who had to immigrate to Greece due to Population Exchange Treaty between two countries. It isn't hard to guess that not only people immigrate but all the songs, lullabies, languages, culture go with them. When I sing it, I can't help sadly dreaming of all the Kapadokian babies who had once gone to sleep in peace with this old Turkish & Greek lullaby. Lullabies have much to say...

                                                       Νανούρισμα από Καπαδοκία
                                                       Lullaby from Kapadokia- Turkey

As this world  turns on and on, let these lovely sounds of lullabies of the world echo out of the silence, every night: Ninni, ayya, hush- a- bye, alla, ayneni, laylay, lori, oror, durme, yalla, nani, nana, nenni, nen, nennen, nina, ninna, nanna, eee, eee, huu huu...