I have always dreamt of the day when I could sing my babies to sleep with a soft lullaby. There is something so powerful in knowing that a simple melody can soothe one’s worries to the point where they are calm and at peace enough to fall into a gentle slumber. I have a cousin who used to be a nanny for three children. When she first started, the baby would cry for hours, probably from being distraught that her parents were gone and she did not know where they were or when they would return. My cousin tried everything to get the baby to stop crying from distracting it with food to toys to pacifiers. She decided to sing the baby a soft lullaby that she had learned a while back and low and behold, the baby stopped crying.
Oosthuizen, in her article “Lullabies for a Nation”, relates to lullabies in that she is also a mother of a crying baby. Lullabies help her to calm and quiet her son so he is able to lay down his worries and fall asleep. In her article, she also relates the worries and turmoil of a small infant to the current conflicts in South Africa. This country is struggling to the point that the people are losing hope by the second. I like when Oosthuizen remembers the freedom singer Miriam Makeba and says, “music does not wait for a time when we know there is hope, but can create the possibility or the space for hope to emerge”. The aforementioned Miriam Makeba, also known as “Mother Africa”, was known for singing her stories or lullabies to the distressed people of Africa to calm them and instill a sense of hope in the midst of turmoil.
Just like the freedom singers of Africa, music therapists use music to calm. The only difference is that we use it to help those who are “oppressed or impoverished by illnesses and disabilities that limit their ability to participate fully within society” instead of those oppressed by their nation and the problems within the nation. It is a wonderful gift to be able to use music to help people with whatever personal issues they have, but to be able to use music to calm a nation and give them a glimpse of hope again is nothing short of a miracle.