Recess! Media

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That’s Lorain Fox singing a traditional Aztec lullaby, “Tu Tu Teschcote,” from a truly remarkable collection of Native American lullabies called “Under the Green Corn Moon: Voices of Native America,” from Silver Wave Records.

Here you’ll find both old and newly created songs, woven together into a timeless, seamless fabric of melodies — a MicMac rhyme, from Mary Philbrook that counts a sleepy child’s fingers; a Comanche reflection on how a child grows up from Myra Aitson; an Ogalala Sioux lament about a child’s lost father, whose spirit waves to the mother and infant from a nearby hilltop; a Cheyenne poem from Ann Shadlow for a child who’s just been fed and is ready for sleep; a Kiowa song from Dorothy White Horse, that gallops across the plains:

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In these moving songs, the wind sighs through the forest, bends the tall grasses of the prairies, touches the tops of the new corn that will ripen through the summer. Listen to how Laughing Woman — with Tom Wasinger’s flute, drums and cittern — tells the Mashantucket Pequot story about the creator, who walks among the moon and stars. Listen, and you can hear the first songs of this continent. Listen and you can hear everything growing, still . . . .

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