Recess! Media

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That’s Marylou Seba from Cameroon with the traditional cradle song, “Mba Mon” on a new CD called Lullabies for a Small World from Celestial Arts. It’s another in their fine series of recordings of the music that people sing to their children to soothe them, to calm them, to ease them into sleep. Like the others in this series, this too is a collection of both classic and new melodies by leading musicians from Sicily to Brasil, from Mexico to Denmark, from the Ukraine to the United States. The Spanish musician, Cesar Berlanga, has composed a remarkable “cante hundo” for his children “as a talisman,” he writes, “that will protect them during their life.”

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And it’s hard to imagine a better way to go to sleep than with a “milonga” from Argentina — drifting and dreaming of the Pamapas:

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