With the help of the Lullaby Project, moms are creating custom songs for their children

The little concert was an intimate affair — just the performers, some family members, and friends in a classroom at Rowan University’s Wilson Hall.

Marionne Bansing, elegant in a long red dress that was quite a change from the stay-at-home mom garb that’s been her norm of late, took her place at the front of the room. But as her music began to play, Bansing’s hands fluttered up to her face.

“I’m nervous!” she blurted out.

But a very important person was there that evening: her song’s inspiration, 10-month-old daughter Keily. The first-time mother took a deep breath and began to sing:

“I loved you before I knew you.

Your little kicks told me you did, too

… It’s the little moments with you.

You teach me how much I love you.

You teach me to be a better person, too …”

There wasn’t another sound in the room. Except for one: By the song’s close, Keily was happily babbling along.

“Little Moments” is part of the Lullaby Project, an initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute that invites mothers and other caregivers to create lullabies for their babies with the help of professional musicians and music educators.

The eight South Jersey families who recently completed Rowan School of Music’s Lullaby Project are among the over 3,500 families globally who have participated in the initiative since its 2011 inception in New York City. Songs have been written in over 20 languages across the U.S., including Philadelphia, and around the world, including Canada, Australia, and some European, South American, and Asian countries. A few African countries are expected to join in, too. The musical styles range from classic lullaby to rock, Latin, spoken word, and everything in between. Mothers have written their lullabies from homeless shelters, prisons, hospitals, and other institutions, as well as their homes.

Hundreds of these lullabies are available on SoundCloud for anyone to hear. In addition, Hopes and Dreams: The Lullaby Project, an album of the songs, was recorded with professional artists including Fiona Apple, Lawrence Brownlee, Dianne Reeves, Roseanne Cash, Patti Lupone, Rhiannon Giddens, and more. Each year, Carnegie Hall holds a lullabies concert.

But the project isn’t only about the music. Over the several weeks of the project, the mothers keep a journal. In the journal, and with the musician they’re working with, they may explore feelings about parenthood, their own childhood, their hopes for their child, as well as what they want their lullaby to sound like and what they want it to say. The goal is to use music to help support the parent-child bond, early childhood development, and maternal well-being.

The Philadelphia Lullaby Project started three years ago, first with World Cafe Live as the lead agency and now with music education nonprofit Musicopia, with other community agencies taking part. It is ongoing, and new participants are welcome.

The research firm WolfBrown has been studying the impact of the Philadelphia project as part of an NEA Research Lab, supported by the William Penn Foundation. The focus is on family engagement, music in early literacy, and the role of parents as first music teachers.

Among the soon-to-be-published Philadelphia findings are positive results for the mothers and, ultimately, their children, according to researcher Dennie Palmer Wolf. Women involved in the project feel more empowered, with more satisfaction in their role as caregivers, she has found. They also develop more understanding of their children’s behavior.

“They come to see their children in much more complex ways,” Wolf said.

Dionne Long, 37, of East Falls, remembers telling her mother a few weeks before she found out she was pregnant that she was kind of ambivalent about having children. That all changed when she learned she was having her son Truth.

“I just really felt like it was a gift. I was humbled,” said Long, a single mother and an accountant who participated in Philly’s ongoing Lullaby Project.

Truth is nearly 2 now. He plays with his friends in day care while his mom is at work. “Other than that, I’m 100% focused on Truth.” When Long was a child, she said, she was moved often from parent to parent to grandparent. Back then, she said, she wasn’t sure where she belonged or who she could rely on. “Those are things I don’t want Truth to ever feel.”

Her lullaby, “Truth, My Love,” is spoken word with a smooth jazz sound. She and Truth made it together. You can hear his laughter, and you can hear her love. Long likes that the words will last — “something tangible for us to have in the future.” There should Truth want or need to hear them:

“I will always be there to not let you fall. When you face a fork in the road, I am always right behind you. Truth, I am grateful to have you as my son.”

During the several weeks of the Rowan Lullaby Project, the mothers were invited to write a letter to their child, imagining them growing up, said Lynn Gumert, a music therapist and composer who directed the project and teaches at Rowan.

“You do hear hopes and dreams,” they said. “There is definitely a role for the lullaby as you’re looking forward to the future. You’re imagining a future for your child that may be better.”

Madison Foltz, 25, has no lullabies leftover from her childhood. Instead, her memories are a cacophony of shouts, reprimands, and worse. When she met Robert Foltz, 49, the man who would become her husband, at work at Amazon, they discovered they’d had similar childhoods.

When the Salem County couple started their family, they decided they wanted it to be a kind, safe place for themselves and their children.

Their lullaby, “Froggy Song,” borrows from a tune on the cartoon Puffin Rock. They chose it because their son Raymond, 1 ½ years old, already loved it. They fine-tuned the words for him. It’s gentle and playful, like their little boy.

On their recording, Robert sings and Madison plays the guitar. She hadn’t played in a while, so she was a bit self-conscious, but Robert encouraged her. Last month, the Foltzes had a second son, Lloyd. They’d like to create a lullaby for him, too.

“We make everything about the kids now,” she said. “When me and Rob were writing the song, it was a way of saying, ‘I love you.’ It’s a different language.”

It may not have been Carnegie Hall, but the little classroom concert was momentous for Marionne Bansing, 33. The last time she sang in public was several years ago in her old church in the Philippines. She dressed Keily in a frilly red dress, the color of her own gown. Her husband Norly Cuyugan, 35, wore a red T-shirt.

Her life had not always been so intentional. She and Cuyugan were both visiting relatives in the United States during the pandemic when they were laid off from their jobs with Air Asia, a Malaysian airline similar to Frontier. They ended up staying here, with Cuyugan’s family helping them at first. They settled in Sewell.

In New Jersey, she and Cuyugan decided to get married. Then last August, Keily was born. And so was a great love.

The Lullaby Project gave her an opportunity to explore many feelings, including ones she’d buried. “I discovered a lot about myself,” Bansing said. She said it is an “honor” to spend time with her daughter.

She learned she could do some things she would have never thought she could, like write a lullaby and sing it before a roomful of people with her little girl watching.

“When Keily is grown up, I want to be able to tell her that I performed this for her,” Bansing said. “And I made this song for her.”