PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — World Café Live is connecting first time parents with local musicians for a special project that begins virtually on Tuesday, called the Philadelphia Lullaby Project.
Jacinda Arellano, program manager for World Café Live, said the musicians who participate in the project are incredibly talented.
"They are basically song doulas, I would say, where they take on these lyric ideas, song emotional ideas and favorite types of music," she said, "and I put them together in this puzzle and they collaboratively create a lullaby for their baby."
According to Arellano, lullabies help parents connect with their children and come in many forms — particularly when they're personalized to each family's style.
"People can write upbeat, happy songs songs celebrating the fact that their kid loves the red bird outside or they can write something bubbly about how you don't want to go to bed so let's just get energetic and not go to bed instead," she said.
"Parents can make it all sorts of ways. People can make beats over their songs, they make salsas, they make them dance music. Songs can sound like anything."
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Arellano told KYW Newsradio she has learned so much about the positive impact parents have on their children when they sing to them.
"You could see it just in the baby's eyes when they have their mom sing to them," she said. "They calm down, they get really focused, eye contact, just listening ... I just heard from a parent who told me that their kid was learning to talk and singing along with the lullaby that they wrote."
At the end of the program, parents have a unique lullaby to sing to their children, but Arellano said that's just a byproduct.
"My true goal is not to have a lullaby at the end," she shared. "It's to give families the ability to make music at home."
Arellano encourages interested people to email her directly at jacinda@liveconnections.org. She said they also recruit for a Spanish-exclusive group to be held Saturdays at 2 p.m.