Sleep Song Part 11 (from Tubaka) SCORE

The score for Part 11 of Sleep Songs for my Daughter.

https://Platoon.lnk.to/sleep-song--part-11-from-tubaka

After recording a Salif Keita tune as a lullaby for a complication for my record label, it was suggested that I dedicate an entire album to the idea of “lullabies.” The resulting recording session took the form of a three hour booking at Milestone Studios in Cape Town where Jethro and I turned off the lights and decided not to speak to each other for the entire duration of the recording, which would be recorded in a single take. 

I had no plan for the music itself except to place myself, in my mind, back on the edge of my six year old (now fourteen) daughter’s bed at night, playing guitar to her while she fell asleep. Usually, in these nightly sessions, I would play her what she asked, which was often” Kaira,” the song she was named after. I would also play her “Kai Kai” which was a song I wrote for her for an album called “Kai Kai”released in 2009. Once she had fallen asleep I would continue playing, and I would get to play what I wanted. Some evenings I would just bring what I had been working on, others I would explore new things or just play whatever I felt like.

It was this spirit of quiet exploration that I brought to the studio for this three hour session. It was very dark and a light from a window up above looked enough like a moon, making it all feel rather wonderful, playing into the quiet expectation of the microphone. I remember the feeling, sometimes, of playing with exultation, but keeping that exultation quiet, so as not to wake her, but still allowing myself to be full in the swing of playing. 

What was significant for me in making this recording was being liberated from having to play guitar, from being interesting, from playing pieces, songs, compositions. So what is left after that liberation is fragments of existing pieces, from the kora repertoire, from my own compositions, and a few re-recordings of pieces I would have been playing around the time Kaira was little, like “Clinton’s Seven” and “Kai Kai” and “Uhadi Rain.” 

The recording is a going to sleep album, a long-form lullaby, where the mind is quiet and relaxed and remembers fragments of a past heard outside of the hubbub of daily time. 

I renewed the memory of sitting on the edge of that bed throughout the two hours I ended up spending recording. I then went back and removed what I didn’t like, and what is left is a ninety minute recording in sixteen parts, called “Sleep Songs for my Daughter.”