Songs That Remember: Oral Traditions and Cultural Resilience in Diasporic Families

This talk will explore the performance of songs and lullabies as an act of perseverance to preserve cultural memories. The oral transmission of memories through songs is critically important to diasporic families, where languages and stories can easily be lost. 

In an Erie Art Museum project initiated by folklorist Kelly Armor, members of immigrant communities in Erie, Pennsylvania, were invited to record children's songs in their native languages, leading to a beautiful cultural cross-pollination and the most fertile understandings of new knowledge as immigrant families undergo cultural integration and transition in the new land. 

Dr. Shreelina Ghosh’s project reveals that the stories in them often transmit cultural values, practices, and history. They express and perpetuate native epistemologies within the context of colonial suppression to transmit cultural knowledge and perspectives, even against the odds. These stories in the songs are often of hurt, violence, and loss.  

Join Dr. Ghosh, the director of the writing program at Gannon University, to learn about these stories in the songs and argue that lullabies are not simply soothing music to put a child to sleep. They are the foundations of learning and connecting to one’s cultural identity. A caregiver’s chanting of the lullabies is vital in the preservation of cultural memories, especially in diasporic families. 

This event is part of the JES’s USA 250 Event Series.