Javanese-Surinamese Lullaby
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Javanese-Surinamese Lullaby Lyrics. An original lullaby inspired by descendants of Javanese contract laborers brought to Suriname, who still play gamelan music and craft batik cloth today. Javanese laborers were brought to Suriname under a Dutch contract-labor system, part of a wider pattern of indentured labor migration used across colonial plantation economies at the time, and over generations their descendants developed their own distinct blend of language, cuisine, and custom, still gathering gamelan orchestras for weddings and community celebrations today. Here you will find the lyrics, meaning, and chords.
Lyrics & chords
An original arrangement, with guitar & piano chords above each line.
Verse
What the words mean
Chords — guitar & piano
What “Javanese-Surinamese Lullaby” Means
“Ibu” means mother in Javanese and Indonesian. Descendants of Javanese contract laborers brought to Suriname in the late 1800s still play gamelan music and craft batik cloth today. This original lullaby draws on those gamelan and batik images of Javanese-Surinamese life, with “ibu” used as a warm address rather than a literal translation.
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- An original lullaby by Relax In No Time, inspired by the musical traditions of its region. The words, melody, arrangement and recording are ours.
- Recording and arrangement: real instruments played by hand, no AI music, by Relax In No Time.
- Chords: written by us for guitar and piano.
- Translation: our own meaning-for-meaning translation, written for understanding. The sung words stay in the original language.
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