Over two years, Minnesota educator Marian Hassan recorded 61 Somali grandmothers singing 67 lullabies and poems, an effort to keep the Somali language alive in a state where children are already losing it, MPR News reported on Friday.
The project
The project, called Sing Again, began with a Minnesota Legacy Cultural Heritage grant that Hassan received in fall 2024. She told MPR she was motivated in part by what she saw in her work with Somali children and youth: kids who could no longer talk with their older relatives. Somali is the third most common language in Minnesota, behind English and Spanish, according to MPR.
Hassan, who is a Somali immigrant and a longtime literacy educator, went to mosques, community centers and malls to recruit the women. MPR reported that the grandmothers came primarily from Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, as well as Faribault, Rochester and St. Cloud. “Many times with Somali elders, once they hear that this has been long term, this is our language is going away, our children are not using the language, they’re very willing to participate,” she said.
The University of Minnesota, through its Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, helped develop a curriculum framework. According to the university, Hassan interviewed the 61 grandmothers, transcribed the lullabies and built a bilingual manuscript, and a team of educators and researchers designed training tools around the recordings for teachers who are not language specialists.
The grandmothers
Hawa Aden, 85, is one of the grandmothers in the project. “These are centuries-old songs I sang to my children,” said Aden, a grandmother of 42, in comments translated by Hassan. “My grandmother sang to me. Her grandmother sang to her, so on and so forth. So they’re part of our history and who we are.”
Aden said she wanted to take part because she felt sad that the next generation might not speak Somali. “The parents whose children have lost the language, they live in sadness and loss because they brought their kids to gain, not to lose so much,” she said, as translated by Hassan.
Hassan said the songs carry more than comfort. “Every song had a life around it. Memories of raising children. Some of the songs speak about hopes that the parents have for the child,” she said. Many, she said, are about “how to contribute, building a good character, striving to be someone who’s dependable.” Oral history, she told MPR, has long been how Somali communities passed information along, including how to raise children.
What comes next
The project launched this month at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul; the Minnesota Historical Society listed a book launch for Sing Again: A Somali Lullaby Collection on October 16. MPR reported that an illustrated book is expected to go on sale soon, and that the team plans community events later this year in mosques and community centers to share the curriculum. The recordings and a free downloadable curriculum are available at singagain.org.
Hassan said she hopes the work can serve as a model for other immigrant communities. “Lullabies are international,” she said.
Avery Reed · October 31, 2026 · Culture, Identity & Society