Poetry and Song with Nourit

When Nourit sings, she doesn't sing the songs we know, but makes up her own. She's been known to give a long concert, setting up her stepstool like a podium, and putting a Mozart Rondo for Piano on the music stand in front of her, then pouring her heart out in another language, with hints of a nasal 'n' which tells us she's singing in Nourit-French. It's melismatic, mixed-metered, prosaic, and sometimes interrupted by screams and a dive off the podium to snatch a toy out of her baby sister's hands. Despite this, it's wonderful to hear her interpretation of all the musical influences she's had in her short life.

(To get the full effect, watch all 9+ minutes of the video below. To get to the part where the diva dives off the stage, accosts the baby, then resumes singing like nothing ever happened, start about two-thirds of the way through.)

Rounding this out, she's got a great sense for rhythm and rhyme. From an early age, I noticed her grasp on musical or poetic phrasing. She will make up songs or poetry with words that aren't necessarily found in any language we know, but they definitely rhyme at the end of each phrase. She's translated this skill to book-reading, too. Often, in her well-loved books, we'll begin the sentence on each page and let her finish. Here's what happened when she mixed it up a little:

Excerpted from 'Goodnight Moon'



In the Great Green Room, there was a red "vaboon" and a picture of the "plow" jumping over the "boon." Etc, etc. You get the idea of the game she's playing.

Then we get to the part about the quiet old lady who, instead of whispering "hush" was whispering "puss." Okay, a little gross. But this old lady has some more bad habits. By the end of the story, Nourit had her whispering "cuss." At least she swears quietly.