Singing quietly in a darkened room is not the only way to get a baby to fall asleep. You can also dance with them to loud, beat-driven music in a room full of people. Babies like all kinds of grooves, from gangsta rap to eighties pop to death metal. My favorite thing to dance to is funk, so my kids are grooving to a lot of that.
If you’ve ever seen Spike Lee’s extraordinary 1989 comedy drama Do The Right Thing, then you’ll never forget the scene where Italian-American pizzeria owner Sal (Danny Aiello) squares off with Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) as Fight the Power blares out of his boombox, lyrically laying down the gauntlet, drawing a line at which Sal’s racism has to stop and, as it turns out, laying his life on that same line.