Modern Poetry Around the World

Cross Cultural Poetics has podcasts featuring modern poets from different countries around the world. The first podcast features Egyptian poets Mohamed Metwalli and Maged Zaher and Chinese poet Zhang Er. They compare Chinese and Arabic poetry to English poetry. Zhang Er points out that Chinese poetry has no tense — so it has an eternal feeling to [...]

Mama Lisa Now Has a Facebook Group

We'd love it if you'd join the Mama Lisa Facebook Group. You can post anything you'd like about your culture. You can post your own musical recordings or YouTube videos… Links to culture and musical sites… Photos of your country… Questions about songs or cultural issues… Anything related to World Culture and [...]

Modern Arabic Transliteration

Mourad Bendjennet sent us information about a new way of transliterating Arabic that has come about since the advent of computers. Here we're talking specifically about transliterating Arabic by writing the language in the Roman alphabet to show how to pronounce it in English... “With the introduction of computers and text messages among Arabs, they [...]

Moroccan Lullabies and Kids Songs

Jennie sent me some Moroccan lullabies and songs today with this note… Dear Mama Lisa! I came across your website today after doing a Google search looking for children's songs and lullabies from Morocco… Recently I just moved to Morocco, with my baby, and was interested in learning some songs. I have picked up a few songs while [...]

Symbolic Foods Eaten Around the World for New Years

In many parts of the world, the foods eaten on New Years Eve and New Years Day have important symbolic meanings. These symbols seem to fall into several major categories. The first class symbolizes financial prosperity. This type of food is round like coins. Often, the dish will be round beans, like lentils, [...]

How to Find Sheet Music, Tunes and MP3's on Mama Lisa's World

In addition to this blog, I also host Mama Lisa's World. Mama Lisa's World is a large collection of children's songs and rhymes from countries all around the globe. Matt, a music teacher from Rhode Island, wrote a question to me, the other day, about Mama Lisa's World: Hey Mama, I love the concept of your site. [...]

Mama Lisa's World News and Multimedia Features

A significant part of the Mama Lisa sites is a large collection of songs and nursery rhymes from around the world. We currently have about 750 songs from around 90 countries and cultures. When you consider how many languages there are in those cultures – that's a lot of information! In order to make [...]