Children’s songs, school songs, and nursery rhymes with a river theme. Beloved classics about nostalgic watersides.
Children’s songs and school songs that entrust the babbling and flow of rivers to music are filled with a unique sentiment that deeply resonates with the Japanese heart.
From nostalgic tunes hummed in childhood to memorable songs learned at school, many people still remember river-themed pieces even as adults.
In this article, we introduce works that sing of the river’s beauty as it changes with the seasons and of the creatures that live in and around it.
Please enjoy as you bask in fond memories.
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Children’s songs, school songs, and nursery rhymes themed around rivers. Beloved classics of waterside nostalgia (31–40)
Suwannee RiverNHK Tōkyō Jidō Gasshōdan
Foster wrote the lyrics and composed the music for a blackface minstrel troupe in New York to perform.
The sheet music was published in 1851 under the title “Old Folks at Home,” and in 1935 it became the state song of Florida, where the Suwannee River is located.
In Japan, both Katsu Tsuguo’s translation “Furusato no Hitobito” (Old Folks at Home) and Onoen Ryoko’s translation “Suwanee River” are well known.
running riverHāmonī Ochiai
This is the second piece from the choral suite “Mizu no Tsubasa” (Wings of Water), composed by Yoshinori Kurosawa with lyrics by Chieko Kanazawa.
Released in 1993, it, along with “Izumi” (Spring) and “Umi e” (To the Sea), expresses the journey of water as it becomes a river, returns to the sea, and sets out on a new voyage.
It has become a staple in middle school choral competitions.
Down the Mother VolgaHitotsubashi Daigaku Tsudajuku Daigaku Gasshoudan Humanite
It is a piece composed by Alexander Glazunov in 1921.
The Volga is a great river flowing through western Russia.
In Russia, the Volga River has long been a vital transportation route, and there are folk songs such as the Song of the Volga Boatmen, which describes the work of hauling boats upstream from the land with ropes after they had drifted downstream.
Afton’s flowKōbe Chūō Gasshōdan
This is a 19th-century American song that uses a poem by Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns.
The composer is Jonathan E.
Spilman, a lawyer from Kentucky, USA, and it is said to have been written in 1837.
The River Afton is a small stream flowing through South Ayrshire in southwestern Scotland.
BeginningNagoya Shiritsu Shiroyama Chugakkou
This is a choral piece with lyrics by Naoko Kudo and music by Makiko Kinoshita.
Other choral works in which Makiko Kinoshita set Naoko Kudo’s poems to music include “Mainichi ‘Ohatsu’,” which was selected as the compulsory piece for the Elementary School Division of the 73rd (FY2006) NHK All-Japan School Music Competition.
Children’s songs, school songs, and nursery rhymes themed around rivers. Beloved classics of waterside scenes (41–50).
MoldauAichi-ken Nagoya Shiritsu Shiroyama Chūgakkō
It is the second piece from Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems, Má vlast (My Homeland).
It depicts the flow of the river that runs through the city of Prague—called the Moldau in German and the Vltava in Czech.
Since its premiere in 1874, it has become one of Smetana’s signature works, and arranged versions are often performed as art songs and choral pieces.
Bengawan SoloGusan Marutoharutono
This is a representative song of kroncong, Indonesia’s popular music.
The title means the Solo River, and the lyrics sing of the marvels of nature—the river overflowing in the rainy season but nearly drying up in the dry season—and of the hometown longings of the people who live there.