“Summertime” is an aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess,” with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, author of the novel “Porgy” on which the opera was based. Gershwin set out to write his own spiritual in the style of African American folk music, and he spent time in the Gullah community near Charleston, South Carolina, studying its music and speech.
The song is a lullaby, sung in the opera to a baby, promising that the living is easy, that the cotton is high, and that nothing will harm the child while its parents keep watch. Its ease is shadowed by the hardship the rest of the story makes plain.
“Summertime” became a much-recorded jazz and pop standard and has since been taken up across many styles.
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