Music for the Motherless Child is a collaboration album between English folk guitarist Martin Simpson and Chinese pipa player Wu Man, released by Water Lily Records in 1996. As with the other album's released on the label, it was recorded at Christ the King Chapel, St. Anthony Seminary, Santa Barbara, by Tamil producer and label owner Kavichandran Alexander, who, also similarly to the label's other releases, curated and oversaw the project as a fusion between the music of two disparate cultures. Neither Simpson or Man had met before the recording of the album, which was done in only a single session that lasted seven hours. Alexander employed vacuum tube recording and took advantage of the church's natural acoustics.