Topic: Movement - Learned by Adults
As mentioned in the post for 8 November 2017, Louise Ilg and Louise Bates Ames found four-year-old American children in the late 1930s had a "high interest in dramatizing songs." [1] Dorothy McConnell visited a Methodist mission in the southern Belgium Congo in the 1950s where young African children
"were singing ". . . now I rise and wash myself—now I put on my clothes—now I say goodbye to my mother—now I come to school." It was the daily song sung by children in one way or another since the beginning of time—usually with motions to match.
"The young teacher, fearing no doubt that I would think this a frivolous way to begin a school day, explained that by the song and the motions to go with it the words, French words, were fixed more exactly in the child’s mind." [2]
If such lexical gesture songs indeed are treated as frivolous by adults, and children do not graduate to the more complex ones sung in summer resident camps, then their kinesic repertoires and their ideas about what is possible remain frozen. Alex Bradford, an African-American gospel singer from Bessemer, Alabama, told Tony Heilbut when he was just starting, he formed a group.
"To distinguish them from other groups, he developed a style of choreography he’d swiped from show business–‘My Sister was Minnie the Moocher.’ There gestures were hardly subtle. ‘When we sang "run," we ran, when we sang "fly," we’d flap our arms. We believed in making things come alive, sort of like the deaf do today’." [3]
Bradford had been involved in vaudeville as a child, [4] and his reference to Cab Calloway’s 1931 song may have come from there. However, the song also was famous for its use of vocables. [5] Bradford’s only other perception of movement with words was a vague impression of how the deaf communicate.
The motions Yvonne Anderson used with "Come by Here" in 2010 were similar to those of Bradford. Both used their arms like the four-year-old daughter of Juicy Lollipop, [6] not the fine muscle coordination of the fingers and hands utilized in the later gesture songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
She was identified as a pastor, and many of her gestures may have come from public speaking or the church. She opened her arms out wide from the elbows, and raised both forearms with her palms facing outward. Sometimes, Anderson moved just her left hand. Between motions, she returned her hands to her lap or waist; the camera was focused on her head and did not show anything below her chest.
There was no consistent relationship between gesture and text. Anderson’s most common movement for "Lord" was to raise her arms from her lap to her chest, then open them wide or upward, and let them fall to the opening position. However, she sometimes used just her left hand.
The most typical motion for come was to bring one or both hands to her chest. What happened next varied: one time they moved out in an arc, another time they rose to her face, and often just returned to her lap.
Within this general dictionary of movement, Anderson may have been using her gestures to dramatize the arcs of her musical phrases. As Zora Neale Hurston observed in the post for 16 October 2017, "breathing is part of the performance and various devices are resorted to to adorn the breath taking." [7] Anderson’s hands and arms began at rest, rose and expanded with her breath and fell back into the relaxed position.
This would have been consistent with her singing, which varied the treatment of words as if each time were the first time and unique. Neither her articulation nor her physical movements were tied to an explicit word or to its emotive content, but simply to the act of making music.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Yvonne Anderson
Vocal Accompaniment: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: she said "year" or "yar" for "here"; one time she did not pronounce the /d/ that ended "Lord."
Verses: come by here, crying, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone, but one time she said somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 3 verse song repeated twice
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCABC
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: simple repetition of melody, but varied each time in style
Singing Style: many sustained tones sung with vibrato; one time a syllable was sung on three notes. There was no pattern for sustained notes; it varied from line to line from one iteration to the next. The favored syllable could be the first, middle, or last note in a phrase. It often was an important word like "Lord" but could be one like "by."
Notes on Performance
Occasion: for the person making the video
Location: in a room with a plain background
Microphones: none
Clothing: she wore a purple and lilac top with her hair severely pulled back and long, clear pendant earrings. It was not clear if the choice of color was personal or liturgical. Purple normally was associated with Lent and blue violet with Advent. [8] This video was uploaded during Advent.
Notes on Movement
She was seated, and often bent to one side or the other from the hips; she tilted forward slightly less often. Sometimes when she raised her hands, she also raised her head and eyes. One time when she sang "oh" she emphasized the sound with her lips. She was only still during the pauses between lines or verses.
Although she sang the praying verse, she did not use the conventions for that word. The closest she came was the first line of the second repetition, when she brought her fists together in front of her chest and flattened them into the prayer position. The hands never touched one another, and they immediately opened wide with the forearms raised from the elbows. This was one time Anderson’s head and eyes looked up.
Here facial expression was neutral while she was singing, but she smiled when she was done.
Notes on Performers
Yvonne Anderson is a common name, and I could find nothing on the internet about this particular individual. All I know was what the video revealed: she was a middle-aged African-American woman with a strong voice who could sing a capella in a traditional style.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by playaprice101 on 18 December 2010.
End Notes
1. Louise L. Ilg and Louise Bates Ames. "Personal-Social Behavior." 238-261 in The First Five Years of Life. Sponsored by Yale Clinic of Child Development. NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1940. 257.
2. Dorothy McConnell. Along the African Path. New York: Methodist Church, Board of Missions, 1952. 63-64. Her comment of "beginning of time" probably was triggered by the similarity of this song to "Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush." The teachers were African converts.
3. Tony Heilbut. The Gospel Sound. Garden City: Anchor Press, 1975 edition. 150.
4. Heilbut. 146.
5. The vocables were permutations of "ho de ho." Cab Calloway And His Orchestra. "Minnie The Moocher." Brunswick 6511. New York, 3 March 1931. His co-writer, Irving Mills, was a music publisher. (Entries for the song title in Wikipedia and Discogs).
6. The video posted by Juicy Lollipop was described in the entry for 8 November 2017.
7. Zora Neale Hurston. "Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals." 79-84 in The Sanctified Church. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1983. 81.
8. Dennis Bratcher. "The Meaning of Church Colors." Christian Resource Institute website.
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