Colin Walley - Kum Ba Ya

Topic: Pedagogy - Vocal Harmony
Public school text books in the United States tended to see "Kumbaya" as a children’s song. It appeared in one third grade volume, three fourth-grade books, and two-sixth grade texts in the 1960s and 1970s. It was only in Canada that a music series used it in a junior high school volume.

The irony was "Kumbaya" essentially was a song for junior-high-school-aged youth who, according to Arnold Gesell, [1] were just beginning to enjoy singing in harmony. Colin Walley’s Canadian text treated harmony in much the way as had the fourth-grade one mentioned in the post for 12 August 2018.

Both Walley and Lorrain Watters discussed using autoharps to accompany singing, with detailed information on intervals and harmonizing in thirds. However, the Fanfare arrangement was more ambitious than Watters, which used parallel thirds. The junior high school book let some boys sing melody, while everyone else repeated a "kumbaya ya" chant in three-part harmony.

Walley was able to exploit the physical changes that came with adolescence. The most obvious were the increased strength of the vocal cords after the changes mentioned in the post for 5 August 2018. His male melody began on the C below middle C, at the low end of the tenor range. [2] Those boys whose voices had deepened could handle it, while the others could sing the low notes in the chant.

Equally important to the physical changes that made singing "Kumbaya" in full harmony possible for adolescents were cognitive changes described by Jean Piaget. He discovered the conversations of young children were essentially collective monologues in which each talked about him or herself. [3] When they sang, the group essential provided an accompaniment to simultaneous solos.

By the age of eight, [3] children engaged in socialized language that was intended to communicate, but they did not always understand the words they heard used by adults. [5] Instead of grasping their meaning, a child assimilated everything he or she heard into his or her "own point of view and his own stock of information." [6] At this time, strange words like "kumbaya" were melted "into the immediate context which the child feels he has quite sufficiently understood." [7]

Children moved beyond this stage around age eleven, when their ability to listen changed. When I visited summer camps in the 1970s, youngsters sometimes asked to hear themselves on my tape recorder. Elementary-school-aged children wanted to sing along. If others in the group wanted to listen, they lost interest, began talking, or wandered away. Girls around age eleven or twelve and older were the ones who listened critically. Karl Gehrkens considered this change fundamental to the ability to sing well. [8]

Lonesome EJ told readers of Mudcat Café, he had

"learned this song in my Junior High Chorus Class. It was 1964 and I had never heard of the song before. It really seemed kind of exotic, in its African words and styling. We learned to sing trailing harmonies to it, with the basses and tenors singing Kumbaya just before the altos and sopranos shadowed the word with their higher harmony." [9]

Beyond the music, the cultural associations of the words with brotherhood and peace appealed to adolescents. Erik Erikson believed the biological changes wrought by puberty led to a search "for some inspiring unification of tradition" [10] and for "for men and ideas to have faith in." [11] This made them inclined to think ideologically. Circumstances determined how that psychological impulse was channeled. [12]

Gesell’s team noted the enjoyment of harmony and the idealist quest merged for twelve-year olds who abandoned Sunday School for church services and choir. [13] Parents and thirteen-year-old began noting an appreciation for "a good time, the United States, peace and quiet, luxury, and popular music." [14] An even greater number of fourteen-year-olds attended church or choir or nothing, rather than go to Sunday school. [15]

EJ remembered they "sang it in the gymnasium to an assembly of our schoolmates and teachers, and I can recall that the usually rowdy crowd was silent as the echoes of the song reverberated in the hall. It was always the kind of song that had a sort of magic in it, that sounded better unaccompanied by instruments, that sounded, as Janie said, like a prayer." [16]

College, the military, or entering the workforce dissipated this idealistic impulse as individuals faced new sociopsychological challenges. Perhaps the more abrupt the transition, the more cynical one became about one’s youthful hopes. One man remembered:

"When I was a little camper, and I first heard it, I enjoyed Kumbayah. Then as I grew older -- hearing it again and again and again -- I grew annoyed by it. Then as a young adult, I joined the Army." [17]

EJ’s experiences were different. He argued:

"Beautiful in its simplicity, the song bears no reponsibility for how it was used, whether as a civil rights anthem or an anti-war hymn. It also transcends its use as a chide. When I hear it, it lies beyond those connotations, somewhere in the heart of a thirteen year old boy, where it still resonates." [18]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: class, boys and girls
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Nigerian Folk Song

Hootenanny Song Book—Music for Missions Series Number 44. Consolidated Music Publishers, 1963. [19].

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no indication
Verses: crying, singing, praying

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: not given
Key Signature: two sharps
Chords: D G A⁷ Em

Basic Structure: strophic repetition; male melody with group chant

Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final Lord

Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: the "kum ba yah yah" was repeated twice in every line. The chant used triads.

Notes on Performers
Walley and his co-editors all had experience first as singers, then as teachers. He had been "a boy soloist" in the Manitoba Musical Festivals where "he often came into it with the Balmoral Choir." After earning his certification he taught music in the rural area of Homewood. That school’s choir also performed in the festivals. [20]

Beth Douglas began teaching at Manitoba Teacher’s College, then became the assistant director of music for the Winnipeg public schools. She directed the Winnipeg Boys’ Choir, the Vivance Ladies’ Choir, and the Bethesda Church choir in Winnipeg. [21] The last was an evangelical church in the Keswick tradition. [22]

Glen Harrison was a tenor with at the Young United Church and choirmaster at Westminster United Church. He taught in the public schools before becoming the co-ordinator of music for the Winnipeg schools. [23]

The premise of Fanfare was that it was taking fans of the Beatles and Bob Dylan backstage with units labeled as rehearsals. [24] Harrison was active with Winnipeg’s outdoor musical theater, the Rainbow Stage from 1955 to 1972. He then became the artistic director of the local Gilbert and Sullivan society. [25] Walley had a bit part in the theater’s 1957 production of Chu Chin Chow. [26]

Douglas was a co-editor of the Clark, Irwin music books for elementary school. Walley and Harrison were only involved in the ones that taught "comprehensive musicianship for the junior high school." They all held masters in music education from the University of Manitoba, where Walley later joined the faculty.

Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Ya." 331 in Fanfare Act 1. Edited by Colin Walley, Beth Douglas, and Glen Harrison. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, and Company, 1969.

End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames. Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956. They said a twelve-year-old "especially enjoys singing in harmony." 133.

2. Wikipedia. "Vocal Range" gave the tenor’s range as low B to the orchestra’s A and the baritone’s from low G to F.

3. Jean Piaget. Le Langage et la pensée chez l'enfant. Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1923. Translated as The Language and Thought of the Child by Marjorie Gabain. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1955.

4. Piaget. 140-141.
5. Piaget. 142.
6. Piaget. 164.
7. Piaget. 164-165.

8. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. 89-90.

9. Lonesome EJ. Mudcat Café website. "Why is Kumbaya a dirty word?" Thread begun 16 February 2008. Comment added 18 February 2008.

10. Erik H. Erikson. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. 130.
11. Erikson. 128.
12. Erikson. 129-130.
13. Gesell. 500-501.
14. Gesell. 373.
15. Gesell. 501.

16. Lonesome EJ. Janie had written on 18 February 08:

"I’ll risk making a fool of myself here.

I think it a lovely song of sorrow in search of solace. A prayer."

17. So-Called Austin Mayor. 31 August 2006. Comment on Eric Zorn. "Someone’s dissin’, Lord, kumbaya." Chicago Tribune website. 31 August 2006.

18. Lonesome EJ.

19. The book was edited by Irwin Silber. It was subtitled Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. The Sing Out! version was the one Cooperative Recreation Service had used in the Girl Guides’ Chansons de Notre Chalet. The Fanfare arrangement was original.

20. "Gilbert Munroe Wins Aikins Music Trophy." The Winnipeg Tribune. 8 April 1949. 12.

21. Ronald Gibson. "Beth Douglas." The Canadian Encyclopedia website. 14 June 2007; last updated 16 December 2013.

22. Item in Winnipeg Free Press, 10 November 1962, page 29, and Bethesda Church website.

23. Ronald Gibson. "Glen Harrison." The Canadian Encyclopedia website. 6 August 2007; last updated 15 December 2013.

24. Fanfare. i, 1.
25. Gibson, Harrison.

26. C. G. Dafoe. "Chu Chin Chow Wows Crowd." Winnipeg Free Press. Reprinted on Rainbow Stage website, 11 January 2013.