Topic: Movement - Dance
Methodists’ aversion to social dancing goes back to an article John Wesley wrote for lay readers of his Arminian Magazine in July and August of 1787 about "a more excellent way" of living. [1]
At the time he was eighty-four-years old and concerned with the structure of the church. He had begun as a reformist within the Anglican church, and still considered that to be his role. However, the successful revolution fought by the North American colonies meant the English church had ceased to exist there, and local leaders in the United States had begun ordaining themselves. At the annual meeting held in Manchester in August of that year the primary issue was the desire by English pastors for the same sort of independence. [2]
Despite his conservative loyalty to the church, Wesley remained an innovator. As mentioned in the post for 27 September 2018, he had introduced small weekly classes led by exhorters when the Methodist society in Bristol, England, became too large to be taught by one individual. In 1787, the movement had grown to 4,000 in England and 6,859 in America. [3] He resorted to the newly emerging mass media in 1778 when he began his own magazine for his followers. [4]
In many ways his sermon on "a more excellent way" was a reformulation of his 1729 attempt to create a method of appropriate behavior for the Holy Club at Oxford. [5] He began by suggesting "two orders of Christians" existed within the Anglican church. "One lived an innocent life, conforming in all things, not sinful, to the customs and fashions of the world." The other were more zealous in their intent "to attain the whole mind that was in Christ." [6]
Then, as in 1729, he itemized the ways they differed from how many hours they slept to how they conducted their business and ate their meals. However, the instructions he drew up for his first society in 1744 did not mention dancing. [7]
His reason for including the section on proper diversions in 1787 probably was stimulated by the behavior of the royal family. George III’s brother Henry had taken up residence in a seaside resort that had become popular for its baths. George’s oldest son visited Henry in 1782, and rented his own home in 1783. Both had contracted scandalous marriages, and were considered "dissipated." [8]
Wesley’s list of diversions matched the activities in Brighton: hunting, shooting, fishing, races, masquerades, plays, assemblies, balls, cards, dancing, and music. [9] Samuel Johnson had said in the 1770s: "you hunt in the morning and crowd to the rooms at night and call it diversion when your heart knows it is perishing from poverty of pleasures and your wits get blunted for want of some other mind to sharpen them on." [10]
Wesley’s conceded "balls or assemblies" were "more reputable than masquerades but must be allowed by all impartial persons to have exactly the same tendency. So undoubtedly have all public dancings. And the same tendency they must have, unless the same caution obtained among modern Christians which was observed among the ancient Heathens. With them men and women never danced together, but always in separate rooms. This was always observed in ancient Greece, and for several ages at Rome, where a woman dancing in company with men would have at once been set down for a prostitute." [11]
His instructions were taken up in this country after Phoebe Palmer introduced the concept of living a more holy life. She had never had a genuine conversion experience, and believed this would, as Wesley promised, bring her closer to the mind of Christ. [12] By then waltzes had been introduced [13] and dancing between men and women become more intimate because the man put his arm around his partner’s waist and she touched his shoulder.
Couples dancing like that done in Bristol in 2016 became taboo. At that Christmas party, a man and woman were seen standing several inches apart taking steps that traveled in varying directions. His right arm was around her waist, and hers was lain along that arm. Another man, wearing a Santa hat, had one hand extended to his partner in a pose popularized by jitterbug.
Wesley and Palmer would have been more scandalized if they knew the music was a religious song recorded by a blues musician. It was not clear if the Whiskey Headed Buddies even knew the origins of "Needed Time": they learned it from Eric Bibb. [14] They replaced the reference to "Jesus," with "please, if you don’t stay long."
For the middle-aged gathering, it was simply a pleasant tune. For Wesley and Palmer it would have been an example of an unthinking way of life that followed the conventions of the time. It would not have mattered if the woman was the man’s wife or a friend.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Keith Hodges
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: Keith Hodges, acoustic guitar; Dave Hares, electric guitar; John Jones, bass guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: Sean Hanneberry
Credits
"one of our favourite songs by Eric Bibb" [15]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, bended knee, stay long
Vocabulary
Pronoun: you
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: "please" for "Jesus"
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCAC
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: sung verses alternated with instrumental sections at the beginning, after the third verse, and at the end
Singing Style: one syllable to one note with no ornamentations
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the band played chords during the vocal parts, and melody during the interludes with no displays of virtuosity to disturb the dancers.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Christmas party, 11 December 2015
Location: stage, Whitchurch Community Centre, Bristol, England. The stage backdrop was a mural of rural life with Holstein cows in a fenced field.
Microphones: the vocalist had a floor mike; the electric instruments had amplifiers
Clothing: casual dark shirts and slacks; the drummer wore a tee-shirt featuring someone’s head. The male dancers wore white shirts and ties; the woman wore a sweater.
Notes on Movement
The band remained stationary. The electric bass player sometimes shifted his weight from foot to foot. The electric guitar player moved a little to the music.
Audience Perceptions
The party-goers applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Whiskey Headed Buddies was formed in 2009. [16] They performed together, and in combinations with others. [17]
The lead singer, Keith Hodges, was "a regular solo performer around the folk clubs of Bristol and Dorset" and played bass guitar with a Ceilidh band. [18] He inherited his father’s nursery business, where his own son, Phil, took over in 1997. [19]
David Hares had his own recording studio, [20] and worked with Christ Scott in 1990 as an acoustic blues duet. [21] In addition to electric guitar, he played mandolin and keyboard. He retired from the same volunteer fireman’s company where his father had worked, in 2011. Hares earned his steady income as an undertaker. [22]
John Jones played flute and bohdran for "theatrical productions," as well as electric bass for the Buddies. [23] Drummer Sean Henneberry was associated with the University of the West of England, Bristol, [24] and produced solo recordings in his home studio. [25]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by David Hares on 3 January 2016
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "Sermon XL." The Arminian Magazine 10:341-346:July 1787 and 10:398-406:August 1787. Thomas Jackson called it "The More Excellent Way" and labeled it sermon 89 in The Sermons of John Wesley. Nampa, Idaho: Northwest Nazarene University, 1872. Copies are available from many sources on-line.
2. L. Tyerman. The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. New York: Harper and Brothers, volume 3, 1872. 496-498.
3. Tyerman. 498.
4. Samuel J. Rogal. "John Wesley’s Arminian Magaine." Andrews University Seminary Studies 22:231-247:1984. 232.
5. Wikipedia. "Charles Wesley."
6. Wesley, July. 343.
7. William Henry Meredith. The Real John Wesley. Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1903. 236-237.
8. Ronald Sutherland Gower described Henry, Duke of Cumberland this way in a journal published by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill. ("Anne Lutterell, Duchess of Cumberland." The Anglo-Saxon Review 10:63-66:1901. 64.)
9. Wesley, August. 401-402.
10. Samuel Johnson. Quoted by Adam Trimingham. "Eighteenth Century Celebs Making Brighton Their Home." The [Brighton, England] Argus. 24 October 2014. Pat Rogers mentioned he was in Brighton in 1773 and 1776. ("Johnson, Samuel." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on-line. 23 September 2004; last updated 21 May 2009.
11. Wesley, August. 402-403.
12. Phoebe Palmer was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
13. The waltz was introduced in European classical music around 1800, according to Willi Apel. "Waltz." 922 in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Willi Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition.
14. Bibb’s version of "Needed Time" was discussed in the post for 18 February 2018.
15. YouTube notes.
16. "About Whiskey Headed Buddies." Facebook.
17. "Whiskey Headed Buddies. Weebly website.
18. Weebly.
19. "Almondsbury Garden Centre." Corby Fellas website.
20. Weebly.
21. Facebook, Buddies.
22. "Farewell for Vacuuming Fireman." The Weston [Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England] Mercury. 25 July 2011.
23. Weebly.
24. "About Sean Henneberry." Facebook.
25. Weebly.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Igreja Batista Filadélfia - kumbaya Senhor
Topic: Movement - Dance
The recording of "Teatro Kumbaya" used by Sara Nossa Terra [1] and all the other groups was in English with music by a synthesizer and drum set. The vocal part alternated between a young man and a group of women, with the one singing the verses and the other the chorus.
The chorus used the standard "Kumbaya" melody with one group singing "kumbaya my Lord" as the statement, and the others echoing "kumbaya." The eight-line verses had two lines addressed to God, with one a slight variation on the other. This was followed by a line from "Kumbaya" like "someone’s praying Lord" sung twice. The quatrain was repeated with a different inquiry and a different allusion to the original song.
In 2018, a nine member ensemble from A Igreja Batista Filadélfia of Salvador, Brazil, uploaded a version in Portuguese. Unlike many, it also translated Lord to Senhor.
The first verse was a duet that began when a young woman sang the first line, and a young man the second. In the chorus, the three women at stage left sang the statements in the chorus, and the three men and other three women shadowed them. During the second verse, the groups used the same gender division as the soloists had done, but with diverging chordal harmony.
During the dissonant section, which was strictly instrumental in Sara Nossa Terra’s version, the group sang "me senhor" over and over. With each repetition, the number of notes in the chords expanded.
The group elaborated the ending with more repetitions of "me senhor." It sang "kumbaya" four times, each higher, then three more times at the original pitches. The nine held the last note.
Performers
Sara Nossa Terra
Vocal Soloist: man
Vocal Group: women
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Vocal Soloist: woman and man
Vocal Group: six women and three men
Vocal Director: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
"The correct spelling is Kumbaya (‘Kumbaya, my Lord’) in Gullah’s spiritual song (circa 1920), sung in the South Carolina islands.
"It means ‘Come to us, my Lord.’
"Subsequently American missionaries took the song to Angola, which is why it is wrongly said that it is an Angolan song." [2]
Notes on Lyrics
Sara Nossa Terra
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum BYE yah
Verses: kumbaya, allusions to crying, praying, calling
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: repetitions of "Oh Lord"
Unique Features: reduction of original song to chorus
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Language: Portuguese
Pronunciation: KUM bi yeah
Term for Deity: Senhor
Ending: repetitions of "Oh Lord," followed by repetitions of "kumbaya"
Notes on Music
Sara Nossa Terra
Opening Phrase: chorus was 1-3-5, verse was original
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: ABABCB where A was a vocal soloist, B was a vocal group, and C had no vocal part
Singing Style: solo with echo, one syllable to one note except for "Lord" in the second line of the chorus
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Opening Phrase: same as Sara Nossa Terra
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: ABABCB where A was two soloists, B and C were the group
Singing Style: chordal harmony that went beyond triads
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Occasion: Ministério de Louvor (worship ministry)
Location: three-sided altar of church; the walls were white above a stone wainscoting. Posters and a wide-screen television were hung on the walls. Amplifiers and a large arrangement of white flowers were at the front of the platform.
Microphones: they all had hand-held mikes.
Clothing: the women wore black dresses of different styles; the men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor wore a black suit.
Notes on Movement
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Three women stood on one side and three on the other, with the men in the center. They held their microphones with both hands and stood still. The soloists remained in place so the director stepped aside to let both be seen. He returned to his position in the center and used both arms to conduct; he bounced a little to mark the rhythm.
Notes on Audience
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
The video stopped before any reaction could be recorded.
Notes on Performers
A Igreja Batista Filadélfia was established in Salvador, Bahia, the religious center of Brazil, in 1902. The neighborhood of Caixa D’Água was near the city’s reservoirs, and the church took its original name from one, Cruz do Cosme. [3] It later was changed to brotherhood.
The congregation remained loyal to Baptist theology as imported by Southerners fleeing Reconstruction, [4] and did not become a charismatic church. Its statement of beliefs held to liberty of conscience and education that merges reason and faith. [5] It said a religious service
"must be consistent with the nature of God, in his holiness: an experience, therefore, of adoration and confession which expresses itself with fear and humility. Cult is not mere form and ritual, but an experience with the living God, through meditation and self-giving. It is not simply a religious service, but a communion with God in the reality of praise, the sincerity of love and the beauty of holiness. The worship becomes significant when the inspiration of the presence of God, the proclamation of the gospel, the freedom and action of the Spirit are combined with reverence and order." [6]
Availability
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
YouTube: uploaded by Filadélfia - Primeira Igreja Batista de Salvador on 19 March 2018.
End Notes
1. Sara Nossa Terra and the other groups who did movements to the song were discussed in the post for 25 October 2018.
2. YouTube notes translated by Google Translate.
3. Deocleciano Ferreira. "História." Church’s website. February 2011.
4. The first Baptists evangelists in Brazil were Z. C. Taylor, whose father considered migrating to Brazil from Missouri, before resettling in Texas. His interest in Brazil led W. B. Bagley to go before him. Bagley was living in Plantersville, Texas, at the time they met. The third person important person, Solomon Ginsburg, was a Polish Jew converted in London. He moved to Brazil as a Congregationalist, and was reconverted by Taylor. (Glendon Donald Grober. "An Introduction to and Critical Reproduction of The Z.C. Taylor Manuscript: The Rise and Progress of Baptist Missions in Brazil." MA thesis. Ouachita Baptist University, 1969.)
5. "Princípios." Church’s website. Translated by Google Translate.
6. "Princípios." Translated by Google Translate.
The recording of "Teatro Kumbaya" used by Sara Nossa Terra [1] and all the other groups was in English with music by a synthesizer and drum set. The vocal part alternated between a young man and a group of women, with the one singing the verses and the other the chorus.
The chorus used the standard "Kumbaya" melody with one group singing "kumbaya my Lord" as the statement, and the others echoing "kumbaya." The eight-line verses had two lines addressed to God, with one a slight variation on the other. This was followed by a line from "Kumbaya" like "someone’s praying Lord" sung twice. The quatrain was repeated with a different inquiry and a different allusion to the original song.
In 2018, a nine member ensemble from A Igreja Batista Filadélfia of Salvador, Brazil, uploaded a version in Portuguese. Unlike many, it also translated Lord to Senhor.
The first verse was a duet that began when a young woman sang the first line, and a young man the second. In the chorus, the three women at stage left sang the statements in the chorus, and the three men and other three women shadowed them. During the second verse, the groups used the same gender division as the soloists had done, but with diverging chordal harmony.
During the dissonant section, which was strictly instrumental in Sara Nossa Terra’s version, the group sang "me senhor" over and over. With each repetition, the number of notes in the chords expanded.
The group elaborated the ending with more repetitions of "me senhor." It sang "kumbaya" four times, each higher, then three more times at the original pitches. The nine held the last note.
Performers
Sara Nossa Terra
Vocal Soloist: man
Vocal Group: women
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Vocal Soloist: woman and man
Vocal Group: six women and three men
Vocal Director: man
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
"The correct spelling is Kumbaya (‘Kumbaya, my Lord’) in Gullah’s spiritual song (circa 1920), sung in the South Carolina islands.
"It means ‘Come to us, my Lord.’
"Subsequently American missionaries took the song to Angola, which is why it is wrongly said that it is an Angolan song." [2]
Notes on Lyrics
Sara Nossa Terra
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum BYE yah
Verses: kumbaya, allusions to crying, praying, calling
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: repetitions of "Oh Lord"
Unique Features: reduction of original song to chorus
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Language: Portuguese
Pronunciation: KUM bi yeah
Term for Deity: Senhor
Ending: repetitions of "Oh Lord," followed by repetitions of "kumbaya"
Notes on Music
Sara Nossa Terra
Opening Phrase: chorus was 1-3-5, verse was original
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: ABABCB where A was a vocal soloist, B was a vocal group, and C had no vocal part
Singing Style: solo with echo, one syllable to one note except for "Lord" in the second line of the chorus
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Opening Phrase: same as Sara Nossa Terra
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: ABABCB where A was two soloists, B and C were the group
Singing Style: chordal harmony that went beyond triads
Occasion: Ministério de Louvor (worship ministry)
Location: three-sided altar of church; the walls were white above a stone wainscoting. Posters and a wide-screen television were hung on the walls. Amplifiers and a large arrangement of white flowers were at the front of the platform.
Microphones: they all had hand-held mikes.
Clothing: the women wore black dresses of different styles; the men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor wore a black suit.
Notes on Movement
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
Three women stood on one side and three on the other, with the men in the center. They held their microphones with both hands and stood still. The soloists remained in place so the director stepped aside to let both be seen. He returned to his position in the center and used both arms to conduct; he bounced a little to mark the rhythm.
Notes on Audience
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
The video stopped before any reaction could be recorded.
Notes on Performers
A Igreja Batista Filadélfia was established in Salvador, Bahia, the religious center of Brazil, in 1902. The neighborhood of Caixa D’Água was near the city’s reservoirs, and the church took its original name from one, Cruz do Cosme. [3] It later was changed to brotherhood.
The congregation remained loyal to Baptist theology as imported by Southerners fleeing Reconstruction, [4] and did not become a charismatic church. Its statement of beliefs held to liberty of conscience and education that merges reason and faith. [5] It said a religious service
"must be consistent with the nature of God, in his holiness: an experience, therefore, of adoration and confession which expresses itself with fear and humility. Cult is not mere form and ritual, but an experience with the living God, through meditation and self-giving. It is not simply a religious service, but a communion with God in the reality of praise, the sincerity of love and the beauty of holiness. The worship becomes significant when the inspiration of the presence of God, the proclamation of the gospel, the freedom and action of the Spirit are combined with reverence and order." [6]
Availability
Igreja Batista Filadélfia
YouTube: uploaded by Filadélfia - Primeira Igreja Batista de Salvador on 19 March 2018.
End Notes
1. Sara Nossa Terra and the other groups who did movements to the song were discussed in the post for 25 October 2018.
2. YouTube notes translated by Google Translate.
3. Deocleciano Ferreira. "História." Church’s website. February 2011.
4. The first Baptists evangelists in Brazil were Z. C. Taylor, whose father considered migrating to Brazil from Missouri, before resettling in Texas. His interest in Brazil led W. B. Bagley to go before him. Bagley was living in Plantersville, Texas, at the time they met. The third person important person, Solomon Ginsburg, was a Polish Jew converted in London. He moved to Brazil as a Congregationalist, and was reconverted by Taylor. (Glendon Donald Grober. "An Introduction to and Critical Reproduction of The Z.C. Taylor Manuscript: The Rise and Progress of Baptist Missions in Brazil." MA thesis. Ouachita Baptist University, 1969.)
5. "Princípios." Church’s website. Translated by Google Translate.
6. "Princípios." Translated by Google Translate.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Sara Nossa Terra - Teatro Kumbya
Topic: Movement - Dance
Modern dance became an international art form modified by every choreographer. In Brazil, it mixed with mime in performances sponsored by evangelical Protestant churches. I found 17 versions of Teatro Kumbaya posted to YouTube with a standard development adapted to fit unskilled performers. Another group only posted the music it used.
The drama began with four people kneeling on the floor in a rectangular formation, with another off to the side. Two people stood toward the back in the center. As the music began, the front person approached each of the four and tried to make contact. In turn, each person on the floor was aroused to begin some routine activity, like fussing with the hair, and ignored the messenger.
Each time the person in the center moved, he or she was shadowed by the one in back. The synthesizer music alternated between verses sung by a man, and a group that sang and echoed "kumbaya." When certain words were sung they raised their right arms, then their left.
The music changed from singing to dissonance. The lead and people on the floor turned in one direction and pushed their arms against invisible walls. Next the five turned to the center, held their heads in their hands, and swung their heads from side to side. They repeated the pushing in the other direction, then keeled over on the floor.
The person in back held out his hand to the lead who stood as the music returned to the original choral chorus. They hugged. He did the same with every other person, who then went to the back and hugged the messenger.
A fifth person, if one was used, was aroused last. As the music ended, everyone raised one arm.
The pantomime was performed in churches, where it was possible someone explained it in an introduction. [1] In other places it was performed in the street. With the lyrics in English, the narrative was entirely dependent on the actions of the performers. [2]
Their costumes followed the conventions of the masque. Some had white paint on one side of their faces and black on the other. A few used all white makeup, or wore white gloves. Most wore black tops and slacks, but some dressed the two leads in some combination of black-and-white and/or all white.
The origins of this performance piece, and the acting tradition itself, are difficult to define from information in English on the internet. The first video was uploaded to YouTube in 2007 by Sara Nossa Terra, a Protestant church organized in the 1970s by a physics student at the Federal University of Goiânia. The background music was poorly recorded.
A better version of the music was used by a group in the coastal province of Arequipa in Perú in 2009. The five women and one man were organized by five brothers who had been saved in 1982, after their mother was converted. They since dedicated themselves "to music, preaching in plazas, colleges, universities, theaters." [3]
The script or the idea of mime apparently wasn’t accepted there, since that was the only version on YouTube from outside Brazil. As the map below shows, most came from the urbanized southeastern and southern regions where the number of people with African or native ancestors was smaller than in the former slave-owning north. [4] Four were from the state of São Paulo and three from Paraná with two from Curitiba in that state.
One of the few YouTube versions from another part of the country came from Parintis in Amazonas. Rafael Reis said "The group of actors was formed by the missionary organization EXAD, through a dance workshop with Christian participants from various churches in the city and members of the mission itself." [5]
Reis’ comments suggested that several individual evangelists may have been going from church to church, probably by invitation, to teach this and other pantomimes. The idea of using mime to reach the unconverted may have spread independently through word of mouth or ephemeral publications.
If the skit was intended to dramatize Armageddon and the Resurrection, it was within an almost Lutheran view. Everyone on stage was raised, even though they had ignored the messenger when he or she had tried to contact them. There were no allusions to Catholic confession or to Methodist requirements for atonement for past sins.
I suggest Lutheran because they were the most inclusive Protestant denomination, and Germans were recruited as farmers in the south after Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822. By 1860 they were 10% of São Paulo’s population. [6] A number remigrated from the south to Paraná during the 1890s civil war. [7] By the end of the century German-speakers were 60% of the immigrants living in Curitiba. Most were either Roman Catholics or Lutherans. Some now, of course, are unchurched or involved with Pentecostal groups. [8]
Performers
Dancers: two soloists, five corps
Instrumental Accompaniment: recording
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
The lyrics are discussed in the post for 28 October 2018.
Notes on Music
The music is discussed in the post for 28 October 2018.
Notes on Performance
Most performances were done in churches. Only a few were outdoors where they might be seen by the disinterested or unconverted. The Peruvian group appeared in a shopping area, as did Grupo Resgate in Brasilia. Exército de Adoradores performed in front of the sports arena during the annual Festival Folclórico de Parintins.
The all-male Teatro Metanóia acted in a parking lot or street in Santo Antônio do Jacinto with cars passing in the background. Although they were performing in July 2011, they were using the original recording.
Notes on Movement
Jamille Tuany uploaded a number of videos from Igeja Missionaria Evangelica Deus Proverá in northeastern Brazil. Some included women in white, liturgical dress. She wrote in her YouTube profile: "Where dance is our way of speaking to God and being close to Him."
Notes on Performers
Many of the groups staging "Teatro Kumbaya" were small Protestant sects, but some had affiliations with Presbyterians, Baptists, and established Brazilian denominations.
The largest was Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo, which was organized in 1955 by Manoel de Mello e Silva. The former construction worker from Pernambuco first affiliated with the Assembléia de Deus, then "joined the National Crusade of Evangelization today named Church of the Foursquare Gospel." He preached on radio, and in stadiums, much like his contemporaries in the United States. Most recently, the denomination had 4,300 congregations with 3,600,000 members in Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Portugal and the United States. [10]
Sara Nossa Terra was organized as a student Bible study group by Robson Rodovalho at the Universidade Federal de Goiânia. In 1992, he moved to Brasilia and organized his first church in 1994. He later set up a broadcasting section that reached "more than 1,080 churches and more than 1.3 million believers." [11]
Hernane Santos started as an itinerant evangelist working among Brazilian Indians. In 2002, he began supporting mission activities in Africa. His Visão de Evangelismo Mundial was performing in Curitiba in 2010. Two years later, he and fourteen others, "led by the Holy Spirit," established a community in Campo Largo, also in the state of Paraná, to train missionaries and adopt churches in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. [12]
Jose Roberto formed the Comunidade Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi in 2001 after he received a "revelation from the Holy Spirit" to recreate the primitive church. [13] The Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus was established in 2011 and was performing two years later in Volta Redonda in Rio de Janeiro state. [14]
Igreja Presbiteriana Bela Jerusalém began as a prayer meeting group in 1981 under the auspices of the Central Presbyterian Church of Ribeirão Preto. It opened its own church in 1985. [15] Igreja Batista Missionária started as a renewal church in 1982 and since had affiliated with the National Baptist Convention. It believed "in the working of the Holy Spirit." [16]
Exército de Adoradores was a movement outside ecclesiastical jurisdictions that cooperated with existing churches. Its founder, Rafael, was a member of the Segunda Igreja Batista in Campos in São Paulo state. [17] In addition to its annual appearance in Parintins for the local Baptist church, the Army of Adorers staged performances during the January vacation "in different states like Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Minas Gerais." [18] In the Madureira neighborhood of Rio de Janerio, members met in the Evangélica Assembléia de Deus church. [19].
Availability (in chronological order)
2007
YouTube: Equipe Desafio [Challenge Team], Sara Nossa Terra. "Teatro kumbaya." Paranaiba, Mata Grosso do Sol. Uploaded by Alex Melo on 21 May 2007.
2009
YouTube: Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva. "Kumbaya." Arequipa department, Perú. Uploaded by Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva on 10 August 2009.
YouTube: Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi. "Pantomima Kumbaya." Curitiba, Paraná, 6 December 2009. Uploaded by Pra.Marlici Santos on 16 December 2009.
2010
YouTube: Assembleia de Deus Peniel. "Kumbaya." Rolim de Moura, Rondônia. Uploaded by brufeiten on 16 January 2010.
YouTube: Exército de Adoradores [EXAD]. "Kumbaya." Parintins, Amazonas, 2010. Uploaded by Rafael Reis on 16 February 2011.
YouTube: Visão de Evangelismo Mundial. "Teatro Kumbaya." Curitiba, Paraná. Uploaded by talinizerribas on 30 May 2010.
2011
YouTube: Grupo Resgate. "Teatro Kumbaya." Brasilia, 12 March 2011. Uploaded by Diego Felipe 5 December 2011.
YouTube: Grupo Sinais. "Teatro Kumbaya." São Paulo, 21 May 2011. Uploaded by Samuel Lima on 24 May 2011.
YouTube: Ide Louvart. "Kumbaya." Igeja Missionaria Evangelica Deus Proverá, Fortaleza, Ceará. Uploaded by jamille tuany on 6 June 2011.
YouTube: Teatro Metanóia. "Kumbaiá." Santo Antônio Do Jacinto, Minas Gerais, 9 July 2011. Uploaded by Teatrometanoia on 6 November 2011.
YouTube: Grupo In Action. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by Kamila Lopes on 12 July 2011.
2012
YouTube: Teatro Ide. "Kumbaia Pantomima." Igreja Batista Missionária, Vitória, Espírito Santo, 17 June 2012. Uploaded by Fernanda Natiely on 18 June 2012.
YouTube: Igreja O Brasil Para Cristo. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by I D E OFICIAL on 6 September 2012.
2013
YouTube: Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus. "Kumbaya." Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro. Uploaded by Fernanda Oliveira on 16 Mar 2013.
YouTube: Igreja Bela Jerusalém. "Kumbaya." Camp, São Paulo. Uploaded by Vinícius Souza on 27 July 2013.
2014
YouTube: Youth with a Mission. "KUMBAYA." Ponta Grossa, Paraná. Uploaded by Leinarde S. Santos on 14 March 2014. Music only.
YouTube: Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo Mooca. "Teatro Kumbaya." São Paulo. Uploaded by Thintho Rodrigues on 9 May 2014.
2017
YouTube: Igreja Presbiteriana para as Nações. "TEATRO - KUMBAYA." São Paulo, 7 May 2017. Uploaded by IPNações TV on 24 May 2017.
Locations
End Notes
1. The only video to show an extended introduction was the one posted by IPNações TV. The speaker also played the messenger.
2. According to Wikipedia, "because of Brazil’s size, self-sufficiency, and relative isolation, foreign languages are not widely spoken. English is often studied in school and is increasingly studied in private courses. It has replaced French as the principal second language among educated people." ("Languages of Brazil")
3. "Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva." Its website. 29 August 2010.
4. Wikipedia. "Regions of Brazil."
5. Rafael Reis. YouTube notes translated by Google Translate
6. Wikipedia. "German Brazilians."
7. Wikipedia. "South Region, Brazil." The civil war mentioned by Wikipedia was discussed by Ralph Zuljan. "Brazilian Civil War 1893-1895." On War website.
8. Wikipedia, German Brazilians.
9. Jamille Tuany. YouTube profile. Google Translate from: "onde a dança é a nosso modo de falar com Deus e estar perto dEle."
10. Portuguese Wikipedia. "Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo." Translation by Google Translate.
11. "História da Sara." Sara Nossa Terra website. Translation by Google Translate.
12. Visão de Evangelismo Mundial. Its website. Translation by Google Translate.
13. "História da Igreja Comunidade Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi." Its website. Translation by Google Translate.
14. Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus. Facebook.
15. Igreja Presbiteriana Bela Jerusalém website.
16. "Igreja Batista Missionária." Multifidelidade website. Translation by Google Translate.
17. MissaoExad website.
18. Luíze Bispo Reis and Phelipe Marques Reis. "Exad." No Caminho website. Translation by Google Translate.
19. "Exército de Adoradores (Grupo de Pandeiro )." Facebook. This Assembly of God denomination was discussed in the post for 27 December 2017. It was independent of the one in the United States.
Modern dance became an international art form modified by every choreographer. In Brazil, it mixed with mime in performances sponsored by evangelical Protestant churches. I found 17 versions of Teatro Kumbaya posted to YouTube with a standard development adapted to fit unskilled performers. Another group only posted the music it used.
The drama began with four people kneeling on the floor in a rectangular formation, with another off to the side. Two people stood toward the back in the center. As the music began, the front person approached each of the four and tried to make contact. In turn, each person on the floor was aroused to begin some routine activity, like fussing with the hair, and ignored the messenger.
Each time the person in the center moved, he or she was shadowed by the one in back. The synthesizer music alternated between verses sung by a man, and a group that sang and echoed "kumbaya." When certain words were sung they raised their right arms, then their left.
The music changed from singing to dissonance. The lead and people on the floor turned in one direction and pushed their arms against invisible walls. Next the five turned to the center, held their heads in their hands, and swung their heads from side to side. They repeated the pushing in the other direction, then keeled over on the floor.
The person in back held out his hand to the lead who stood as the music returned to the original choral chorus. They hugged. He did the same with every other person, who then went to the back and hugged the messenger.
A fifth person, if one was used, was aroused last. As the music ended, everyone raised one arm.
The pantomime was performed in churches, where it was possible someone explained it in an introduction. [1] In other places it was performed in the street. With the lyrics in English, the narrative was entirely dependent on the actions of the performers. [2]
Their costumes followed the conventions of the masque. Some had white paint on one side of their faces and black on the other. A few used all white makeup, or wore white gloves. Most wore black tops and slacks, but some dressed the two leads in some combination of black-and-white and/or all white.
The origins of this performance piece, and the acting tradition itself, are difficult to define from information in English on the internet. The first video was uploaded to YouTube in 2007 by Sara Nossa Terra, a Protestant church organized in the 1970s by a physics student at the Federal University of Goiânia. The background music was poorly recorded.
A better version of the music was used by a group in the coastal province of Arequipa in Perú in 2009. The five women and one man were organized by five brothers who had been saved in 1982, after their mother was converted. They since dedicated themselves "to music, preaching in plazas, colleges, universities, theaters." [3]
The script or the idea of mime apparently wasn’t accepted there, since that was the only version on YouTube from outside Brazil. As the map below shows, most came from the urbanized southeastern and southern regions where the number of people with African or native ancestors was smaller than in the former slave-owning north. [4] Four were from the state of São Paulo and three from Paraná with two from Curitiba in that state.
One of the few YouTube versions from another part of the country came from Parintis in Amazonas. Rafael Reis said "The group of actors was formed by the missionary organization EXAD, through a dance workshop with Christian participants from various churches in the city and members of the mission itself." [5]
Reis’ comments suggested that several individual evangelists may have been going from church to church, probably by invitation, to teach this and other pantomimes. The idea of using mime to reach the unconverted may have spread independently through word of mouth or ephemeral publications.
If the skit was intended to dramatize Armageddon and the Resurrection, it was within an almost Lutheran view. Everyone on stage was raised, even though they had ignored the messenger when he or she had tried to contact them. There were no allusions to Catholic confession or to Methodist requirements for atonement for past sins.
I suggest Lutheran because they were the most inclusive Protestant denomination, and Germans were recruited as farmers in the south after Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822. By 1860 they were 10% of São Paulo’s population. [6] A number remigrated from the south to Paraná during the 1890s civil war. [7] By the end of the century German-speakers were 60% of the immigrants living in Curitiba. Most were either Roman Catholics or Lutherans. Some now, of course, are unchurched or involved with Pentecostal groups. [8]
Performers
Dancers: two soloists, five corps
Instrumental Accompaniment: recording
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
The lyrics are discussed in the post for 28 October 2018.
Notes on Music
The music is discussed in the post for 28 October 2018.
Notes on Performance
Most performances were done in churches. Only a few were outdoors where they might be seen by the disinterested or unconverted. The Peruvian group appeared in a shopping area, as did Grupo Resgate in Brasilia. Exército de Adoradores performed in front of the sports arena during the annual Festival Folclórico de Parintins.
The all-male Teatro Metanóia acted in a parking lot or street in Santo Antônio do Jacinto with cars passing in the background. Although they were performing in July 2011, they were using the original recording.
Notes on Movement
Jamille Tuany uploaded a number of videos from Igeja Missionaria Evangelica Deus Proverá in northeastern Brazil. Some included women in white, liturgical dress. She wrote in her YouTube profile: "Where dance is our way of speaking to God and being close to Him."
Notes on Performers
Many of the groups staging "Teatro Kumbaya" were small Protestant sects, but some had affiliations with Presbyterians, Baptists, and established Brazilian denominations.
The largest was Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo, which was organized in 1955 by Manoel de Mello e Silva. The former construction worker from Pernambuco first affiliated with the Assembléia de Deus, then "joined the National Crusade of Evangelization today named Church of the Foursquare Gospel." He preached on radio, and in stadiums, much like his contemporaries in the United States. Most recently, the denomination had 4,300 congregations with 3,600,000 members in Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Portugal and the United States. [10]
Sara Nossa Terra was organized as a student Bible study group by Robson Rodovalho at the Universidade Federal de Goiânia. In 1992, he moved to Brasilia and organized his first church in 1994. He later set up a broadcasting section that reached "more than 1,080 churches and more than 1.3 million believers." [11]
Hernane Santos started as an itinerant evangelist working among Brazilian Indians. In 2002, he began supporting mission activities in Africa. His Visão de Evangelismo Mundial was performing in Curitiba in 2010. Two years later, he and fourteen others, "led by the Holy Spirit," established a community in Campo Largo, also in the state of Paraná, to train missionaries and adopt churches in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. [12]
Jose Roberto formed the Comunidade Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi in 2001 after he received a "revelation from the Holy Spirit" to recreate the primitive church. [13] The Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus was established in 2011 and was performing two years later in Volta Redonda in Rio de Janeiro state. [14]
Igreja Presbiteriana Bela Jerusalém began as a prayer meeting group in 1981 under the auspices of the Central Presbyterian Church of Ribeirão Preto. It opened its own church in 1985. [15] Igreja Batista Missionária started as a renewal church in 1982 and since had affiliated with the National Baptist Convention. It believed "in the working of the Holy Spirit." [16]
Exército de Adoradores was a movement outside ecclesiastical jurisdictions that cooperated with existing churches. Its founder, Rafael, was a member of the Segunda Igreja Batista in Campos in São Paulo state. [17] In addition to its annual appearance in Parintins for the local Baptist church, the Army of Adorers staged performances during the January vacation "in different states like Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Minas Gerais." [18] In the Madureira neighborhood of Rio de Janerio, members met in the Evangélica Assembléia de Deus church. [19].
Availability (in chronological order)
2007
YouTube: Equipe Desafio [Challenge Team], Sara Nossa Terra. "Teatro kumbaya." Paranaiba, Mata Grosso do Sol. Uploaded by Alex Melo on 21 May 2007.
2009
YouTube: Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva. "Kumbaya." Arequipa department, Perú. Uploaded by Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva on 10 August 2009.
YouTube: Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi. "Pantomima Kumbaya." Curitiba, Paraná, 6 December 2009. Uploaded by Pra.Marlici Santos on 16 December 2009.
2010
YouTube: Assembleia de Deus Peniel. "Kumbaya." Rolim de Moura, Rondônia. Uploaded by brufeiten on 16 January 2010.
YouTube: Exército de Adoradores [EXAD]. "Kumbaya." Parintins, Amazonas, 2010. Uploaded by Rafael Reis on 16 February 2011.
YouTube: Visão de Evangelismo Mundial. "Teatro Kumbaya." Curitiba, Paraná. Uploaded by talinizerribas on 30 May 2010.
2011
YouTube: Grupo Resgate. "Teatro Kumbaya." Brasilia, 12 March 2011. Uploaded by Diego Felipe 5 December 2011.
YouTube: Grupo Sinais. "Teatro Kumbaya." São Paulo, 21 May 2011. Uploaded by Samuel Lima on 24 May 2011.
YouTube: Ide Louvart. "Kumbaya." Igeja Missionaria Evangelica Deus Proverá, Fortaleza, Ceará. Uploaded by jamille tuany on 6 June 2011.
YouTube: Teatro Metanóia. "Kumbaiá." Santo Antônio Do Jacinto, Minas Gerais, 9 July 2011. Uploaded by Teatrometanoia on 6 November 2011.
YouTube: Grupo In Action. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by Kamila Lopes on 12 July 2011.
2012
YouTube: Teatro Ide. "Kumbaia Pantomima." Igreja Batista Missionária, Vitória, Espírito Santo, 17 June 2012. Uploaded by Fernanda Natiely on 18 June 2012.
YouTube: Igreja O Brasil Para Cristo. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by I D E OFICIAL on 6 September 2012.
2013
YouTube: Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus. "Kumbaya." Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro. Uploaded by Fernanda Oliveira on 16 Mar 2013.
YouTube: Igreja Bela Jerusalém. "Kumbaya." Camp, São Paulo. Uploaded by Vinícius Souza on 27 July 2013.
2014
YouTube: Youth with a Mission. "KUMBAYA." Ponta Grossa, Paraná. Uploaded by Leinarde S. Santos on 14 March 2014. Music only.
YouTube: Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo Mooca. "Teatro Kumbaya." São Paulo. Uploaded by Thintho Rodrigues on 9 May 2014.
2017
YouTube: Igreja Presbiteriana para as Nações. "TEATRO - KUMBAYA." São Paulo, 7 May 2017. Uploaded by IPNações TV on 24 May 2017.
Locations
End Notes
1. The only video to show an extended introduction was the one posted by IPNações TV. The speaker also played the messenger.
2. According to Wikipedia, "because of Brazil’s size, self-sufficiency, and relative isolation, foreign languages are not widely spoken. English is often studied in school and is increasingly studied in private courses. It has replaced French as the principal second language among educated people." ("Languages of Brazil")
3. "Ministerio Misionero Tierra Nueva." Its website. 29 August 2010.
4. Wikipedia. "Regions of Brazil."
5. Rafael Reis. YouTube notes translated by Google Translate
6. Wikipedia. "German Brazilians."
7. Wikipedia. "South Region, Brazil." The civil war mentioned by Wikipedia was discussed by Ralph Zuljan. "Brazilian Civil War 1893-1895." On War website.
8. Wikipedia, German Brazilians.
9. Jamille Tuany. YouTube profile. Google Translate from: "onde a dança é a nosso modo de falar com Deus e estar perto dEle."
10. Portuguese Wikipedia. "Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo." Translation by Google Translate.
11. "História da Sara." Sara Nossa Terra website. Translation by Google Translate.
12. Visão de Evangelismo Mundial. Its website. Translation by Google Translate.
13. "História da Igreja Comunidade Cristã Tabernáculo de Davi." Its website. Translation by Google Translate.
14. Comunidade Evangélica Dependentes de Deus. Facebook.
15. Igreja Presbiteriana Bela Jerusalém website.
16. "Igreja Batista Missionária." Multifidelidade website. Translation by Google Translate.
17. MissaoExad website.
18. Luíze Bispo Reis and Phelipe Marques Reis. "Exad." No Caminho website. Translation by Google Translate.
19. "Exército de Adoradores (Grupo de Pandeiro )." Facebook. This Assembly of God denomination was discussed in the post for 27 December 2017. It was independent of the one in the United States.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Ryul Chamber Choir - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Dance
Samuel Moffett joined seven Presbyterian missionaries already in Korea in 1890. He stressed "intensive Bible study for all believers, and evangelism by all believers." To that end, he established a seminary in 1901 [1] that grew into Chongshin University. [2]
Sang-Kil Lee suggested the Presbyterians brought choirs that spread beyond the denomination in 1913, when a private vocal group was established. After Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945, more choirs were organized. By the 1960s, they were becoming part of the school programs in South Korea. These were augmented in the 1970s by government-sponsored choral competitions. Civic and professional choirs formed as a consequence of the increased support for group vocal music. [3]
The infiltration of local traditions into the western vocal form can be seen in a comparison of versions of "Kumbaya" performed by the Ryul Chamber Choir of Seoul and by the Far East Broadcast Company Women’s Chorus in Busan. [4] The gestures both groups used were abstract rather than literal, and performed by rows and sections.
The Ryul conductor placed ten men in black suits in the back row. In front on them were two rows of nine women in black, floor-length sheathes. The piano was at stage right and the djembé at stage left for Neil Ginsberg’s arrangement.
They stood still during the first "kumbaya" verse, but during the "crying" stanza the men waved their arms twice to the left like Hawaiian dancers, then twice to the right. The women bent their knees so they could be seen, and stood like the women in Busan while the men repeated their combination. The women’s hands were flexed.
Both sets of movements were repeated in the verse. At one point, the men introduced a single hand clap that was not in the score.
During the "singing" verse, everyone took a step to the left and twisted their bodies back to the front. They repeated it to the right. The men’s arms were out at their waists. They all kept their faces toward the audience. On the second line the women remained still while the men continued the step and twist combination. On the next line, the women moved and the men stood still. They all remained in place on the last line.
The group stayed in place for the "praying" verse. In the concluding amen section, the individuals at stage right bent their knees on the first "oh lord." They were joined by those stage left on the next, and by those in the center on the third repetition. They stood en masse on the final "oh lord" and spread their arms as they held the last syllable. This echoed the Busan women’s opening.
The singers’ arms returned to their sides for the final "kumbaya," each of which was quieter. The woman playing the djembé hit one final note that echoed through the Lutheran church. It had been converted into a swimming pool by the Soviets, and the acoustics changes weren’t eliminated after the church was returned to the congregation. [5]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: 18 women, 10 men
Vocal Director: Lee Kison
Instrumental Accompaniment: upright piano played by a woman
Rhythm Accompaniment: djembé played by a woman
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom BY yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: repeated "oh Lord" five times followed by three repetitions of "kmbaya"
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Neil Ginsberg’ arrangement, discussed in the post for 21 August 2018.
Tempo: moderate
Singing Style: little vibrato
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano loud before the choir sang, then subdued.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: the camera microphone didn’t often pick up the sound of the djembé.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: concert, 11 July 2015
Location: altar, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Microphones: none
Clothing: the women wore sleeveless, black, Empire-stye sheathes with tan bands under their busts; the men were in black suits and bow ties; the conductor also wore a black suit.
Notes on Movement
The choir was arranged in three rows with two risers. The conductor stood in front center at the beginning, then sat in the first pew to conduct with both arms while seated. He stood again for the final repetitions of "kumbaya."
Notes on Audience
They applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Kisan Lee did his undergraduate work in choral conducting at Chongshin, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard. He returned to Korea to teach at Chongshin and directed city choirs in Sungnam, Goyang, and Daegu. He apparently retired from the university in 2017, but remained active in the Hallelujah Praise group of the Church of Love Presbyterian Church. [6]
The Ryul Chamber Choir and Orchestra may have been a private one. I found nothing about it, except it had invited Bruce Chamberlain, of the University of Arizona, to appear as a guest conductor. [7] Lee earned a doctorate from Arizona in 2009. [8]
The church where the choir performed in Saint Petersburg had been built by Germans in 1837. After the Russians returned the church, services were conducted in both Russian and German. Wikipedia said Korean Presbyterians held their services in the nearby Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Katarina. [9]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by JiYeong Noh on 23 July 2015. Notes were in both English and Korean.
End Notes
1. Jae Guen Lee. "Moffett, Samuel Austin." Boston University website.
2. Wikipedia. "Chongshin University."
3. Sang-Kil Lee. "Korean Choral Music from its Inception to the Present Day." The IFCM Magazine website. 15 July 2012.
4. The Far East Broadcasting Company version was discussed in the post for 21 October 2018.
5. Vincent Rampino. "Non-Orthodox Religious Spaces on Nevsky Prospekt: Oppression, Privacy, and Memory." William and Mary in Saint Petersburg website. 19 December 2013.
6. "About: Lee Sun-sun." Facebook. Google Translate wasn’t consistent in rendering his name.
7. "Bruce Chamberlain." University of Arizona website.
8. Facebook.
9. Wikipedia. "Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul."
Samuel Moffett joined seven Presbyterian missionaries already in Korea in 1890. He stressed "intensive Bible study for all believers, and evangelism by all believers." To that end, he established a seminary in 1901 [1] that grew into Chongshin University. [2]
Sang-Kil Lee suggested the Presbyterians brought choirs that spread beyond the denomination in 1913, when a private vocal group was established. After Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945, more choirs were organized. By the 1960s, they were becoming part of the school programs in South Korea. These were augmented in the 1970s by government-sponsored choral competitions. Civic and professional choirs formed as a consequence of the increased support for group vocal music. [3]
The infiltration of local traditions into the western vocal form can be seen in a comparison of versions of "Kumbaya" performed by the Ryul Chamber Choir of Seoul and by the Far East Broadcast Company Women’s Chorus in Busan. [4] The gestures both groups used were abstract rather than literal, and performed by rows and sections.
The Ryul conductor placed ten men in black suits in the back row. In front on them were two rows of nine women in black, floor-length sheathes. The piano was at stage right and the djembé at stage left for Neil Ginsberg’s arrangement.
They stood still during the first "kumbaya" verse, but during the "crying" stanza the men waved their arms twice to the left like Hawaiian dancers, then twice to the right. The women bent their knees so they could be seen, and stood like the women in Busan while the men repeated their combination. The women’s hands were flexed.
Both sets of movements were repeated in the verse. At one point, the men introduced a single hand clap that was not in the score.
During the "singing" verse, everyone took a step to the left and twisted their bodies back to the front. They repeated it to the right. The men’s arms were out at their waists. They all kept their faces toward the audience. On the second line the women remained still while the men continued the step and twist combination. On the next line, the women moved and the men stood still. They all remained in place on the last line.
The group stayed in place for the "praying" verse. In the concluding amen section, the individuals at stage right bent their knees on the first "oh lord." They were joined by those stage left on the next, and by those in the center on the third repetition. They stood en masse on the final "oh lord" and spread their arms as they held the last syllable. This echoed the Busan women’s opening.
The singers’ arms returned to their sides for the final "kumbaya," each of which was quieter. The woman playing the djembé hit one final note that echoed through the Lutheran church. It had been converted into a swimming pool by the Soviets, and the acoustics changes weren’t eliminated after the church was returned to the congregation. [5]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: 18 women, 10 men
Vocal Director: Lee Kison
Instrumental Accompaniment: upright piano played by a woman
Rhythm Accompaniment: djembé played by a woman
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom BY yah
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: repeated "oh Lord" five times followed by three repetitions of "kmbaya"
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Neil Ginsberg’ arrangement, discussed in the post for 21 August 2018.
Tempo: moderate
Singing Style: little vibrato
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano loud before the choir sang, then subdued.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: the camera microphone didn’t often pick up the sound of the djembé.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: concert, 11 July 2015
Location: altar, Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Microphones: none
Clothing: the women wore sleeveless, black, Empire-stye sheathes with tan bands under their busts; the men were in black suits and bow ties; the conductor also wore a black suit.
Notes on Movement
The choir was arranged in three rows with two risers. The conductor stood in front center at the beginning, then sat in the first pew to conduct with both arms while seated. He stood again for the final repetitions of "kumbaya."
Notes on Audience
They applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Kisan Lee did his undergraduate work in choral conducting at Chongshin, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard. He returned to Korea to teach at Chongshin and directed city choirs in Sungnam, Goyang, and Daegu. He apparently retired from the university in 2017, but remained active in the Hallelujah Praise group of the Church of Love Presbyterian Church. [6]
The Ryul Chamber Choir and Orchestra may have been a private one. I found nothing about it, except it had invited Bruce Chamberlain, of the University of Arizona, to appear as a guest conductor. [7] Lee earned a doctorate from Arizona in 2009. [8]
The church where the choir performed in Saint Petersburg had been built by Germans in 1837. After the Russians returned the church, services were conducted in both Russian and German. Wikipedia said Korean Presbyterians held their services in the nearby Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Katarina. [9]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by JiYeong Noh on 23 July 2015. Notes were in both English and Korean.
End Notes
1. Jae Guen Lee. "Moffett, Samuel Austin." Boston University website.
2. Wikipedia. "Chongshin University."
3. Sang-Kil Lee. "Korean Choral Music from its Inception to the Present Day." The IFCM Magazine website. 15 July 2012.
4. The Far East Broadcasting Company version was discussed in the post for 21 October 2018.
5. Vincent Rampino. "Non-Orthodox Religious Spaces on Nevsky Prospekt: Oppression, Privacy, and Memory." William and Mary in Saint Petersburg website. 19 December 2013.
6. "About: Lee Sun-sun." Facebook. Google Translate wasn’t consistent in rendering his name.
7. "Bruce Chamberlain." University of Arizona website.
8. Facebook.
9. Wikipedia. "Lutheran Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul."
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Busan Far East Broadcasting Women Chorus - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Dance
Sang-Kil Lee, president of the Korean Federation for Choral Music, used the word "glocalism" to describe South Korea’s blend of global and local elements. He noted that, while choirs were introduced by Protestant missionaries before World War I, they were "significantly influenced by the hosting of big international events such as the Asian Games in 1986 and the Olympics in 1988." [1]
The Far East Broadcasting Company’s version of "Kumbaya" combined an American song and chorus lines with moves more acceptable to conservative religious audiences. The steps were simple, as was necessary for singers, but they were effective because of the precision with which they were executed.
The sponsor was an American evangelical group organized in the Philippines in 1945 to beam short-wave radio broadcasts to people living in Communist China. [2] It provided no information on its programs in South Korea. One only can deduce from watching the women’s chorus that the choreographer, if not some of the singers, watched American films carefully or had taken ballet lessons. [3]
The vocal arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry [4] was in 4/4, but all the dance combinations took two beats or half a measure. The chorus members had to know the choreography to perform in those small temporal units. At the same time, they were aware of their positions in the group, so they all faced the same angle and raised their arms to the same heights.
The lyrics began with four repetitions of the work "kumbaya." When the performance began the young women were dressed in ivory-colored tops and narrow-legged slacks, with their backs to the audience. Their feet were separated in ballet’s parallel second position.
On the first "kumbaya" the women on stage right turned around. On the first repetition, the women on the left turned, and on the third the ones in the center moved. They stayed in that position, with their arms at their sides for the remainder of the four-line verse.
The gestures that followed were abstract, with no connection to the English text. The separation of the two may have been related to the low levels of fluency among South Koreans. The language became part of the elementary school curriculum in 1993, and so people under 35 years of age were more likely to understand a sung text than older people. [5]
It’s also one trait that may have been cultural. While Presbyterians were the first to proselytize in Korea, [6] they apparently could not impose the requirement that one must understand what one sang, which had influenced Anglo and Scots Protestants.
For the first verse, "someone’s praying," the Busan women divided into two groups facing each other. They then did a wide pas de bourrée. As they stepped to the side, the singers again faced front. When they crossed their foot nearest the center behind the other, they also raised their arms over their heads in a high fifth position. In the final part they brought their front feet beside their back ones as they lowered their arms to their sides.
On the "kumbaya" refrain, they moved their right feet forward with their knees bent, then did the same with their left feet. To complete the measure, they moved their left feet back, then right ones.
The women stepped to a diagonal toward each other and raised their upstage arms on the second lines, with their weight on their upstage feet and the heels of their downstage feet off the ground. They walked forward on the final line. They repeated the forward/backward step combination for the refrain, and continued it through the third line of the verse.
On the final line they began in their original position, facing front. They raised their right arms up to their waist and moved them out, and repeated with their left arms to end in ballet’s second position. They dropped their arms to their sides on "kumbaya."
The key changed for the "singing" verse and the rhythm became louder. The women took two wide steps to the left followed by two to the right with their arms at forty-five degrees from their bodies with their hands flexed. On line two, they stood still and nodded their heads. They repeated the steps on line three, and the head nods on line four.
The final verse was a repetition of "praying." They spread their arms wider so they crossed those of their neighbors. On the first line the first and third rows stepped in one direction while the other rows stepped in the other. For the second line, the rows took turns bending their knees low while the others stood.
The version ended with two repetitions of "kumbaya." The women turned toward their partners with elbows bent and hands straight up with the palms forward. On the very last word, they turned their faces toward the audience.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: 34 woman spread among first and second sopranos and altos
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum, shaker
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum bye yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, singing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCB where B was praying. The Perry arrangement had used "let us praise the Lord" for the final verse.
Ending: kumbaya repeated twice
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry. It will be discussed in a future post.
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with key change on final iteration
Singing Style: chordal harmony with few overtones
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano was loud and stressed the downbeats
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: drum and shaker were loud
Notes on Performance
Occasion: no information given
Location: stage, probably in Busan, the second largest city in Korea
Microphones: none
Clothing: ivory tops and narrow-legged slacks, with medium-height heels, and taupe-colored long scarves
Notes on Movement
The women were standing in four rows on three risers.
Notes on Audience
Applause at end.
Notes on Performers
Far East Broadcasting was organized by John Broger and Bob Bowman. It began using South Korea as a base for reaching North Korea in 1956. Its organization expanded to Busan in 2008, which it claimed had "a relatively low Christian population." Most of its broadcasting was in Korean, with only an hour a month in English. [7]
The two men met at the Assemblies of God’s Southern California Bible College in Pasadena in the 1930s. [8] During World War II, Broger was an radio technician in the United States Navy, and returned to the military when Arthur Radford became chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff under Eisenhower. From his position managing internal communications in the services, he indoctrinated men with the ideas of the John Birch Society, according to Trent Christman. [9]
Bowman took over managing FEBC after Borger left. [10] As an undergraduate he had sung baritone for Haven of Rest Quartet, which appeared on early Christian radio broadcasts [11] Mark Ward believed that experience allowed him to see the effectiveness of radio as an evangelical medium. [12]
Theologically, FEBC promoted the literal interpretation of the Bible, the Holiness emphasis on "regeneration by the Holy Spirit," and the millenialist belief "in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved into the resurrection of life, and they that are lost into the resurrection of damnation." [13]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lee Young-mi on 12 June 2017. The notes were in Korean and translated by Google Translate.
End Notes
1. Sang-Kil Lee. "Korean Choral Music from its Inception to the Present Day." The IFCM Magazine website. 15 July 2012.
2. Wikipedia. "Far East Broadcasting Company."
3. The national ballet was organized in Seoul in 1962. (Wikipedia. Korea National Ballet.) I could not find any information on how many children took classes.
4. Dave and Jean Perry. "Kum Ba Yah." Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, 2002.
5. "The Future of English in Korea." The Diplomat website. 29 June 2014. Surveys indicated 50% could speak English, but differences by age, gender, locality, and fluency were averaged together in that number.
6. Jae Guen Lee. "Moffett, Samuel Austin." Boston University website. The Presbyterians arrived in Korea in 1890.
7. "South Korea." Far East Broadcasting Company website for South Korea.
8. Mark Ellis. "Far East Broadcasting Founder Bob Bowman Watched God Do the Impossible with Radio." Crossmap website. 29 December 2003.
9. Trent Christman. Brass Button Broadcasters. Nashville: Turner Publishing Company, 1992. 139.
10. Ruth A. Tucker. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004 edition. 385.
11. Haven of Rest was mentioned in the post for 27 November 2017.
12. Mark Ward. The Lord’s Radio. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. 96.
13. "What We Believe." Far East Broadcasting Company website.
Sang-Kil Lee, president of the Korean Federation for Choral Music, used the word "glocalism" to describe South Korea’s blend of global and local elements. He noted that, while choirs were introduced by Protestant missionaries before World War I, they were "significantly influenced by the hosting of big international events such as the Asian Games in 1986 and the Olympics in 1988." [1]
The Far East Broadcasting Company’s version of "Kumbaya" combined an American song and chorus lines with moves more acceptable to conservative religious audiences. The steps were simple, as was necessary for singers, but they were effective because of the precision with which they were executed.
The sponsor was an American evangelical group organized in the Philippines in 1945 to beam short-wave radio broadcasts to people living in Communist China. [2] It provided no information on its programs in South Korea. One only can deduce from watching the women’s chorus that the choreographer, if not some of the singers, watched American films carefully or had taken ballet lessons. [3]
The vocal arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry [4] was in 4/4, but all the dance combinations took two beats or half a measure. The chorus members had to know the choreography to perform in those small temporal units. At the same time, they were aware of their positions in the group, so they all faced the same angle and raised their arms to the same heights.
The lyrics began with four repetitions of the work "kumbaya." When the performance began the young women were dressed in ivory-colored tops and narrow-legged slacks, with their backs to the audience. Their feet were separated in ballet’s parallel second position.
On the first "kumbaya" the women on stage right turned around. On the first repetition, the women on the left turned, and on the third the ones in the center moved. They stayed in that position, with their arms at their sides for the remainder of the four-line verse.
The gestures that followed were abstract, with no connection to the English text. The separation of the two may have been related to the low levels of fluency among South Koreans. The language became part of the elementary school curriculum in 1993, and so people under 35 years of age were more likely to understand a sung text than older people. [5]
It’s also one trait that may have been cultural. While Presbyterians were the first to proselytize in Korea, [6] they apparently could not impose the requirement that one must understand what one sang, which had influenced Anglo and Scots Protestants.
For the first verse, "someone’s praying," the Busan women divided into two groups facing each other. They then did a wide pas de bourrée. As they stepped to the side, the singers again faced front. When they crossed their foot nearest the center behind the other, they also raised their arms over their heads in a high fifth position. In the final part they brought their front feet beside their back ones as they lowered their arms to their sides.
On the "kumbaya" refrain, they moved their right feet forward with their knees bent, then did the same with their left feet. To complete the measure, they moved their left feet back, then right ones.
The women stepped to a diagonal toward each other and raised their upstage arms on the second lines, with their weight on their upstage feet and the heels of their downstage feet off the ground. They walked forward on the final line. They repeated the forward/backward step combination for the refrain, and continued it through the third line of the verse.
On the final line they began in their original position, facing front. They raised their right arms up to their waist and moved them out, and repeated with their left arms to end in ballet’s second position. They dropped their arms to their sides on "kumbaya."
The key changed for the "singing" verse and the rhythm became louder. The women took two wide steps to the left followed by two to the right with their arms at forty-five degrees from their bodies with their hands flexed. On line two, they stood still and nodded their heads. They repeated the steps on line three, and the head nods on line four.
The final verse was a repetition of "praying." They spread their arms wider so they crossed those of their neighbors. On the first line the first and third rows stepped in one direction while the other rows stepped in the other. For the second line, the rows took turns bending their knees low while the others stood.
The version ended with two repetitions of "kumbaya." The women turned toward their partners with elbows bent and hands straight up with the palms forward. On the very last word, they turned their faces toward the audience.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: 34 woman spread among first and second sopranos and altos
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum, shaker
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum bye yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, singing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCB where B was praying. The Perry arrangement had used "let us praise the Lord" for the final verse.
Ending: kumbaya repeated twice
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry. It will be discussed in a future post.
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with key change on final iteration
Singing Style: chordal harmony with few overtones
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano was loud and stressed the downbeats
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: drum and shaker were loud
Notes on Performance
Occasion: no information given
Location: stage, probably in Busan, the second largest city in Korea
Microphones: none
Clothing: ivory tops and narrow-legged slacks, with medium-height heels, and taupe-colored long scarves
Notes on Movement
The women were standing in four rows on three risers.
Notes on Audience
Applause at end.
Notes on Performers
Far East Broadcasting was organized by John Broger and Bob Bowman. It began using South Korea as a base for reaching North Korea in 1956. Its organization expanded to Busan in 2008, which it claimed had "a relatively low Christian population." Most of its broadcasting was in Korean, with only an hour a month in English. [7]
The two men met at the Assemblies of God’s Southern California Bible College in Pasadena in the 1930s. [8] During World War II, Broger was an radio technician in the United States Navy, and returned to the military when Arthur Radford became chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff under Eisenhower. From his position managing internal communications in the services, he indoctrinated men with the ideas of the John Birch Society, according to Trent Christman. [9]
Bowman took over managing FEBC after Borger left. [10] As an undergraduate he had sung baritone for Haven of Rest Quartet, which appeared on early Christian radio broadcasts [11] Mark Ward believed that experience allowed him to see the effectiveness of radio as an evangelical medium. [12]
Theologically, FEBC promoted the literal interpretation of the Bible, the Holiness emphasis on "regeneration by the Holy Spirit," and the millenialist belief "in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved into the resurrection of life, and they that are lost into the resurrection of damnation." [13]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lee Young-mi on 12 June 2017. The notes were in Korean and translated by Google Translate.
End Notes
1. Sang-Kil Lee. "Korean Choral Music from its Inception to the Present Day." The IFCM Magazine website. 15 July 2012.
2. Wikipedia. "Far East Broadcasting Company."
3. The national ballet was organized in Seoul in 1962. (Wikipedia. Korea National Ballet.) I could not find any information on how many children took classes.
4. Dave and Jean Perry. "Kum Ba Yah." Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, 2002.
5. "The Future of English in Korea." The Diplomat website. 29 June 2014. Surveys indicated 50% could speak English, but differences by age, gender, locality, and fluency were averaged together in that number.
6. Jae Guen Lee. "Moffett, Samuel Austin." Boston University website. The Presbyterians arrived in Korea in 1890.
7. "South Korea." Far East Broadcasting Company website for South Korea.
8. Mark Ellis. "Far East Broadcasting Founder Bob Bowman Watched God Do the Impossible with Radio." Crossmap website. 29 December 2003.
9. Trent Christman. Brass Button Broadcasters. Nashville: Turner Publishing Company, 1992. 139.
10. Ruth A. Tucker. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004 edition. 385.
11. Haven of Rest was mentioned in the post for 27 November 2017.
12. Mark Ward. The Lord’s Radio. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. 96.
13. "What We Believe." Far East Broadcasting Company website.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
The Selvys - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Dance
Ballet, as we think of it with bare-armed women in point shoes and long, white, tulle skirts, emerged in the early nineteenth century. Two features were taken up by the popular stage: the corps, which evolved into the chorus line, and the pas de quatre.
The Gaiety Theatre opened in London in 1868 and the Folies Bergère in Paris the next year. The Gaiety’s owner described himself as a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." [1]
The Folies became explicitly a place for men to watch women dance in 1887 when it staged the "Place aux Jeunes." [2] The Gaiety’s new director, George Edwardes, introduced a pas de quartre with four women who "did what is called ‘high kicking’." [3]
By the end of the century its advertisements featured renderings of two lines of young women standing in low heels, the one line showing its knickers when one leg was raised to the front while the opposing line was bent forward to thrust a leg to the rear. [4]
Flo Ziegfeld brought the Folies-style show to New York in 1910. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had noted dancing was more important at the Gaiety in 1894 than it was in "American entertainments of the same grade." [5] Ziegfeld’s women did not tease with glimpses of female anatomy forbidden in polite society, but wore elaborate costumes and used stairs to be seen. His entertainers included the Bahamian-born dancer, Bert Williams. [6]
Busby Berkeley took Ziegfeld’s format to Hollywood in 1930 with even more complex patterns of movement. He first worked on Eddie Cantor films, but a later film featured Gene Kelly. [7]
Elaborate production numbers did not survive World War II. Broadway musicals staged in the 1950s by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe had coherent narratives that reduced the dance sequences to accompaniments to singing. [8] Chorus lines moved to television where Cholly Atkins choreographed the June Taylor Dancers for Jackie Gleason’s shows. [9]
In 1955, he worked with an African-American vocal quintet from Harlem, the Cadillacs. [10] Adkins asked them
"to stop clutching their hearts to denote true love or pointing yonder when ‘far away’ was the subject and try counterpoint movements. The lead singer, usually the worst dancer, kept it simple by moving to the melody, while backing singers evoked the rhythmic subtleties of jazz hoofers remembered by Atkins"
from "riffdancing routines from the ensemble passages that swing sections played behind soloists in the 1930s". [11]
Thus was born the techniques he used when Berry Gordy hired him to coach his Motown Records’ artists in 1964. He merged the stylized moves of tap and Hollywood films, with the natural moves already known by the soul singers. The style was borrowed by groups like the Boltons and Skylar Patterson, who used fewer of the professional movements and more of the ones from African-American religious traditions. [12]
The Selvys included two dance sections in the version of "Kumbaya" they used to open their part of an afternoon concert in Chicago’s Washington Park in 2011. The singers nearest the camera in the right wings were large women encased in flowing, long-sleeved, floor-length, white robes with sleeveless, maroon surplices. Their gestures were accordingly big.
As soon as the keyboards and drum set began playing they began moving between diagonals and clapping. They spread their arms wide between claps near the collarbone. As much as I could tell through the costumes, most of their movements were done with bent knees like the Bolton Brothers had done.
They were wearing athletic shoes as they stood, widely separated, to sing. When one woman danced, she hopped at an angle, landing with her supporting bent knee and her back foot raised from the knee. Her arms swung in a semicircle as she moved, with the left arm going forward when she landed on her right foot. If she were in a ballet class, she would have been doing a small jeté.
The women didn’t follow a choreographed pattern, but each moved with the same arm gestures, occasionally crossing in front of one another. The accompaniment had changed to one drum that had the hollow sound of a tom tom.
They returned to their places to sing.
The group from northeastern Arkansas may have selected "Kumbaya" as their opening number to get the audience comfortable with them. The lead singer, Jessica Selvy-Davis, believed they knew the song and would sing along with her. They used the 1-5 melody of the HIghtower Brothers and the pronoun "somebody," but most of their verses were iterations of "kumbaya" rather than "come by here."
In the first verse, Jessica sang alone with the instrumental accompaniment. On the second, her four sisters sang in what sounded like unison or the timbraic harmony that developed in families. After that, Jessica sang the statements, and they sang refrain. On the final line of each verse, Jessica sang "oh Lord," which they repeated while raising their left arms. Jessica trailed them on the final "kumbaya."
The only variations after that were occasional verses like "somebody’s praying." Jessica’s voice grew raspier in later iterations.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Jessica Selvy-Davis
Vocal Group: Jennifer Selvy-Carr, Joy Selvy-Campbell, Jacklyn Selvy, and Joni Selvy Brown [13]
Instrumental Accompaniment: Jesse James Selvy III, keyboard; Antonio Bernard Parks, keyboard; Jarrett Deon Selvy, bass keyboard
Rhythm Accompaniment: Jeffrey Lynn Selvy, Junior, drum set
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kome BAA ya
Verses: kumbaya, praying, waiting, come by here, needs you
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAABBxxxAAAA where A was "kumbaya" and B was "praying"
Ending: repeat "oh Lord" seven times
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: the soloist sang the first verse, the four women the second in unison; thereafter, the soloist sang statements and the group sang refrains.
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: the keyboards and drums accompanied the singing, but only the drums played during the dancing.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: African Festival of the Arts, 4 September 2011, sponsored on Labor Day weekend by Africa International House USA of Chicago
Location: Stage, Washington Park, Chicago
Microphones: each singer had a hand-held mike.
Clothing: the men wore white shirts and maroon vests.
Notes on Movement
The sisters never stood still.
Notes on Audience
The video camera was in the wings and did not pick up any audience response. It stopped before the applause.
Notes on Performers
The five sisters were trained to quartet singing by their father, Jesse Selvys. A keyboard player and the bass keyboard player were their brothers. The other keyboard player and drummer were cousins. [14]
Jesse was on the town council in Earle, [15] a small town located on Mississippi River bottom lands in Crittendon County. Slaves were the majority of the population before the Civil War, and attempts to suppress the political power of African Americans continue. [16] Earle’s population fell by a sixth between 2000 and 2013 as whites left the community. A tornado in 2008 no doubt contributed to the emigration. [17]
The Silvys never mentioned their religious affiliation, although several were associated with the Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts in West Memphis. That group said it believed "baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues is given to believers who ask for it." [18]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by TheSelvys1 on 20 October 2011.
End Notes
1. John Hollingshead. Gaiety Chronicles. London: A. Constable, 1898.
2. "Folies-Bergère." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July1998; last updated by Richard Pallardy on 6 November 2008.
3. Lilly Grove Frazer. Dancing. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. The show was Faust up to Date. The pas de quatre was both a part of corps work done by four women in ballets like Swan Lake and a specific work choreographed by Jules Perrot for four famous soloists in 1845.
4. "Rice & Barton’s Big Gaiety Spectacular Extravaganza Co." Buffalo: The Courier Company, 1900." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 18 February 2009 by Adam Cuerden. It can be seen at Wikipedia. "Chorus Line."
5. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 23 December 1894. 9a. Quoted by Wikipedia. "Gaiety Girls."
6. Wikipedia. "Ziegfeld Follies" and "Bert Williams."
7. Michael Barson. "Busby Berkeley." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July 1998; last updated 8 March 2018. The first Cantor film, Whoopee!, was originally a Ziegfeld show. For Me and My Gal featured Kelly in 1942.
8. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! included modern ballets choreographed by Agnes DeMille in 1943. (Wikipedia. Oklahoma!) Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Brigadoon also was choreographed by DeMille. (Wikipedia. "Brigadoon.")
9. Douglas Martin. "Cholly Atkins, 89, Dancer and Choreographer. The New York Times. 23 April 2003.
10. Wikipedia. "The Cadillacs."
11. Terry Monaghan. "Cholly Atkins." The [London, England] Guardian. 28 April 2003.
12. The Boltons were discussed in the post for 12 August 2017. Patterson was discussed in the post for 27 October 2017.
13. Jessica Selvy-Davis introduced her sisters, but I had a hard time hearing her. The names mentioned in an Italian review clarified what I heard. Jessica did not name the instrumentalists, but the Italian did in "Rassegna ‘Blues al femminile’." Villadossola city website. 4 December 2008.
14. "The Selvys." Reverb Nation website.
15. "Earle." Arkansas Municipal League website.
16. Grif Stockley. "Crittenden County." Encyclopedia of Arkansas website. Last updated 26 February 2016.
17. Wikipedia. "Earle, Arkansas."
18. Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts website.
Ballet, as we think of it with bare-armed women in point shoes and long, white, tulle skirts, emerged in the early nineteenth century. Two features were taken up by the popular stage: the corps, which evolved into the chorus line, and the pas de quatre.
The Gaiety Theatre opened in London in 1868 and the Folies Bergère in Paris the next year. The Gaiety’s owner described himself as a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." [1]
The Folies became explicitly a place for men to watch women dance in 1887 when it staged the "Place aux Jeunes." [2] The Gaiety’s new director, George Edwardes, introduced a pas de quartre with four women who "did what is called ‘high kicking’." [3]
By the end of the century its advertisements featured renderings of two lines of young women standing in low heels, the one line showing its knickers when one leg was raised to the front while the opposing line was bent forward to thrust a leg to the rear. [4]
Flo Ziegfeld brought the Folies-style show to New York in 1910. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had noted dancing was more important at the Gaiety in 1894 than it was in "American entertainments of the same grade." [5] Ziegfeld’s women did not tease with glimpses of female anatomy forbidden in polite society, but wore elaborate costumes and used stairs to be seen. His entertainers included the Bahamian-born dancer, Bert Williams. [6]
Busby Berkeley took Ziegfeld’s format to Hollywood in 1930 with even more complex patterns of movement. He first worked on Eddie Cantor films, but a later film featured Gene Kelly. [7]
Elaborate production numbers did not survive World War II. Broadway musicals staged in the 1950s by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe had coherent narratives that reduced the dance sequences to accompaniments to singing. [8] Chorus lines moved to television where Cholly Atkins choreographed the June Taylor Dancers for Jackie Gleason’s shows. [9]
In 1955, he worked with an African-American vocal quintet from Harlem, the Cadillacs. [10] Adkins asked them
"to stop clutching their hearts to denote true love or pointing yonder when ‘far away’ was the subject and try counterpoint movements. The lead singer, usually the worst dancer, kept it simple by moving to the melody, while backing singers evoked the rhythmic subtleties of jazz hoofers remembered by Atkins"
from "riffdancing routines from the ensemble passages that swing sections played behind soloists in the 1930s". [11]
Thus was born the techniques he used when Berry Gordy hired him to coach his Motown Records’ artists in 1964. He merged the stylized moves of tap and Hollywood films, with the natural moves already known by the soul singers. The style was borrowed by groups like the Boltons and Skylar Patterson, who used fewer of the professional movements and more of the ones from African-American religious traditions. [12]
The Selvys included two dance sections in the version of "Kumbaya" they used to open their part of an afternoon concert in Chicago’s Washington Park in 2011. The singers nearest the camera in the right wings were large women encased in flowing, long-sleeved, floor-length, white robes with sleeveless, maroon surplices. Their gestures were accordingly big.
As soon as the keyboards and drum set began playing they began moving between diagonals and clapping. They spread their arms wide between claps near the collarbone. As much as I could tell through the costumes, most of their movements were done with bent knees like the Bolton Brothers had done.
They were wearing athletic shoes as they stood, widely separated, to sing. When one woman danced, she hopped at an angle, landing with her supporting bent knee and her back foot raised from the knee. Her arms swung in a semicircle as she moved, with the left arm going forward when she landed on her right foot. If she were in a ballet class, she would have been doing a small jeté.
The women didn’t follow a choreographed pattern, but each moved with the same arm gestures, occasionally crossing in front of one another. The accompaniment had changed to one drum that had the hollow sound of a tom tom.
They returned to their places to sing.
The group from northeastern Arkansas may have selected "Kumbaya" as their opening number to get the audience comfortable with them. The lead singer, Jessica Selvy-Davis, believed they knew the song and would sing along with her. They used the 1-5 melody of the HIghtower Brothers and the pronoun "somebody," but most of their verses were iterations of "kumbaya" rather than "come by here."
In the first verse, Jessica sang alone with the instrumental accompaniment. On the second, her four sisters sang in what sounded like unison or the timbraic harmony that developed in families. After that, Jessica sang the statements, and they sang refrain. On the final line of each verse, Jessica sang "oh Lord," which they repeated while raising their left arms. Jessica trailed them on the final "kumbaya."
The only variations after that were occasional verses like "somebody’s praying." Jessica’s voice grew raspier in later iterations.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Jessica Selvy-Davis
Vocal Group: Jennifer Selvy-Carr, Joy Selvy-Campbell, Jacklyn Selvy, and Joni Selvy Brown [13]
Instrumental Accompaniment: Jesse James Selvy III, keyboard; Antonio Bernard Parks, keyboard; Jarrett Deon Selvy, bass keyboard
Rhythm Accompaniment: Jeffrey Lynn Selvy, Junior, drum set
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kome BAA ya
Verses: kumbaya, praying, waiting, come by here, needs you
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAABBxxxAAAA where A was "kumbaya" and B was "praying"
Ending: repeat "oh Lord" seven times
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: the soloist sang the first verse, the four women the second in unison; thereafter, the soloist sang statements and the group sang refrains.
Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: the keyboards and drums accompanied the singing, but only the drums played during the dancing.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: African Festival of the Arts, 4 September 2011, sponsored on Labor Day weekend by Africa International House USA of Chicago
Location: Stage, Washington Park, Chicago
Microphones: each singer had a hand-held mike.
Clothing: the men wore white shirts and maroon vests.
Notes on Movement
The sisters never stood still.
Notes on Audience
The video camera was in the wings and did not pick up any audience response. It stopped before the applause.
Notes on Performers
The five sisters were trained to quartet singing by their father, Jesse Selvys. A keyboard player and the bass keyboard player were their brothers. The other keyboard player and drummer were cousins. [14]
Jesse was on the town council in Earle, [15] a small town located on Mississippi River bottom lands in Crittendon County. Slaves were the majority of the population before the Civil War, and attempts to suppress the political power of African Americans continue. [16] Earle’s population fell by a sixth between 2000 and 2013 as whites left the community. A tornado in 2008 no doubt contributed to the emigration. [17]
The Silvys never mentioned their religious affiliation, although several were associated with the Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts in West Memphis. That group said it believed "baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues is given to believers who ask for it." [18]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by TheSelvys1 on 20 October 2011.
End Notes
1. John Hollingshead. Gaiety Chronicles. London: A. Constable, 1898.
2. "Folies-Bergère." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July1998; last updated by Richard Pallardy on 6 November 2008.
3. Lilly Grove Frazer. Dancing. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. The show was Faust up to Date. The pas de quatre was both a part of corps work done by four women in ballets like Swan Lake and a specific work choreographed by Jules Perrot for four famous soloists in 1845.
4. "Rice & Barton’s Big Gaiety Spectacular Extravaganza Co." Buffalo: The Courier Company, 1900." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 18 February 2009 by Adam Cuerden. It can be seen at Wikipedia. "Chorus Line."
5. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 23 December 1894. 9a. Quoted by Wikipedia. "Gaiety Girls."
6. Wikipedia. "Ziegfeld Follies" and "Bert Williams."
7. Michael Barson. "Busby Berkeley." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July 1998; last updated 8 March 2018. The first Cantor film, Whoopee!, was originally a Ziegfeld show. For Me and My Gal featured Kelly in 1942.
8. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! included modern ballets choreographed by Agnes DeMille in 1943. (Wikipedia. Oklahoma!) Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Brigadoon also was choreographed by DeMille. (Wikipedia. "Brigadoon.")
9. Douglas Martin. "Cholly Atkins, 89, Dancer and Choreographer. The New York Times. 23 April 2003.
10. Wikipedia. "The Cadillacs."
11. Terry Monaghan. "Cholly Atkins." The [London, England] Guardian. 28 April 2003.
12. The Boltons were discussed in the post for 12 August 2017. Patterson was discussed in the post for 27 October 2017.
13. Jessica Selvy-Davis introduced her sisters, but I had a hard time hearing her. The names mentioned in an Italian review clarified what I heard. Jessica did not name the instrumentalists, but the Italian did in "Rassegna ‘Blues al femminile’." Villadossola city website. 4 December 2008.
14. "The Selvys." Reverb Nation website.
15. "Earle." Arkansas Municipal League website.
16. Grif Stockley. "Crittenden County." Encyclopedia of Arkansas website. Last updated 26 February 2016.
17. Wikipedia. "Earle, Arkansas."
18. Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts website.
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Janet Lynn - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Dance
Ballet training entered figure skating regimes after Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova won the pairs competition in the 1964 Olympics. Protopopov’s mother was a dancer, and he apparently absorbed a dancer’s way of moving the way children learn to use their bodies when they are toddlers. He said he originally wanted to study music, but was rejected because he couldn’t detect differences in pitch and key. Instead, he enrolled in percussion classes and took up figure skating by chance. [1]
Peggy Fleming said their 1964 performance "had a great effect on me." She went on, "what I brought was the spirit of ballet more than the techniques of dance" to her performances. [2]
Superficially ballet and skating looked the same with arabesques, turns, jumps, and connecting steps, but they differ in how the movements were executed. A woman balanced on a turned out leg in a pointe shoe with the other raised in back was using her muscles differently from one moving forward on a skate with a weight attached to her back foot.
Despite the physiological differences, there were things skating and ballet shared like the use of the head in turning to avoid getting dizzy and the use of extensions to make leaps look higher. [3] Fleming worked with John Curry on the use of the arms and hands that extended lines and released tensions. [4]
Janet Lynn was an eleven-year-old with ambitious in 1964. She had rejected ballet when her parents enrolled her in a class for toddlers, [5] but was taking skating lessons when she was three. [6] Her coach, Slavka Kohout, added ballet and gymnastics to the schedule at her rink north of Chicago. [7] Buck Jerzy said Lynn "also took organ lessons to get a better feel for moving to the music while skating." [8]
In 1983, Lynn included "Kumbaya" in a medley of spirituals to accompany her technical program at the World Professional Championships. During the first three lines of the verse she glided around the rink building the energy to execute a maneuver at the beginning of "Oh, Lord." The first was a jump with a double turn. The other was a turning side-arabesque that morphed into a pirouette-like spin. [9]
Lynn’s arms were generally extended, not quite straight, and not quite curved like a ballerina’s. She made the transition from the side arabesque to the turn by extending both arms in front of her, then pulling them back across her chest in a pose associated with Giselle. [10]
The choice of spirituals was unusual in an event that leaned toward classical music. In her exhibition program she used the "Bluebird" variation from Act 3 of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. [11] She had used Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun at the U. S. Figure Skating Championships in 1968. [12] Nijinsky had used the music for a modern ballet in 1912. [13]
By the time Lynn utilized the three spirituals she had retired from amateur competitions and left the Ice Follies to raise a family. She had become a Born-Again Christian after she placed third in the 1972 Olympics, [14] and later became a religious speaker. [15]
Others regretted her disappearance from the ice and conversion into a suburban housewife who scrubbed her own toilets. [16] Christine Brennan wrote that Brian Boitano, who began competing in the Olympics after Lynn retired,
"stopped her the last time he saw her, at the 1994 Nationals in Detroit. He always talks about hearing music, even elevator music and immediately picturing himself doing a routine on ice.
"‘Janet,’ he wanted to know, ‘when you hear music, do you still picture yourself skating to it?’
"‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Always’." [17]
Performers
Skating Soloist: Janet Lynn
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unidentified
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
There were none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here [18]
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: two-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: part two of three-part medley of spirituals that began with "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and ended with "Deep River"
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: on the first iteration, the chorus sang softly; on the second the piano played the statement and the chorus sang the refrain
Notes on Performance
Occasion: 1983 World Professional Championships ladies’ singles competition, technical program
Location: ice rink, Landover, Maryland
Clothing: white dress with long sleeves and short skirt; scoop neck and outer edges of sleeves covered with large beads. Her skates were white.
Notes on Audience
She won the women’s single’s competition. The audience booed when she got a mere 9.8 from one judge for the "Bluebird" variation; the other scores were all 9.9. [19]
Notes on Performers
Lynn’s family were members of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago. [20] She became interested in religion during her two years of confirmation classes that include a week in the summer at Camp Augustana in Wisconsin. [21] In high school she joined Young Life. [22]
While still in high school she competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. She won the United States Figure Skating championship from 1969 to 1973. [23] Her coach said, "she had an animal grace. She had a sense of balance that was incredible, something innate that cannot be taught." [24]
It was after she fell during her free-skating program in 1972 that she heard about speaking in tongues from a high school friend. [25] Soon after, she and another friend sought the Holy Spirit. [26]
William Johnson talked to after she won her last national championship the next year. When asked how she had done so well, she said "I had an inner peace last night, and I always skate very well when I have that."
They talked more about her relationship with God. She said she was bored and depressed after losing the Olympics and considered quitting. She prayed, and continued for His sake. She continued:
"‘But it is so hard and I am more depressed than I was before. I’m O.K. when I trust in God, but otherwise not. I used to be O.K. on my own, but now I have to have God and faith or I can’t make it. It’s so hard now....’
"The interviewer pauses then asks hesitantly, ‘Is God a good skater?’
"The radiant smile flashes once again and Janet says with a giggle, ‘He must be. That sure wasn’t me skating last night’." [27]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014
End Notes
1. Gererd Zelensky interview with Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova published by Yunost. Reprinted by Ryan Stevens. "The Legacy Of Ludmila." Skate Guard website. 29 September 2017.
2. Peggy Fleming. The Long Program. With Peter Kaminsky. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. 11. Fleming won the gold medal in figure skating in the 1968 Olympics; she competed in the 1964 one.
3. Oleg Protopopov remembered, "When I was a boy, my mother brought me an American magazine with Dick Button on the cover. He was doing a split jump, and his position was so extended, his toes were pointed…my mother said, ‘one day you must skate better than him’. It never happened." (Christie Sausa. "Protopopovs, Dick Button Reunite at Tribute." Adirondack Almanack. 6 September 2011.
4. Fleming. 11. Curry wanted to study ballet when he was child, but took up skating when his father refused to let him dance. He won the Olympics single men’s figure skating event in 1976.
5. Janet Lynn. Peace + Love. With Dean Merrill. Carol Stream: Creation House, 1973. Reprinted by New York: Dell Publishing, 1976. 14.
6. Lynn. 15.
7. Allison. Interview with Slavka Kohout. Transcribed by Fiona Mcquarrie. Manley Woman website. 26 July 2009.
8. Buck Jerzy. "Janet Lynn Proved Sacrifices Spell Success." Polish Sports Hall of Fame website.
9. I don’t follow skating, and don’t know the technical terms for the maneuvers. I would be grateful to anyone who enlightens me.
10. Giselle was introduced by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in 1841. (Wikipedia. "Giselle.")
11. "Janet Lynn - Bluebird Variation." Video from 1983 uploaded to YouTube by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014.
12. Lynn. 59. A video from 1983 was uploaded to YouTube by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014. ("Janet Lynn - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.")
13. Wikipedia. "Afternoon of a Faun (Nijinsky)." It was done for the Ballets Russes.
14. Lynn. 118-119.
15. Wikipedia. "Janet Lynn."
16. Christine Brennan. Inside Edge. New York: Scribner, 1966. "Go Out and Tell a Story" chapter reprinted by Nick Pilgrim. Aussie Skates website. 2003.
17. Brennan.
18. The commentator was talking during this section and I may have misunderstood the words.
19. YouTube, Bluebird.
20. Lynn. 17.
21. Lynn. 51-52. Her autobiography was written by the editor of a religious publishing house who focused on her relationship with Christ; he rarely mentioned other aspects of her childhood and adolescence.
22. Lynn. 88. Young Life was mentioned in the post for 17 December 2017.
23. Wikipedia. "Janet Lynn."
24. Slavka Kohout. Quoted by William Johnson. "This Is It, for Heaven’s Sake." Sports Illustrated. 5 March 1973.
25. Lynn. 114.
26. Lynn. 118-119.
27. Johnson.
Ballet training entered figure skating regimes after Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova won the pairs competition in the 1964 Olympics. Protopopov’s mother was a dancer, and he apparently absorbed a dancer’s way of moving the way children learn to use their bodies when they are toddlers. He said he originally wanted to study music, but was rejected because he couldn’t detect differences in pitch and key. Instead, he enrolled in percussion classes and took up figure skating by chance. [1]
Peggy Fleming said their 1964 performance "had a great effect on me." She went on, "what I brought was the spirit of ballet more than the techniques of dance" to her performances. [2]
Superficially ballet and skating looked the same with arabesques, turns, jumps, and connecting steps, but they differ in how the movements were executed. A woman balanced on a turned out leg in a pointe shoe with the other raised in back was using her muscles differently from one moving forward on a skate with a weight attached to her back foot.
Despite the physiological differences, there were things skating and ballet shared like the use of the head in turning to avoid getting dizzy and the use of extensions to make leaps look higher. [3] Fleming worked with John Curry on the use of the arms and hands that extended lines and released tensions. [4]
Janet Lynn was an eleven-year-old with ambitious in 1964. She had rejected ballet when her parents enrolled her in a class for toddlers, [5] but was taking skating lessons when she was three. [6] Her coach, Slavka Kohout, added ballet and gymnastics to the schedule at her rink north of Chicago. [7] Buck Jerzy said Lynn "also took organ lessons to get a better feel for moving to the music while skating." [8]
In 1983, Lynn included "Kumbaya" in a medley of spirituals to accompany her technical program at the World Professional Championships. During the first three lines of the verse she glided around the rink building the energy to execute a maneuver at the beginning of "Oh, Lord." The first was a jump with a double turn. The other was a turning side-arabesque that morphed into a pirouette-like spin. [9]
Lynn’s arms were generally extended, not quite straight, and not quite curved like a ballerina’s. She made the transition from the side arabesque to the turn by extending both arms in front of her, then pulling them back across her chest in a pose associated with Giselle. [10]
The choice of spirituals was unusual in an event that leaned toward classical music. In her exhibition program she used the "Bluebird" variation from Act 3 of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. [11] She had used Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun at the U. S. Figure Skating Championships in 1968. [12] Nijinsky had used the music for a modern ballet in 1912. [13]
By the time Lynn utilized the three spirituals she had retired from amateur competitions and left the Ice Follies to raise a family. She had become a Born-Again Christian after she placed third in the 1972 Olympics, [14] and later became a religious speaker. [15]
Others regretted her disappearance from the ice and conversion into a suburban housewife who scrubbed her own toilets. [16] Christine Brennan wrote that Brian Boitano, who began competing in the Olympics after Lynn retired,
"stopped her the last time he saw her, at the 1994 Nationals in Detroit. He always talks about hearing music, even elevator music and immediately picturing himself doing a routine on ice.
"‘Janet,’ he wanted to know, ‘when you hear music, do you still picture yourself skating to it?’
"‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Always’." [17]
Performers
Skating Soloist: Janet Lynn
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unidentified
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
There were none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here [18]
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: two-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: part two of three-part medley of spirituals that began with "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and ended with "Deep River"
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: on the first iteration, the chorus sang softly; on the second the piano played the statement and the chorus sang the refrain
Notes on Performance
Occasion: 1983 World Professional Championships ladies’ singles competition, technical program
Location: ice rink, Landover, Maryland
Clothing: white dress with long sleeves and short skirt; scoop neck and outer edges of sleeves covered with large beads. Her skates were white.
Notes on Audience
She won the women’s single’s competition. The audience booed when she got a mere 9.8 from one judge for the "Bluebird" variation; the other scores were all 9.9. [19]
Notes on Performers
Lynn’s family were members of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago. [20] She became interested in religion during her two years of confirmation classes that include a week in the summer at Camp Augustana in Wisconsin. [21] In high school she joined Young Life. [22]
While still in high school she competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. She won the United States Figure Skating championship from 1969 to 1973. [23] Her coach said, "she had an animal grace. She had a sense of balance that was incredible, something innate that cannot be taught." [24]
It was after she fell during her free-skating program in 1972 that she heard about speaking in tongues from a high school friend. [25] Soon after, she and another friend sought the Holy Spirit. [26]
William Johnson talked to after she won her last national championship the next year. When asked how she had done so well, she said "I had an inner peace last night, and I always skate very well when I have that."
They talked more about her relationship with God. She said she was bored and depressed after losing the Olympics and considered quitting. She prayed, and continued for His sake. She continued:
"‘But it is so hard and I am more depressed than I was before. I’m O.K. when I trust in God, but otherwise not. I used to be O.K. on my own, but now I have to have God and faith or I can’t make it. It’s so hard now....’
"The interviewer pauses then asks hesitantly, ‘Is God a good skater?’
"The radiant smile flashes once again and Janet says with a giggle, ‘He must be. That sure wasn’t me skating last night’." [27]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014
End Notes
1. Gererd Zelensky interview with Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova published by Yunost. Reprinted by Ryan Stevens. "The Legacy Of Ludmila." Skate Guard website. 29 September 2017.
2. Peggy Fleming. The Long Program. With Peter Kaminsky. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. 11. Fleming won the gold medal in figure skating in the 1968 Olympics; she competed in the 1964 one.
3. Oleg Protopopov remembered, "When I was a boy, my mother brought me an American magazine with Dick Button on the cover. He was doing a split jump, and his position was so extended, his toes were pointed…my mother said, ‘one day you must skate better than him’. It never happened." (Christie Sausa. "Protopopovs, Dick Button Reunite at Tribute." Adirondack Almanack. 6 September 2011.
4. Fleming. 11. Curry wanted to study ballet when he was child, but took up skating when his father refused to let him dance. He won the Olympics single men’s figure skating event in 1976.
5. Janet Lynn. Peace + Love. With Dean Merrill. Carol Stream: Creation House, 1973. Reprinted by New York: Dell Publishing, 1976. 14.
6. Lynn. 15.
7. Allison. Interview with Slavka Kohout. Transcribed by Fiona Mcquarrie. Manley Woman website. 26 July 2009.
8. Buck Jerzy. "Janet Lynn Proved Sacrifices Spell Success." Polish Sports Hall of Fame website.
9. I don’t follow skating, and don’t know the technical terms for the maneuvers. I would be grateful to anyone who enlightens me.
10. Giselle was introduced by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in 1841. (Wikipedia. "Giselle.")
11. "Janet Lynn - Bluebird Variation." Video from 1983 uploaded to YouTube by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014.
12. Lynn. 59. A video from 1983 was uploaded to YouTube by GoldenAgeofFS on 21 November 2014. ("Janet Lynn - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.")
13. Wikipedia. "Afternoon of a Faun (Nijinsky)." It was done for the Ballets Russes.
14. Lynn. 118-119.
15. Wikipedia. "Janet Lynn."
16. Christine Brennan. Inside Edge. New York: Scribner, 1966. "Go Out and Tell a Story" chapter reprinted by Nick Pilgrim. Aussie Skates website. 2003.
17. Brennan.
18. The commentator was talking during this section and I may have misunderstood the words.
19. YouTube, Bluebird.
20. Lynn. 17.
21. Lynn. 51-52. Her autobiography was written by the editor of a religious publishing house who focused on her relationship with Christ; he rarely mentioned other aspects of her childhood and adolescence.
22. Lynn. 88. Young Life was mentioned in the post for 17 December 2017.
23. Wikipedia. "Janet Lynn."
24. Slavka Kohout. Quoted by William Johnson. "This Is It, for Heaven’s Sake." Sports Illustrated. 5 March 1973.
25. Lynn. 114.
26. Lynn. 118-119.
27. Johnson.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Clariece Paulk - O Lord, Won’t You Come By Here?
Topic: Movement - Dance
Ballet, as exemplified by the corps in long-skirted white tutus, was challenged by women in the early twentieth century who disliked its restraints. Best known was Isadora Duncan who posed in flowing gowns and long scarves.
Equally important, but less well known was Ruth St. Denis. She was inspired by pictures of Egyptian goddess, and reimagined them moving. She and Ted Shawn formed their own school and company that incorporated elements of Oriental mysticism.
One of her students, Martha Graham, was the most influential, in part because she codified a method that challenged that of ballet. Instead of working from the balance of a plie, she used abdominal contractions for power. Her costumes often were long dresses that fell from the chest in loose circles she shaped with her legs and turns.
Clariece Paulk’s dancers borrowed Graham’s vocabulary for a version of "Come by Here" prepared for a conference sponsored by a charismatic church in Decatur, Georgia. The bishop of the Chapel Hill Harvester church was the son of an official in the Spurling-Tomlinson Church of God [1] that had drawn upon the same sources as Charles Parham and William Seymour to develop a separate form of Pentecostalism.
Earl Paulk became the church’s representative on radio in 1958. Clariece Miller played piano for his weekly broadcasts from the church’s headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee. [2] She was raised in the city, and then was studying piano at the nearby University of Chattanooga. She later married Earl’s brother, Don. [3]
Both Earl and Clariece were what Scott Thumma called second-generation Pentecostals, [4] who were uncomfortable with the "hyper emotionalism" of the camp meetings. [5] After Earl, Don and their sister Myrtle left the church to form what became the Chapel Hill Harvesters, Clariece defined the order of service. [6]
Thumma suggested she professionalized [7] the rituals by transferring functions from the congregation to people she had trained. He noted "the expressive portions of worship, typically unpredictably spontaneous and difficult to control, soon decreased as they became more structured and domesticated." [8] Further, the spontaneous "prophecies, tongues, and healings" were cut from tapes of services made for television broadcast, then limited during the service by Clariece’s use of music. [9]
She remembered church gatherings she had attended that were so unstructured, one choir director asked the congregation what they should sing and another pastor waited for volunteers to fill the choir loft before he began the service. She also had "been in churches that didn’t believe in dancing, yet there was shouting and ‘dancing in the Spirit’." [10]
When she saw her first liturgical dance at a ministerial conference in the 1960s, it suggested ways movement could be regularized. She thought, "if we could rehearse the music we were going to sing in a particular service and rehearse the instrumental music, and perform drama from a script, why couldn’t we have choreographed dance?" [11]
Her version of "Come by Here" was part of a spectacle dramatizing the Civil Rights movement. [12] It began with two white men in suits walking away from each other. A Black male soloist in a torn undershirt and knee pants stood with his back to the audience with his knees bent and his arms raised high.
An African-American woman with a scarf around her head reached her arms forward. She did a contraction then threw her head back and her arms to her sides. He lifted her from behind and slowly turned.
As the music changed from the opening repetitions of "oh, Lord" to "somebody’s praying" they knelt on the floor. He stood with his arms raised in front of him, his hands together, while she remained of her knees, with her body erect, head thrown back, and arms opened wide.
So far, the choreography could have been a dramatization of slavery. A chorus of women repeated the "oh Lord" verse as the song moved from the prelude into the denouement. Women in long dresses and two additional men came on stage to execute more movements derived from Graham.
It was in the denouement that the Paulks’ discomfort with the emotional aspects of Pentecostalism became obvious. The musical accompaniment changed from random drum beats and strums of a string bass to a keyboard, but the choir’s vocal style didn’t changed. The women sang with the same kind of pure voices Madison Short had cultivated in the local high school twenty years before. [13] This lack of vocal emotion continued when a man joined them to sing verses over their repeated phrases.
The failure of the music to progress toward a climax was reflected in the dance, which continued to include more variations on Graham’s style for no apparent reason other than their own virtuosity. The tape ended before they were done, as if fading away were the appropriate ending for a religious experience.
Performers
Dancers: at least seven women, three men [14]
Vocal Soloist: man
Vocal Group: women
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard
Rhythm Accompaniment: occasional drum or string bass
Credits
From the original drama, "The March Goes On.’ [15]
Written by Charles Reed and Marie Middleton [16]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, needs you, praying, need you in the morning, looking for a blessing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: prelude-denouement
Verse Repetition Pattern: each verse repeated twice; "oh Lord" verse used to begin, end, and make the transition from the prelude to the denouement.
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: each line on one tone
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: prelude and first part of denouement used only female singers; in second part of the denouement, a male singer first echoed them, then sang over their repetitions.
Singing Style: clear tones with no vibrato
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: prelude nearly a capella with occasional drum beats or strokes on the string bass; keyboard took over in the denouement, but was restrained.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: World Congress on the Kingdom of God, 1990
Location: stage, K Center, Chapel Hill Harvester Church, Decatur, Georgia
Microphones: none visible
Clothing: shades of lavender; women in long shapeless dresses and darker ankle length tights; men in sleeveless undershirts and knee-length pants
Notes on Movement
Dance in the style of Martha Graham.
Notes on Audience
Video was cut off before the dancers finished.
Notes on Performers
Clariece began playing piano as a child, but her mother made sure she "would learn to read music, arrange music, compose and transpose." [17] She met her husband when she was a freshman at the Church of God’s Lee College in Cleveland. The next year, she attended Wheaton College where "Rolf Espeseth introduced me to a whole new world of sacred classical music. In his choral conducting class he taught me how important it is to select music for worship services." [18]
She returned to Tennessee for her junior and senior years at the University of Chattanooga, where she "danced and sung in productions for the Chattanooga Opera Association," [19] including the Threepenny Opera. [20]
In 1983, the church opened an elementary school that "devoted an hour every day to arts education for each child." When students wanted more, she opened the Clarience Paulk School of the Performing Arts. [21] Among other projects it mounted productions of The Nutcracker and Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. [22]
The church, by then renamed the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, closed after Earl Paulk was accused of preying on young women and girls in his church. One consequence of the litigation was a DNA test that proved he had fathered Clariece’s son. [23] His son/nephew, Donald Junior, reorganized the church after the scandals as the Spirit and Truth Sanctuary in Decatur. [24]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Don Paulk for Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on 28 November 2013.
End Notes
1. Scott Thumma. "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Megachurches in Modern American Society." PhD dissertation. Emory University, 1996. Chapter 2, 13-14.
2. Thumma. Chapter 2, 27.
3. Earl Paulk. Unfinished Course. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Press, 2004. 64.
4. Thumma. Chapter 2, 16-17.
5. Thumma. Chapter 2, 16. "In a sermon in 1977 he stated this feeling very more succinctly, ‘I used to go to camp meetings and I used to dread it with a holy terror’." Paulk also remembered "As a kid I watched the hyper emotionalism and vowed, ‘God I want to serve you...but I don’t want that because I don’t understand that. It has no meaning to me’."
6. Wikipedia. "Earl Paulk."
7. Thumma. Chapter 7, 9-10.
8. Thumma. Chapter 7, 10.
9. Thumma. Chapter 7, 10.
10. Clariece Paulk. People Don’t Know What They Like...They Like What They Know. Maitland, Florida: Xulon Press, 2017. 34.
11. Clariece Paulk. 35.
12. Clariece Paulk. 93.
13. For more on Madison Short and Columbia High School, see the post for 12 August 2018.
14. The company was integrated. The other African-American male and female dancers were not paired during the lifts, which meant a Black man touched a white woman. Clariece named some of her later dancers (page 153), and noted Denise Guzzardi was her first choreographer. (Clariece Paulk. 35.)
15. Don Paulk, YouTube notes.
16. Clariece Paulk. 236.
17. Clariece Paulk. 46.
18. Clariece Paulk. 60.
19. Earl Paulk. 76.
20. Clariece Paulk. 43.
21. Clarience Paulk. 85.
22. Clarience Paulk. 236.
23. John Blake. "How the Ultimate Scandal Saved One Pastor." CNN website. March 2015. He suggested Clariece became involved with Earl because she wanted a son, and had had only daughters.
24. Wikipedia.
Ballet, as exemplified by the corps in long-skirted white tutus, was challenged by women in the early twentieth century who disliked its restraints. Best known was Isadora Duncan who posed in flowing gowns and long scarves.
Equally important, but less well known was Ruth St. Denis. She was inspired by pictures of Egyptian goddess, and reimagined them moving. She and Ted Shawn formed their own school and company that incorporated elements of Oriental mysticism.
One of her students, Martha Graham, was the most influential, in part because she codified a method that challenged that of ballet. Instead of working from the balance of a plie, she used abdominal contractions for power. Her costumes often were long dresses that fell from the chest in loose circles she shaped with her legs and turns.
Clariece Paulk’s dancers borrowed Graham’s vocabulary for a version of "Come by Here" prepared for a conference sponsored by a charismatic church in Decatur, Georgia. The bishop of the Chapel Hill Harvester church was the son of an official in the Spurling-Tomlinson Church of God [1] that had drawn upon the same sources as Charles Parham and William Seymour to develop a separate form of Pentecostalism.
Earl Paulk became the church’s representative on radio in 1958. Clariece Miller played piano for his weekly broadcasts from the church’s headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee. [2] She was raised in the city, and then was studying piano at the nearby University of Chattanooga. She later married Earl’s brother, Don. [3]
Both Earl and Clariece were what Scott Thumma called second-generation Pentecostals, [4] who were uncomfortable with the "hyper emotionalism" of the camp meetings. [5] After Earl, Don and their sister Myrtle left the church to form what became the Chapel Hill Harvesters, Clariece defined the order of service. [6]
Thumma suggested she professionalized [7] the rituals by transferring functions from the congregation to people she had trained. He noted "the expressive portions of worship, typically unpredictably spontaneous and difficult to control, soon decreased as they became more structured and domesticated." [8] Further, the spontaneous "prophecies, tongues, and healings" were cut from tapes of services made for television broadcast, then limited during the service by Clariece’s use of music. [9]
She remembered church gatherings she had attended that were so unstructured, one choir director asked the congregation what they should sing and another pastor waited for volunteers to fill the choir loft before he began the service. She also had "been in churches that didn’t believe in dancing, yet there was shouting and ‘dancing in the Spirit’." [10]
When she saw her first liturgical dance at a ministerial conference in the 1960s, it suggested ways movement could be regularized. She thought, "if we could rehearse the music we were going to sing in a particular service and rehearse the instrumental music, and perform drama from a script, why couldn’t we have choreographed dance?" [11]
Her version of "Come by Here" was part of a spectacle dramatizing the Civil Rights movement. [12] It began with two white men in suits walking away from each other. A Black male soloist in a torn undershirt and knee pants stood with his back to the audience with his knees bent and his arms raised high.
An African-American woman with a scarf around her head reached her arms forward. She did a contraction then threw her head back and her arms to her sides. He lifted her from behind and slowly turned.
As the music changed from the opening repetitions of "oh, Lord" to "somebody’s praying" they knelt on the floor. He stood with his arms raised in front of him, his hands together, while she remained of her knees, with her body erect, head thrown back, and arms opened wide.
So far, the choreography could have been a dramatization of slavery. A chorus of women repeated the "oh Lord" verse as the song moved from the prelude into the denouement. Women in long dresses and two additional men came on stage to execute more movements derived from Graham.
It was in the denouement that the Paulks’ discomfort with the emotional aspects of Pentecostalism became obvious. The musical accompaniment changed from random drum beats and strums of a string bass to a keyboard, but the choir’s vocal style didn’t changed. The women sang with the same kind of pure voices Madison Short had cultivated in the local high school twenty years before. [13] This lack of vocal emotion continued when a man joined them to sing verses over their repeated phrases.
The failure of the music to progress toward a climax was reflected in the dance, which continued to include more variations on Graham’s style for no apparent reason other than their own virtuosity. The tape ended before they were done, as if fading away were the appropriate ending for a religious experience.
Performers
Dancers: at least seven women, three men [14]
Vocal Soloist: man
Vocal Group: women
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard
Rhythm Accompaniment: occasional drum or string bass
Credits
From the original drama, "The March Goes On.’ [15]
Written by Charles Reed and Marie Middleton [16]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, needs you, praying, need you in the morning, looking for a blessing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: prelude-denouement
Verse Repetition Pattern: each verse repeated twice; "oh Lord" verse used to begin, end, and make the transition from the prelude to the denouement.
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: each line on one tone
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: prelude and first part of denouement used only female singers; in second part of the denouement, a male singer first echoed them, then sang over their repetitions.
Singing Style: clear tones with no vibrato
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: prelude nearly a capella with occasional drum beats or strokes on the string bass; keyboard took over in the denouement, but was restrained.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: World Congress on the Kingdom of God, 1990
Location: stage, K Center, Chapel Hill Harvester Church, Decatur, Georgia
Microphones: none visible
Clothing: shades of lavender; women in long shapeless dresses and darker ankle length tights; men in sleeveless undershirts and knee-length pants
Notes on Movement
Dance in the style of Martha Graham.
Notes on Audience
Video was cut off before the dancers finished.
Notes on Performers
Clariece began playing piano as a child, but her mother made sure she "would learn to read music, arrange music, compose and transpose." [17] She met her husband when she was a freshman at the Church of God’s Lee College in Cleveland. The next year, she attended Wheaton College where "Rolf Espeseth introduced me to a whole new world of sacred classical music. In his choral conducting class he taught me how important it is to select music for worship services." [18]
She returned to Tennessee for her junior and senior years at the University of Chattanooga, where she "danced and sung in productions for the Chattanooga Opera Association," [19] including the Threepenny Opera. [20]
In 1983, the church opened an elementary school that "devoted an hour every day to arts education for each child." When students wanted more, she opened the Clarience Paulk School of the Performing Arts. [21] Among other projects it mounted productions of The Nutcracker and Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. [22]
The church, by then renamed the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, closed after Earl Paulk was accused of preying on young women and girls in his church. One consequence of the litigation was a DNA test that proved he had fathered Clariece’s son. [23] His son/nephew, Donald Junior, reorganized the church after the scandals as the Spirit and Truth Sanctuary in Decatur. [24]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Don Paulk for Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on 28 November 2013.
End Notes
1. Scott Thumma. "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Megachurches in Modern American Society." PhD dissertation. Emory University, 1996. Chapter 2, 13-14.
2. Thumma. Chapter 2, 27.
3. Earl Paulk. Unfinished Course. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Press, 2004. 64.
4. Thumma. Chapter 2, 16-17.
5. Thumma. Chapter 2, 16. "In a sermon in 1977 he stated this feeling very more succinctly, ‘I used to go to camp meetings and I used to dread it with a holy terror’." Paulk also remembered "As a kid I watched the hyper emotionalism and vowed, ‘God I want to serve you...but I don’t want that because I don’t understand that. It has no meaning to me’."
6. Wikipedia. "Earl Paulk."
7. Thumma. Chapter 7, 9-10.
8. Thumma. Chapter 7, 10.
9. Thumma. Chapter 7, 10.
10. Clariece Paulk. People Don’t Know What They Like...They Like What They Know. Maitland, Florida: Xulon Press, 2017. 34.
11. Clariece Paulk. 35.
12. Clariece Paulk. 93.
13. For more on Madison Short and Columbia High School, see the post for 12 August 2018.
14. The company was integrated. The other African-American male and female dancers were not paired during the lifts, which meant a Black man touched a white woman. Clariece named some of her later dancers (page 153), and noted Denise Guzzardi was her first choreographer. (Clariece Paulk. 35.)
15. Don Paulk, YouTube notes.
16. Clariece Paulk. 236.
17. Clariece Paulk. 46.
18. Clariece Paulk. 60.
19. Earl Paulk. 76.
20. Clariece Paulk. 43.
21. Clarience Paulk. 85.
22. Clarience Paulk. 236.
23. John Blake. "How the Ultimate Scandal Saved One Pastor." CNN website. March 2015. He suggested Clariece became involved with Earl because she wanted a son, and had had only daughters.
24. Wikipedia.
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