University Settlement Camp - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Indianola, a Methodist family-camp based in Columbus, Ohio, included “Kumbaya” in a March, 1955, songbook published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) of Delaware, Ohio.  John Blocher, Jr., transcribed it from the singing of Kathryn Thompson Good.  In May of that year, it was sung at the annual meeting of the Buckeye Recreation Workshop attended by Good in Urbana, Ohio. [1]  This introduced the song to 4-H leaders.

In January of 1956, the owner of CRS, Lynn Rohrbough, advertized the song’s availability to his customers in a Song Sampler. [2]  Before the Sampler’s formal release, copies of the pamphlet probably were distributed at a meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) in Athens, Ohio, over the Christmas holidays.  Rosa Page Welch and Frederick Hilborn Talbot recalled singing “Kumbaya” there. [3]

Rohrbough remembered one of the first songbooks to include “Kum Ba Yah” was Hymns of Universal Praise, which was compiled in February and March of 1956 for the North East Ohio conference of the Methodist Church by Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young. [4]  In May, “Kumbaya” was sung at the youth night of the church’s general conference in Minneapolis.  The post for 9 October 2022 theorized that it was introduced by someone in the Ohio Wesleyan University choir, which was in town that evening.  The school is in Delaware, Ohio, and Wiant was serving in the local church.

Agents of Rohrbough introduced the song to secular, youth-group leaders in 1957.  Max Exner included “Kum Ba Yah” in a songster he edited for Iowa 4-H groups, [5] while Augustus Zanzig probably was responsible for its inclusion in Chansons de Notre Chalet.  That latter was edited by Marion Roberts for the International Girl Guides, and distributed in this country by the Girl Scouts. [6]  Soon after, Zanzig suggest the YWCA use it in Sing Along. [7]  Their books took the song into girls’ summer resident camps.

These movements were not accomplished through the printed word alone.  Wiant had been a missionary in China and likely attended the SVM meeting, where he may have observed the participants’ reaction to the song. [8]  Similarly, Zanzig was at the 1956 meeting of the Buckeye workshop and probably included a transcription in the meeting notes at the request of attendees. [9]

The post for last week (13 August 2023) detailed how the song began percolating through the veins of the Methodist church.  I noted some church leader may have learned it at a meeting or from a songbook, and then introduced it in a Methodist Youth Fellowship leadership-training session attended by a teacher in my hometown.  He lead it at a Sunday evening MYF meeting in the fall of 1958 or spring of 1959.  Members of MYF were singing it on the high-school band bus in the fall of 1969, where I learned it.  By then it was at least three removes from a CRS source and the form had changed from a four-verse song to an open-ended one with verse-burden format.

“Kumbaya” crossed a cultural boundary in the spring of 1957 when Tony Saletan performed it at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival.  He probably learned it from Rohrbough or Zanzig when he was making recordings for CRS. [10]  Joe Hickerson and others heard it in Philadelphia when they were forming the Folksmiths.  The octet taught it that summer in camps in New England. [11]

Pete Seeger also heard it that spring at Davidson College in North Carolina where a friend of Rohrbough’s, Larry Eisenberg, taught it a conference designed to encourage racial understanding.  People in the audience let Eisenberg know the song did not come from Angola, as he supposed, but was African American. [12]  This news, and Eisenberg’s subsequent contact with Thora Dudley, led Rohrbough to change the headnote for the song in CRS publications. [13]

Meantime, Seeger began singing it at concerts and released a recording of “Kumbaya” in December 1958. [14]  The 1960 songbook for the University Settlement Camp obviously came from him.  The camp was near Beacon, New York, where Seeger lived.  Norman Steele remembers that he

“attended the camp 2 summers for 2 weeks in the fifties.  Pete lived in the camp and sang every night It was an incredible experience.” [15]

The version in the camp’s 1960 songbook classed it as a lullaby.  The Weavers had treated it that way on their 1958 recording, [16] but they had written their own verses that used “nana” for “my Lord.”  USC included Seeger’s “someone’s sleeping” verse in place of the “crying” one.  The book only provided words and guitar chords, so it is impossible to know how it actually was sung.

Performers
Not known

Credits
None; classed as a lullaby

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comment
Verses: kumbaya, sleeping, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: four-verse song
Unique Features: borrowed from Pete Seeger

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: music not provided
Guitar Chords: D G A7

Notes on Performance
Cover: none on my copy
Plate: mimeographed from typed master

Notes on Audience
University Settlement House, located on New York City’s lower east side, began sending children of Jewish immigrants to summer camps in Connecticut and New Jersey around 1900.  In 1910, Eliza Woolsey Howland gave her husband’s estate to the organization. [17]  By 1928, more than a thousand children went to the camp in Beacon. [18]  Some returned, but many were one-time campers who had no shared music repertoire.  Those who led songs would have had to devise ways to interest children who may have had no exposure to group singing.  Seeger’s group singing techniques were ideal for these situations.

In 1945, the settlement house added a work camp for adolescents who spent their time doing camp chores. [19]  While the ethnic backgrounds of the children in the camp changed with that of the lower east side from Jews to Blacks and Puerto Ricansin the 1950s, the ones who came to the work camp often were children of Jews who once lived in the neighborhood. [20]  Their interests in music were different than those of children.

The work camp songbook used the categories of men like Carl Sandburg and John Lomax, discussed in the posts for 5 May 2019 and 12 May 2019, but substituted contemporary commercial, folk-music revival songs for traditional ones.  “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore” [21] was included in the Work Songs, while “Sloop John B” was in the Sea Shanties section. [22]  Other songs were grouped by genres like Ballads, Blues, and Rounds.  The only religious songs for a group that included many Jews were Spirituals.

Notes on Performers
The New York City settlement house was inspired by Tonybee House in London, which encouraged young men from Oxford and Cambridge to “share ‘the culture of the university with those who needed it most’.” [23]  Stanton Coit visited Tonybee House in London in 1886, and then opened the Lily Pleasure Club for boys on Forsyth Street. [24]

The initial work was through clubs for youth that resembled the groups that preceded the Boy Scouts in this country.  In 1887, Coit added a kindergarten and organized the effort as the Neighborhood Guild. [25]  By 1891, the guild’s activities outpaced its financial resources, and it formed the University Settlement Society on Delancey Street with the president of Columbia University as its head. [26]

Once given a formal structure, the University Settlement expanded its reach, and changed its emphasis to match the needs of the neighborhood and the evolving theories of social work.  The organization survives on Eldridge Street, but it closed the Beacon camp in 1989 when it no longer could afford to maintain the site.  After an experiment with the New York City schools in the 1990s, [27] the grounds were sold to New York State Department of Parks and Recreation in 2008. [28]

Availability
Songbook: University Settlement Work Camp.  “Kumbaya.”  28 in U. S. C. AT COUNCIL.  Beacon, New York: 1960.  Copy provided by camp in 1975.

End Notes
1.  For more on Blocher, Good, and Indianola Sings, see the post for 29 May 2022.
2.  For more on the Sampler, see the post for 6 October 2019.
3.  For more on the SVM meeting, see the post for 31 July 2022.
4.  For more on Wiant and Hymns of Universal Praise, see the post for 2 October 2022.
5.  For more on Exner, see the post for 18 December 2022.

6.  For more on Chansons de Notre Chalet, see the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

7.  For more on the YWCA’s Sing Along, see the post for 11 December 2022.
8.  See the post for 2 October 2022.
9.  See the post for 24 July 2022.
10.  For more on Saletan, see the post for26 March 2023.

11.  For more on the Folksmiths, see the posts for 2 April 2023, 9 April 2023, and 16 April 2023.

12.  For more on the Davidson College event, see the post for 16 October 2022.

13.  For more on Thora Dudley, see the posts for 23 October 2022 and 30 October 2022.

14.  For more on Seeger’s activities, see the post for 16 October 2022.

15.  Norman Steele.  Comment posted on 23 April 2020 to “University Settlement of New York City.”  Social Welfare Library website.

16.  For more on The Weavers’ version, see the post for 3 October 2017.

17.  Jeffrey Scheuer.  Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century.  1960.  Reprinted in Legacy of Light.  University Settlement: 1886–2011.  New York: University Settlement, 2012.  22–94.

18.  Scheuer.  75.
19.  Scheuer.  103.

20.  Ellen Kirschner.  “University Settlement Camp and the Jewish Presence in Beacon.”  Beacon Hebrew Alliance website, 23 August 2021.  She attended the work camp in 1967.  She recalled: “When I was at camp, nearly every evening, Pete joined us for ‘Council,’ the daily all-camp gathering and after-dinner sing.  That’s where I learned the songs of the Civil Rights Movement and Seeger favorites like ‘Union Maid’ and ‘Abiyoyo.’  If USC had an anthem in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was ‘This Little Light of Mine’.”

21.  For more on “Michael,” see the post for 26 March 2023.

22.  “The Wreck of the John B” was recorded in 1950 by The Weavers. [29]  It was based on a text published by Sandburg, [30] and revised by Lee Hays of the Weavers. [31]  The Kingston Trio recorded it in 1958 for the same album that contained “Tom Dooley.” [32]

23.  H. J. Hegner.  “Scientific Value of the Social Settlements.”  American Journal of Sociology 3:171–182:July 1897.  Quoted by Scheuer.  47.

24.  Scheuer.  56.
25.  Scheuer.  58.
26.  Scheuer.  59.

27.  Karen Maserjian Shan.  “University Settlement Faces a New Future.”  Beacon Dispatch website, posted by Michael Daecher on 5 March 2006.

28.  Kirschner.

29.  “The Roving Kind / (The Wreck Of The) John B.”  Decca recording 9-27332, released December 1950 [Discogs entry].

30.  “Sloop John B.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 19 August 2023.
31.  Discogs, The Weavers.

32.  The Kingston Trio.  “Sloop John B.”  The Kingston Trio.  Decca recording T-996, released 1958.  The credit was to Sandburg and Hays [Discogs entry].