Bagpipes - Kumbaya

Topic: Instrumental Versions
Organs and pianos are omnibus instruments able to play melody, harmony, and rhythm simultaneously. They differ in their cultural associations: until recently, the one primarily was found in churches, the other in middle-class living rooms. Their similarity in function obscures the fact the one originally was a reed instrument and the other percussive. Air blowing through pipes produces a different sound than hammers striking wire strings.

Other reed instrumentals of "Kumbaya" are rare, and nearly non-existent for "Come by Here." The ones that do exist are by bagpipes, which essentially are portable organs capable of playing melody and harmony simultaneously. Other reed instruments, like clarinet and saxophone, primarily are found in jazz recordings, like those made by Sidney Bechet and Charlie Parker, and not in religious or folk-song performances.

Probably the only reason Scots pipe and drum corps recorded "Kumbaya" was the success of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards’ version of "Amazing Grace." [1] Their 1972 release created an expectation there must be another plaintive religious or noncontroversial folk revival song that would appeal to American audiences.

Peter Kerr was the independent producer who recorded the Dragoons for RCA Camden in 1971. [2] After that recording became popular, the company asked him to make another. This time he recruited a few musicians from the Scottish Division of the British Army Infantry [3] in Edinburgh to play a theatrical [4] version of "Kumbaya." The arrangement by Brian Thomas Keeling began soft, grew steadily louder, then quieter again as if mimicking a band moving past the listener.

The peculiarities of the Scottish highland bagpipe dictated the tempo and phrasing of Keeling’s arrangement. The piper blows into a tube that inflates the bag. Air escapes through the drone pipes that rest on his shoulder and over the reeds in the chanter. He creates the melody by fingering holes in the chanter. It is not possible to stop the movement of air, so there is never a cessation of sound. [5]

Keeling’s arrangement began with a metallic snare drum. The piper played the melody once through, then the brass began playing chords as he began his second repetition. At the ends of verses, the piper held the last note while the brass played a three-tone figure which served to signal the separation of iterations.

The piper did not actually blow into the melody tube, so variations in tone length created by the tongue on instruments like oboes were not possible. All the piper could do was manipulate the length of time holes were open or closed. [6] In this version, the piper made quick changes for the "my" in "my Lord" and the "by" in "kumbaya" in the last line.

The bagpipe player also could not control dynamics. [7] To create the illusion of faintness and loudness in the recording, the musician had to move away from the microphone, or the engineers needed to manipulate the recording equipment. An illusion of loudness could have been created by adding more pipes. Most of the variations of loudness in the Scottish Division recording were created by the brass instruments.

Steve Turner said the Dragoons had broken conventions when it combined a pipe and drum corp with a military band. [8] The musicians hired by Kerr also combined a bagpipe with brass, but kept the pipe dominant. Another arrangement for bagpipes used more elements of the brass band including tuba rhythms and trumpet flourishes. The groups who recorded it were not Scots, but Irishmen and Gurkhas.

Their version of "Kumbaya" probably was based on Keeling’s: it started with a drum, added a faint pipe, grew in loudness, then the sound level subsided to leave a distance single pipe and no drum. The drummers for the two groups played a skin or synthetic head to create a more mellow sound than the Scottish Division. It also sounded like they used more than one piper to increase the volume in some of the iterations.

The chanter on the Irish military bagpipe differs from the Scots highland one. Instead of eight holes capable of playing nine tones, it "is made with several differing key arrangements and is capable of sounding a chromatic scale." [9] Thus, instead of adapting "Kumbaya" to the traditional Scots pipe aesthetic, the pipers for the Irishmen and Gurkhas were able to adjust themselves to popular music and play the melody used by the Seekers.

The orchestration was less traditional in another way. Instead of maintaining the same musical pattern in every verse, [10] it restored the religious norms mentioned in the post for 3 September 2017 that characterized Anglo-Scots Protestant religious music by adding an amen. After the piper sounded the final faint repetition, the band reentered in full voice to repeat the last line slowly, with chords and a cymbal clash.

Update 4 April 2021:
A member of Keeling’s family sent me an email that said “the sound of the piper fading in and out again was achieved by the sound engineer rather than distance of the piper from the microphone.”

The email also said “the musicians (certainly those in the wind band) were boys, basically trainee military musicians aged 17 or below.”

Performers
Scottish Division [11]
Bandmaster: I. D. Carson
Pipe major: J. McK. Allan
Drum major: G. S. Pringle

Irish Rangers: bagpipes, drums, brass

Gurkhas
Bugles of the bands of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles

Pipes and Drums of the 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles

Credits
Scottish Division
Arrangement by B. T. Keeling [12]
Phonographic Copyright (p) – RCA Records [13]
Copyright (c) – RCA Records [13]

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase
Scottish Division: 1-3-5
Irish Rangers/Gurkhas: Seekers

Tempo: moderate

Basic structure: seven repetitions, varied by instrumentation and dynamics

Notes on Performers
Scottish Division
The unit was formed in 1968 by merging the Lowland and Highland brigades. Both groups maintained their bands in 1972. [14]

Irish Rangers
The unit was formed from three regiments of the existing North Irish Brigade in 1968, and was merged into the Royal Irish regiment in 1992. [15] According to Discogs, the band was selling records under its own label in the 1970s. None listed on that website included "Kumbaya," [16] [17] but they no doubt issued other records that have not been indexed by the user-supported database. [18]

Gurkhas
The original units were recruited in Nepal by the East India Company, and the first band was formed in 1859. With Indian independence in 1947, the band chose to stay with India rather than move to Malaya. A new group was formed in 1949, and has remained outside the control of the British Corps of Army Music. [19] The recorded units transferred to Britain in 1947 [20] and remained active until 1994. [21] The band’s 1971 record for Columbia has been indexed by Discogs. [22] While that release did not include "Kumbaya," they no doubt made other records that have not been listed yet.

Availability
Scottish Division
Album: The Pipes And Drums And Military Band Of The Regimental Brigade Of Scotland. "Kumbaya." Amazing Grace. RCA Camden CAS-2579. Edinburgh, 5-6 June 1972. Released 1972.

Amazon: Pipes, Drums & Military Band of Regimental Brigade of Scotland. Essential World Masters. 1 April 2012.

Irish Rangers
Amazon: Sound Of The Bagpipes. Leverage. 21 July 2001.

Amazon: Music Of Scotland. Hallmark box set. 7 February 2005.

Amazon: Classic Bagpipe Melodies, Volume 2. Doppal Music. 17 February 2015.

YouTube: The Royal Irish Rangers. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by The Orchard Enterprises, 11 November 2014.

Gurkhas
Amazon: Gurkha! MM Military. 6 April 2011.

YouTube: The Band Of The Brigade Of Gurkhas. "Kumbaya." Uploaded by The Orchard Enterprises, 15 November 2015.

End Notes
1. "The Pipes And Drums And The Military Band Of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards – Amazing Grace." Discogs website.

2. Peter Kerr had been part of a Scots jazz group in the 1960s, and was working as a freelance record producer in the early 1970s. (Kerr’s website).

3. Peter Kerr. Email, 30 August 2017.

4. Charles Seeger noted traditional musicians set a pattern for melody, tempo, dynamics, and other musical traits in the first verse, and repeated it without intentional variation thereafter. The change in dynamics, like the use of soft and loud in Keeling’s version was a sign of outside influences. "Singing Style," Western Folklore 17:3-11:1958.

5. Wikipedia. "Bagpipes."

6. Wikipedia, Bagpipes.

7. Wikipedia, Bagpipes.

8. Steve Turner. Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song. New York: HarperCollins, 2002 edition. 188. Cited by Wikipedia. "Amazing Grace."

9. William A. Cocks, Anthony C. Baines, and Roderick D. Cannon. "Bagpipe." 2:19-32 in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980. 2:24.

10. The comments made by Seeger, mentioned above in #4, also applied to the slowed tempo used by the Irishmen and Gurkhas.

11. "The Pipes And Drums And Military Band Of The Regimental Brigade Of Scotland." Discogs website.

12. Peter Kerr. Email, 29 August 2017.

13. Discogs, Regimental Brigade.

14. Wikipedia. "Scottish Division."

15. Wikipedia. "Royal Irish Rangers."

16. The Music Of The Royal Irish Rangers. Royal Irish Rangers SLCW 1012. 1973. Described by Discogs.

17. The Royal Irish Rangers. Royal Irish Rangers RIR/101. 1978. Described by Discogs.

18. Kevin Lewandowski began Discogs as an on-line market and database in 2000. As of 2017, some 369,000 supporters had contributed information on 8,900,000 recordings. While it was not as systematic as the old Schwann catalogs, in many ways it was better because it included privately produced records and ones sold through record clubs and other outlets. ("About Discogs." Its website). However, the absence of recordings of "Kumbaya" by the Gurkhas and Irish Rangers does not mean they did not exist. It may only mean no one has mentioned them yet.

19. "The Band of The Brigade of Gurkhas." British Army website.

20. Wikipedia. "Gurkha."

21. Wikipedia. "Brigade Of Gurkhas."

22. The Band Of The Brigade Of Gurkhas. Here Come The Gurkhas. Columbia 342. 1971. Described by Discogs.