Bryan Latimer - Kumbaya

Topic: Instrumental Versions
During the English civil war, Protestant reformers reaffirmed the banishment of organs and other musical instruments from religious services. The Westminster Confession, signed by Anglican and Presbyterian leaders in 1646, decreed:

"the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture." [1]

The English Baptists had preceded them at their 1644 London meeting when they posited:

"The rule of this knowledge, faith, and obedience, concerning the worship and service of God, and all other Christian duties, is not mans inventions, opinions, devices, laws, constitutions, or traditions unwritten whatsoever, but only the word of God contained in the Canonical Scriptures." [2]

Over the centuries sung psalms gave way to hymns that referred directly to scripture, and then to the more personal lyrics of Charles Wesley. [3] Charles Finney, a Presbyterian evangelist mentioned in the post for 12 August 2017, was unwilling to accept Wesley’s use of verse to describe his experience with the Holy Spirit. He believed a revival was "no time for them to let feeling flow away in joyful singing, while so many sinners around them, and their own former companions, are going down to hell." [4] Instead, he believed music should be

"so selected as to bring out something solemn; some striking words, such as the Judgment Hymn, and others calculated to produce an effect on sinners; or something that will produce a deep impression on the minds of Christians." [5]

Instead of the congregation singing, which "dissipates feeling," [6] he introduced choirs to work on their emotions. He was one of the first evangelists to use a music leader to prepare his music. Thomas Hastings suggested an organ "be procured as an accessory to the efficient choir," [7] but warned it must be

"put into the hands that will employ it for that specific purpose. The man of moderate attainments, who has too much modesty for the love of display, and too much principle to allow him to incommode the singers, seems the only one, in the present state of the art, who in the multitude of cases, can be safely allowed to presidet at the instrument." [8]

Even in the interludes when purely instrumental music could be used, Hastings condemned displays of musicianship.

"There is a style in this department, which is chaste, and simple and solemn, throughout perfectly in keeping with other exercises; and there is another style which maintains these characteristics as by constraint, during the action of accompaniment; when at each moment of liberation, the instrument is allowed to burst forth in all the rhapsody of execution, as if exulting in its emancipation from an unwilling captivity! The same disposition to exult and revel at will in all the intricate mazes of melody and harmony is witnessed in the voluntaries, particularly that which closes the service. It is needless to say which is the two styles is most appropriate in a solemn assembly of Christian worshipers." [9]

Many Protestants accepted Finney’s theology of baptism in the holy spirit and his mourner’s bench, but they held to the view musical instruments, even simple chaste ones, detracted from scripture, and thus were the tools of the devil. Three church traditions developed. Major denominations like the Methodists used organs and choirs to intone solemn hymns, while some white and African American churches that sought contact with the spirit accepted popular instruments and played them with Hopkins’ ease of musicality. A third group of sects maintained a capella singing.

I have found few purely instrumental versions of "Kumbaya" and "Come by Here" on YouTube and most of those would have satisfied Hastings. In 2012, Bryan Latimer solemnly played the melody to "Kumbaya" five times with his right hand during the collection in a Saginaw, Michigan, Methodist church.

Anthony Giamanco’s arrangement never obscured the clarity of the tune. It began with the left hand alternating between the high and low tones of a chord, and continued that pattern for the first three lines of the verse. It adhered so closely to the song, that one can safely use terms normally reserved for lyrics to say the left hand changed to chords on the last line. The tempo slowed as the right hand played several notes on the last unsung syllable.

In the second repetition, the left hand continued alternating two tones while the right played the melody with parallel thirds that started a bit higher than the first iteration. On the last line, the right hand executed a "chiming" effect on the word "Lord."

The next variation began with the right hand playing a calliope-style interlude before it resumed playing the melody. Both hands were playing chords and some were dissonant. The left hand emphasized the ends of phrases.

An ending silence was broken by the right hand playing the first phrase of the first line one note at a time alone. The left joined with sustained tones beginning with the first "yah" of the second line. Both hands played chords for the last line slowly.

After another moment of silence, the right hand played the first phrase of the first line and the left echoed it. They joined of the second phrase of the line. Then the right hand would start a phrase and the left sustained a single accompanying chord.

Performers
Instrument: pipe organ, First United Methodist Church, Saginaw, Michigan

Credits
Arr Anthony Giamanco

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: generally slow
Basic Structure: melody with five variations in accompaniment

Notes on Performance
Latimer played it for the offertory, which is played while the collection is being taken, [10] on 22 July 2012. The church was on Gratiot Road.

Notes on Performers
Latimer was raised in a small village in Tuscola County in Michigan’s thumb region. He graduated from the music department of Saginaw Valley State University in 1997 where he majored in English and Piano performance. He supports himself by working in a local Barnes and Noble. [11]

Giamanco was born in Detroit and raised in Taylor, a blue-collar downriver suburb. [12] Before he started studying music at Eastern Michigan, he was the organist at a Romulus Methodist church and in a Catholic parish where his father was the cantor. Since he graduated he has worked for Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches in Pinckney, another rural resort community, and worked as a custodian to support himself. [13]

"Kumbaya" was his first published organ composition. It appeared in Wayne Leupold’s bimonthly, The Organist’s Companion. [14]

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Freedom ToBe, 7 February 2013.

Sheet Music: I have not located a copy to provide publication data. Giamanco wrote: "In 1996, his first composition [. . .] Anthony’s first published organ work, ‘Kum Ba Yah’ (Wayne Leupold Editions), was featured around that time in an early issue of The Organist’s Companion." [15]

End Notes
1. The Westminster Confession of Faith. 1646. Chapter 21.1. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics website. Emphasis added

2. London Baptist Confession of Faith. London: 1644. 7. California Baptist University, Baptist Studies Online website. Emphasis added.

3. Charles was the brother of the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.

4. Charles G. Finney. Revival Lectures. Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1835. Reformatted by Katie Stewart for What Saith the Scripture website. 60.

5. Finney. 59.

6. Finney. 60.

7. Thomas Hastings. Dissertation on Musical Taste. New York: Mason Brothers, 1853 edition. 125.

8. Hastings. 125.

9. Hastings. 128.

10. "Glossary: Offertory." United Methodist Church website. Reprinted from Alan K. Waltz. A Dictionary for United Methodists. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.

11. "About." Brian Latimer’s Facebook page.

12. "Is Taylor mi safe? (Detroit, Flint: apartment complexes, condos, crime rate)." City-Data website forum.

13. "Anthony Giamanco Biography." His website.

14. I found no listing for the arrangement on Leupold’s website. Its mailing address was: Wayne Leupold Editions, 8510 Triad Drive, Colfax, North Carolina, 27235.

15. Giamanco, Biography.