Caleb Adeleye - kumbaya

Topic: Instrumental Versions
Brass bands spread quickly in Europe, and appeared in New Orleans in the late 1830s. [1] They became more popular in the 1880s, [2] partly as a result of the Cotton Exposition when the concert band of the 8th Mexican cavalry played from December 1884 to June 1885. [3] Nationally, the number of bands probably increased with the number of Decoration Day parades honoring the Civil War dead. [4]

In New Orleans, brass bands marched in funeral processions where observers joined at the end to dance to the music. [5] America’s most famous trumpet player, Louis Armstrong, grew up in the city hearing bands in dance halls and brothels. [6] Laurence Bergreen credited him with shifting the "focus" of jazz "from collective improvisation to solo performance." [7]

The British army took its brass bands into the Empire. Ola Balogun remembered "British officials in stiffly starched white uniforms and white tropical helmets were waiting to review" the school bands in Nigeria "as we marched past where they stood on podiums on occasions like Empire Day." [8] He continued:

"On the way back from the parade grounds to which we had been shepherded to stand at attention while the British national anthem was solemnly played (followed by a song known as ‘Hail Britannia’, which proclaimed that Britons would never be slaves!), all protocol usually disappeared, and the school brass bands would change their repertoires and move into lively rendition of what was then known as ‘kokoma’ music, enabling all of us to dance home joyfully along with all the bystanders and onlookers in the native-style melodic and rhythmic patterns that are still practised in present times by school marching bands and funeral bands known in present day Lagos as ‘bocos’." [9]

Despite similar brass band traditions in Lagos and New Orleans, Balogun said most Nigerians did not appreciate jazz. However, in the years before and after independence in 1960, "Louis Armstrong made all of us feel proud and fulfilled because he was a world famous black man whose fame was only matched by that of the iconic boxer Joe Louis." [10]

Caleb Adeleye was too young to have been alive when Armstrong visited Lagos in 1960, but he listed him as a Favorite on his Facebook page. [11] Balogun, who was there, remembered trumpet players used to "to vie with each other in hitting high notes la Louis Armstrong." [12] Adeleye used some of Armstrong’s techniques in his version of "Kumbaya," including air-filled cheeks [13] and a high, sustained final tone.

Adeleye varied the common melody. Instead of playing the first two tones of the primary chord (1-3), he began below the home tone, then ran up to the second syllable of kumbaya. He often trilled the "kum" syllable by rapidly pressing and releasing the first valve.

He played around the melody in the second iteration without obscuring it, while the third variant was higher pitched and more staccato. The next variation was lilting. There were no pauses between repetitions, but he took a brief break after the fourth.

He resumed by repeating the basic patten of the first verse, but this time he used the second key for his trills. To finish, he repeated the last line four times, each time more softly. He played the phrase one final time at normal volume, with a trill on the second valve, and finished with the sustained high note.

Performers
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Adeleye’s variation
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: four repetitions with variations in melody, tempo, and dynamics. After a brief piano interlude, another repetition and an amen ending.

Solo-Accompaniment Dynamics: the piano was not near the microphone, and was hard to hear. In the introduction, the right hand played the melody and runs between phrases, while the left played chords. It also was heard in the brief interlude.

Notes on Performance
Location: recorded in a church hall.
Microphone: none
Clothing: Adeleye was wearing a blue shirt.

Notes on Movement
Adeleye held his silver-colored trumpet with his left hand and fingered the keys with his right. He occasionally moved the trumpet up and down. After four repetitions, he stopped, moved the trumpet and put his hand to his mouth. He then returned the trumpet to its position to finish.

Notes on Performers
Adeleye’s hometown was Ilesha in Osun state. It was one of the oldest Yoruba settlements, and founded by "one of the 16 sons of the deity Oduduwa." [14] He earned a degree in physics in 2012 from Ladoke Akintola University Of Technology in Oyo, and worked as a web programmer. [15]

He said his main activities in school were music and the Apostolic Faith Campus Fellowship. [16] Pentecostalism began in the United States in a 1906 Los Angeles revival led by an African-American, William Seymour. His mentor, Charles Parham, was involved with the men who organized the Apostolic Faith Mission in South Africa mentioned in the post for 29 August 2017. The Apostolic Faith, West and Central Africa grew out of evangelistic efforts by a breakaway group in Portland, Oregon organized by one of Seymour’s white supporters, Florence Crawford. [17]

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Caleb Adeleye, 26 April 2015.

End Notes
1. E. Lawrence Abel. Singing the New Nation. Mechanicsburg, Penysylvania: Stackpole Books, 1999. 133. Cited by Wikipedia. "Music of New Orleans."

2. National Park Service. "Jazz Origins in New Orleans." NPS website.

3. Samuel Charters. A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. 36-38. He also quoted John Storm Roberts. The Latin Tinge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. No page given.

4. Decoration Day and the first parade occurred in 1868. (Wikipedia. "Memorial Day.") The number of parades increased with the power of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War veterans who dominated politics in the 1880s. (Wikipedia. "Grand Army of the Republic.")

5. Wikipedia. "Second Line (Parades)."

6. Wikipedia. "Louis Armstrong."

7. Laurence Bergreen. Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life. New York: Broadway Books, 1997. 1. Cited by Wikipedia, Armstrong.

8. Ola Balogun. "Victor Olaiya and the era of Nigerian dance bands." Guardian, 21 September 2012. Latest Nigeria News website.

9. Balogun. Sonny O. Braide said kokomo was a drumming music introduced by Fanti and Ewe immigrants in Lagos. (Kengema Kalabari: Owuame Kengema. Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2017.) Kye Whiteman associated it with boys’ associations. (Lagos: A Cultural History. Northampton, Massachusetts: Interlink Publishing, 2013).

10. Balogun.

11. "About Caleb Adeleye." Facebook.

12. Balogun.

13. I remember in grade school band the brass players were told not to fill their cheeks with air. This was more than sixty years ago, so I am not sure what they were told to do, but think it was to fill their lungs instead. Proper breathing and embouchure were the marks of a good musician. If you look at the video of Wayne Preusker playing a much larger brass instrument (posted 19 September 2017), you will notice his cheeks are flat. This is not simply a difference between the ways cultural groups treat an instrument. Some academic rules are rooted in physiology. I have read about trumpeters who damaged their facial muscles using them incorrectly.

14. "Ilesha." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July 1998; last updated 30 December 2014.

15. "Caleb Adeleye." LinkedIn.

16. LinkedIn.

17. "Chronology of the History of The Apostolic Faith in Africa." Apostolic Faith WECA website.