Grant Elementary School - Kumbaya

Topic: Learning Music
Every reform in Anglo-Scots Protestant music has been prefaced by comments that congregations were not singing because they were bored. Isaac Watts responded with psalms shorn of alien Old Testament references, [1] John Wesley thought churches needed to improve their song-leading methods, [2] and Thomas Hastings believed singers needed better training in public schools. [3] In the 1960s, people complained about the irrelevance of school music programs.

The Grant Elementary School choir’s 2011 rendition of "Kumbaya" indicated music publishers had responded. Teresa Jenning’s arrangement came with tapes so students could hear and sing along with their parts. The sheet music was intended for the instructor.

The publisher also suggested the "lively African style" arrangement could be used for Black History Month. While most schools now include African-American history in their curriculum, Grant’s students had different interests. It was located in the Little Armenia district of East Hollywood were Armenians had begun moving in the 1940s when the Japanese were removed. [4] After the elimination of immigration quotas in 1965, [5] Asian and Hispanic immigrants moved into the area because there were no restrictive covenants. [6] At the time the choir was singing, pupils in the school spoke more than twenty languages. [7]

The choir was composed of older students who stood on risers with their arms at their sides. The school had two classes of fifth and sixth graders, and they probably were the singers. Younger children have problems with the recognition of variations in tunes that is necessary to singing parts, [8] but have no problem hearing them as generalized sounds. The audience of younger students sat on the gymnasium floor for the Freedom Day assembly, did not grow restive during the singing, and applauded at the end.

The ability to sing harmony comes later, after children have developed new skills in listening that occur around the age of eleven or twelve. [9] Arnold Gesell found a twelve-year-old was the one who "especially enjoys singing in harmony." [10]

Jennings’ arrangement used three groups who did not need to heed each other: one sang the melody and two rhythm. A teacher faced with all the aptitudes found in a public school could put those able to remember a text and tune into the one group, and the rest into the groups who intoned fewer words on a single note. They only needed to conform on timing. Variations in tempo was something they had mastered when they were eight-years-old. [11]

However, the rhythmic parts were alien. Jennings dictated kumbaya be sung as three even eighth notes followed by a rest. She hoped having one group sing the pattern, followed by the other would create a "rollicking African triplet feel." Instead, the students converted the XXXx triplets into XxXx by emphasizing the first and third syllables of "kumbaya." This turned what should have been a simple form of polyrhythm into a chant.

The danger with dividing groups into melody and rhythm is girls usually sing the one and boys get bored doing the other. The Grant music teacher avoided such gender distinctions. The choir stood on risers placed into a U formation, with boys and girls mixed in each section. In addition to black tops and jeans they wore cerise or chartreuse scarves. There was no gender or part coding in the scarves.

The arrangement came with a tape of African music that groups could use for an accompaniment. It included a "conga, udu, log drum, shekere, and shells, as well as djembe." Jennings warned that, if the chorus director did not use the tape, he or she would "need to give starting pitches and tempo." The Grant teacher played a few measures of the tape, then the groups began a capella.

Performers
Vocal Group Conductor: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: sound track introduction
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
arr. Teresa Jennings
© 2006 Plank Road Publishing, Inc.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KOOM-by-YAH
Verses: kumbaya, walk with me, sing with me, come by here

Vocabulary:
Pronoun: me

Term for Deity: Lord used, but "oh" often substituted. The teachers’ notes cited guidelines from the Music Educators National Conference that indicated spirituals could be sung in public schools "solely within an educational context."

Special Terms: none

Format: 4 verses
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB

Line Form: statement-refrain, with the rhythm groups repeating the key words of the statement: "kumbaya" with that verse, "sing with me" with the second verse.

Notes on Music
Score
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: quarter note is 112 beats per minute
Key Signature: two sharps

Basic Structure: melody with vocal rhythm

Singing Style: One syllable to one note, except for "oh" and "Lord" in the last line. Each group sang in unison.

Notes on Performance
Occasion: Freedom Concert, 2011
Location: gymnasium with no strong echoes
Microphones: none

Notes on Movement
The white director stood in front of the students and used her right arm to conduct. She did not move from her position, except to manage the tape recorder.

Viewers’ Perceptions
One parent commented: "my daughter is one of the singers .i am going to tell ever one to watch all of the videos that grant has . BEST I EVER SEEN!" [12]

Notes on Performers
Lisa Smith uploaded the tape with the implication she was the music teacher. In 2017, a woman with that name was teaching at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood where her pupils were enthusiastic about music classes. [13] She had studied at Brigham Young University and California State University, Northridge. [14]

Both Jennings’ parents were college-trained musicians. Her father, Donald Riggio, studied music at Murray State College in Kentucky and chaired the music department at West Virginia Institute of Technology. [15] Her mother, Suzanne Mouton Riggio, was raised in Bayou Teche, Louisiana. She received her first training at Louisiana State University, and later played French horn with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. [16]

Teresa learned oboe, but turned to composition and music education. She and her husband started Plank Road Publishing after their employer, Jenson Publications was sold to Hal Leonard. [17] It had specialized in "band and vocal arrangements for high schools, colleges, churches and choral groups." [18]

Her parents were Roman Catholics [19], and she believed "Kumbaya" symbolized "a desire for social change through peaceful means."

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lisa Smith, 26 February 2011.

Sheet Music: Golden Rule website. Includes all the quoted comments.

End Notes
1. Isaac Watts. "Preface." Hymns and Spiritual Songs. London: J. Humfreys for John Lawrence, 1707. He observed "the dull Indifference, the negligent and the thoughtless Air that sits upon the Faces of a whole Assembly, while the Psalm is on their Lips."

2. John Wesley. "Directions for Singing." Select Hymns: with Tunes Annext. London: 1761. Reprinted in Martin V. Clarke. "John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Singing’: Methodist Hymnody as an Expression of Methodist Beliefs in Thought and Practice." Methodist History 47:196-209:2009. "[. . .] take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first." 197.

3. Thomas Hastings. Dissertation on Musical Taste. New York: Mason Brothers, 1853 edition. "few members of the congregation know enough to sing for the edification of others." 95.

4. Susan Park. "Iconic Neighborhood Restaurants: East Hollywood & Little Armenia." KCET-TV [Burbank, California] website.

5. Wikipedia. "Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965."

6. Park.

7. "School History." Grant Elementary School website.

8. Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman. Musical Characteristics of Children. Washington: Music Educators National Conference, 1971. She found third-grade students, normally eight-years-old, usually could recognize a tune when it underwent some variations in form, like changing tempos. They could not perceive others, like changes in key.

9. Karl Wilson Gehrkens. Music in the Grade Schools. Boston, C. C. Birchard and Company, 1934. He considered the improved ability to listen fundamental to the ability to sing well. 89-90.

10. Arnold Gesell, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames. Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956. 133.

11. See quotation in #8.

12. Sam Arzumanyan. YouTube comment, 2011.

13. "Lisa Smith." Rate My Teachers website.

14. "Lisa Smith." LinkedIn website.

15. "Professor Exhibits His Paintings at Tech." [Charleston, West Virginia] Sunday Gazette-Mail, 13 November 1966. 49.

16. "Suzanne M. Riggio." Obituary. Posted by Schmidt and Bartelt funeral home, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, 10 May 2016.

17. "About Teresa Jennings." Music K-8 website.

18. "Jenson Firms Now in Gotham." Billboard, 6 Septempter 1980. 32.

19. Jennings’ mother was buried by the Saint Mary’s Visitation Roman Catholic parish. See #16.