Guy Carawan - Come By Here

Topic: Political Versions
An assistant to Martin Luther King credited Guy Carawan with introducing the idea of recycling old Black spirituals into the Civil Rights movement. C. T. Vivian noted the problem was they were not able themselves to breach the barrier that existed between the sacred and the profane:

"I don’t think we had ever thought of spirituals as movement material. When the movement came up, we couldn’t apply them. The concept has to be there. It wasn’t just to have the music but to take the music out of our past and apply it to the new situation, to change it so it really fit." [1]

The idea of singing on the picket line or in union meetings already existed. The International Workers of the World (IWW) generally were seen as introducing the idea in the Pacific Northwest during the World War I years. [2]

Carawan discovered folk music in college in California. His Charleston-born mother encouraged his interest with copies of Carl Sandburg’s The New American Songbag [3] and Alan Lomax’s Folksongs: USA. [4] From there he listened to records by artists associated with the Almanac Singers, [5] then went to New York where he met Peter Seeger in 1952 at a Weavers’ performance. [6] The next year, he emulated their example by touring with Jack Elliot and Frank Hamilton. [7] He later visited the Soviet Union and China. [8]

When he returned to this country, Seeger suggested he volunteer at the Highlander Folk School, which was training civil-rights leaders. [9] The wife of one of the founders, Zilphia Horton, had begun collecting songs used in the South and teaching reworked versions to workshop participants. [10] She also inserted some into the YWCA songbook, including one associated with the IWW, when she served on the organization’s music committee. [11]

She died in 1956, [12] and he took her place as music director in 1959. [13] Vivian remembered:

"The first time I remember any change in our songs was when Guy came down from Highlander. Here he was with this guitar and tall thin frame, leaning forward and patting that foot. I remember James Bevel and I looked across at each other and smiled. Guy had taken this song, ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’ – I didn’t know the song, but he gave some background on it and boom – that began to make sense. And, little by little, spiritual after spiritual began to appear with new words and changes: ‘Keep Your Eyes on the Prize’, ‘Hold On’ or ‘I’m Going to Sit at the Welcome Table’. Once we had seen it done, we could begin to do it." [14]

In 1963, Carawan and his wife, Candie Anderson, published a song collection for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee that included a politicized "Come by Here." His version used the melody and format of the standardized form of "Kumbaya," including the 3/4 meter and slow tempo. However, it varied the beat in the last line as The Weavers had done.

He also must have heard the African-American song because he used the pronoun "somebody," but not to refer to the singer as a member of the group. The text was modified to publicize wrongs ("churches are burning") and to articulate demands ("we want justice"). When it used a third-person pronoun it was to refer to specific persons who could not be named, either because there were so many ("somebody’s starving") or because they were hidden from view ("somebody’s shooting.")

Most of the verses referred to general problems. It was not clear if "churches are burning" was inserted at the last minute, after the Ku Klux Klan bombed a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September 1963, or if the reference was fortuitous. The SNCC collection was issued sometime that year.

Performers
Instrumental accompaniment: guitar chords

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, political ones

Vocabulary:
Pronoun: somebody, used to refer to unidentifiable antecedent
Term for Deity: Lord

Special Terms: references to problems faced by Negroes in the South

Format: 6 verse song
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Meter: anapest
Line Length: 9 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5

Time Signature: lines 1-3 were 3/4, line 4 was 2/4, and the last word of last line returned to 3/4

Tempo: quarter note = 63 beats a minute; slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F G G⁷
Basic Structure: melody only

Viewer’s Perceptions
When individuals develop strong associations with songs it is very difficult for them to see them in new contexts. An Ohio State University folklore student heard students from Sydney, Australia, singing the SNCC version in 1973. Her own experiences at a western New York YWCA camp influenced the way she interpreted what she heard. She wrote:

"This song is a variant of one known by the collector. This song indicates a strong feeling that the Lord can intervene in people’s affairs. The Lord is called upon to help man in his suffering as [dented] in the verses. It appears to be a spiritual of old tradition. This song is a reflection of the singer’s religious ideas, but is often sung today without a religious fervor.

"As the collector has heard it sung, it is more a song of grieving for the suffering of other people, and the hopelessness of the situation rather than the calling upon the Lord to right those wrongs. It usually is sung with much feeling and sadness." [15]

Notes on Performers
Carawan’s mother was described as a poet who had been associated with Winthrop College in western South Carolina, and his father was described as a North Carolina tobacco farmer. [16] They must have moved to California, soon after World War I, since he was born in Santa Monica in 1927 and christened Guy Hughes Carawan Junior.

His parents never were identified, and I could find nothing on her relationship with Winthrop College. I believe his father was the Guy Hughes Carawan who married Henrietta Kelly. Her mother, Elizabeth Thompson Barnwell, [17] was buried in Charleston, South Carolina. [18] The immigrant Barnwell founded Beaufort to trade with the local Natives. [19] Although Carawan’s parents lived most of their lives in California, they always considered themselves to be southerners.

After the first years of the Civil Rights protests, African Americans took over leadership positions. In Carawan’s case, they made it clear, once they had his ideas, that they had better versions of songs and could sing them better. [20] He and Candie moved to Johns Island in the South Carolina Sea Islands where they documented the traditions of local Gullah speakers at a time when developers were beginning to encroach on them. [21]

Availability
Songbook: Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. We Shall Overcome! edited by Guy and Candie Carawan. New York: Oak Publications, 1963. 85.

Reissue: Tom Glazer. Songs of Peace, Freedom and Protest. New York: D. McKay Company, 1970. 56-57.

Reissue: Gay and Candie Carawan. Sing for Freedom. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2007. 77. Added notes on who was responsible for introducing songs and when they were used.

End Notes
1. C. T. Vivian. Quoted in Guy Carawan and Candie Carawan. Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Sing Out Corporation, 1990. 4. Requoted in Sing for Freedom. xviii. Taken "from a 1983 interview with the editors."

2. John Greenway. American Folksongs of Protest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953. 179-180.

3. Carl Sandburg. Carl Sandburg’s New American Songbag. New York: Broadcast Music, 1950.

4. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Charles Seeger, and Ruth Crawford Seeger. Best Loved American Folksongs. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1947. The reissue was called Folk Song U. S. A.

5. Peter Dreier. "Remembering Guy Carawan: The Man Who Popularized ‘We Shall Overcome’." The Nation, 7 May 2015.

6. Mark D. Moss. "Guy Carawan Passes." Sing Out! Website. 6 May 2015.

7. Dreier.

8. Wikipedia. "Guy Carawan."

9. Wikipedia, Carawan. The Highlander Folk School was mentioned in the post for 3 October 2017.

10. Wikipedia. "Zilphia Horton"

11. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 59-60. The 1943 songbook was Sing Along the Way. Edited by Marie Oliver. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1943.

12. Wikipedia, Horton.

13. Wikipedia, Carawan.

14. Vivian. xix.

15. Sally Briggs. "Camp and Folk Songs." Ohio State University, 1973. She went to Angola on the Lake. Brackets indicate a typo in my notes.

16. Ellen Harold and Peter Stone. "Guy Carawan." Cultural Equity website.

17. Chris Mills. "Henrietta Kelly Carawan." Find a Grave. 27 February 2012; maintained by Carolyn (Schmidt) Alves.

18. Ann. "Elizabeth Thompson Barnwell Kelly." Find a Grave. 2 January 2010.

19. "Tuscarora Jack" Barnwell- Founder of Beaufort, SC." Beaufort Online website. 12 September 2016.

20. Margalit Fox. "Guy Carawan Dies at 87; Taught a Generation to Overcome, in Song." The New York Times, 7 May 2015.

21. Guy and Candie Carawan. Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.