Topic: Political Versions
The Civil Rights movement, which began with an organized sit-in at a dime-store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, [1] overlapped with protests against the war in Viet Nam, which increased when the number of men drafted doubled in 1965. [2]
Joan Baez performed songs from both movements at her concerts and in appearances to support equality and peace. When she toured college campuses in the South in 1962, her audiences still were all white. [3] An album compiled from performance tapes had two songs with social commentary - Malvina Reynolds’ "What Have They Done to the Rain" and Woody Guthrie’s "Pretty Boy Floyd" - but none directly addressing war or civil rights. [4] She said she did not get seriously involved with peace efforts until after Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. [5]
She did perform an apolitical version of "Kumbaya" in 1962. The verses were the usual ones: singing and praying. By then the song was well known and had evolved into an open-ended one in which verses were alternated with the kumbaya burden. [6] She asked the audience to sing with her, and their voices could be heard, especially on the opening kumbaya verse. Whether their participation lessened with subsequent verses or was edited out by production engineers is not known.
She recorded "Kumbaya" again in a 1967 concert in Milan, and again she asked the audience if they knew the song and would sing along. This time she treated it as a four-verse song with kumbaya as the first and last stanzas. The verses were equally noncontroversial: singing and sleeping.
She remembered Viet Cong supporters had tried to disrupt one of the concerts. When her translator made things worse, she finally sang "Pilgrim of Sorrow" with "enough high F’s to win over the most difficult of crowds." She added, the audience "forfeited their deep love of confrontation for their equally deep love of the human voice" and "decided to sit down, and listened to the rest of the concert." [7]
I did not attend any of her concerts and so do not know if her live version of "Kumbaya" differed from her recordings. I also have not seen any comments on her singing the song at protest rallies. The first video on YouTube that contained political content was from a concert in Barcelona, Spain, in 1977. It included "no more armies" and "no more prisons." A verse she used in France in 1980 was "no more wars."
As a result, I do not know exactly why her version of the song, as distinct from her as an individual, became linked with peace demonstrations in the popular imagination. The association may have existed by 1964 when Vanguard released a 45-rpm record in Germany with "Kumbaya" on one side, and her version of Bob Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right" on the other.
In the end, it may not have been the actual content of the song that mattered, but the context. The two movements used music differently. African Americans sang during sit-ins and at demonstrations. Whites listened to protest songs at rallies. The radical act may have been breaching the wall of privacy that existed between artists and audiences. Asking people to sing was a request for immediate involvement in a communal activity, and one that may have provoked hostility from those who had bad memories of forced singing in public school or church.
One participant in Mudcat Café was digitizing his record collection in 2008 when he came across the 1962 album. He wrote:
"But hearing JB singing Kumbaya, in a concert setting, and hearing the audience response - remember when it was not only ok, but expected, to sing along? Remember when it was not only ok, but expected, for an artist to sing a bunch of songs you knew well enough to sing along with, whether he or she had written them or not? Shit... - anyway, hearing the audience response, from people who are my contemporaries, and my slight seniors, and who are grandparents now as I am, and many of whom of course are long dead, I wonder what’s so snickery about "Kumbaya?" What’s wrong with the way we felt then? Interesting ponder, that. [8]
If anyone attended concerts or events where Baez sang "Kumbaya," please share your memories in a comment or email. There are way too many negative comments in website forums, and too few memories of her performances.
Performers
Instrumental Accompaniment: Joan Baez, guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
"It started as a Negro gospel song, ‘Come By Here, Lord,’ was exported to the West Indies where it was rephrased in ‘pidgin-English’ as ‘Kumbaya’ and returned to the United States. . ." [9]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: always in English
Pronunciation: on the first concert album, she said koom-bye-ah, with the emphasis on the second syllable. When she began, she sang "koom by yah," then softened the /y/ in "yah." She accented the last syllable.
Verses:
South: kumbaya, singing, praying
Milan: kumbaya, singing, sleeping
Barcelona: kumbaya, singing, no more armies, no more prisons
France: kumbaya, singing, no more wars
Songbook: kumbaya, singing, praying, sleeping
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: None
Format: verse-burden
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Repetition Pattern:
South: verse-burden, AxAxA
Milan: AxxA
Barcelona: AxxxA
France: verse-burden, AxAxA
Songbook: verse-burden
Line Meter: trochaic
Line Length: 8 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB
Line Form: statement-refrain
Notes on Music
Concerts
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5. She varied the other three lines.
Songbook
Time Signature: 4/4, which was easier to strum than 3/4.
Tempo: slow
Key Signature: D with three flats
Guitar Chords: Eb Ab Gm7 Fm or A D
Basic Structure: soloist supported by group
Singing Style: usually one syllable to one note, but with a tendency to ornament "ba." She individualized it by exploiting her high notes, usually on the third lines of the verses.
Solo-Group Dynamics
South: the audience already knew the song and sang along.
Barcelona: the audience clapped on the main beat throughout.
France: video showed some women singing along; the camera microphone only picked up Baez’s voice.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: the concert in Barcelona was the year after Francisco Franco died. She had navigated the political tensions in Madrid with "We Shall Not Be Moved," but did not recognize a different language was spoken in Barcelona. A local performer helped her recover for her second concert there. The two finished by singing "We Shall Overcome" together. [10]
Location: the French concert was in a large open area defined by stone buildings. She stood on a low wooden platform under a canopy.
Microphones: yes.
Clothing: she wore a yellow-colored long skirt and top in Barcelona. In France she wore "dress up" slacks and a top.
Notes on Movement
Barcelona and France
She stood holding the guitar and sang into the microphone. Her only movement was strumming the instrument.
Notes on Performers
Her father was a physicist who joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958, where Baez began performing in local clubs. [11] I have never seen a comment on when she learned "Kumbaya." Her first version was similar to Pete Seeger’s, which had been issued in 1958. She could have heard it anywhere on the folk-revival concert circuit.
The only time she mentioned "Kumbaya" in her memoir was a 1970 concert in a Milan soccer stadium. An electric storm erupted just as she was finishing "The Ghetto." Part of the crowd ran for the bleachers, and the other part rushed the covered platform where she was standing. She recalled:
"My mind raced for a song which everyone could sing, as it might be the only way to calm the mounting hysteria. Rain arrived in sheets, and by the time I started "Kumbaya" the first battalion of kids was crawling up to mount the stage." [12]
It had no effect on stemming the chaos when electricity failed and the field flooded.
Audience Perceptions
One fan believed Baez no longer sang or commented on the song. She wrote in the YouTube comments section on the French version:
"Baez rarely sings this song and has refused call out requests at concerts for this song ( and she is usuually very accomadating to requests)
"for decades.
"2 weeks ago in a LA Times editorial on the current-day cliche bashing of the song as a conservative derision of political action by humanitarians (Amnesty International types- Bill Buckley included?) ( appeared on Yahoo and Google News too), the writer noted that Baez refused to even comment." [13]
Availability
South, 1962
Album: Joan Baez in Concert. Vanguard VRS9112. 1962. Released on albums with different titles in Europe, Hong Kong, and Japan.
45 rpm: Vanguard DV 14 837. Released in Germany. 1964.
YouTube: uploaded by Peppina Di Capri, 18 May 2015.
Songbook: The Joan Baez Songbook. Edited by Maynard Solomon. New York: Ryerson Music Publishers, 1964. 130-131.
Milan, 1967
Album: Joan Baez In Italy. Vanguard SVAL 33.013. 1969. Released in Europe under various titles.
YouTube: uploaded by FolkMusicRecords, 21 December 2010.
Barcelona, 1977
YouTube: uploaded by John1948SevenB, 28 October 2015.
France, 1980
YouTube: uploaded by JoanBaezFan1987, 28 December 2007.
You Tube: uploaded by CB, 23 July 2016 as Maroon Bells, Colorado, with Japanese subtitles.
End Notes
1. The Sit-ins were preceded by the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools were inherently unequal and Rosa Parks refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. (Wikipedia. "African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)".)
2. Wikipedia. "Opposition to United States Involvement in the Vietnam War."
3. Markus Jäger said Baez discovered the Southern colleges did not admit African Americans to her concerts. He said she made it a contractual requirement that audiences be integrated for her next tour in 1963. Popular Is Not Enough: The Political Voice Of Joan Baez. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2010. 88.
4. The record probably did not include her entire concert repertoire. I do not know who selected which songs to include, but would not be surprised that any obvious political material might have been omitted.
5. Joan Baez. And a Voice To Sing with. New York: Summit Books, 1987. 118.
6. A burden is a stanza that is repeated after every verse of a song, using the same tune as the verse. When the repeated stanza is set to a different tune than is used with the verses, it is called a chorus. While some use the word refrain for a chorus, technically it refers to words that are repeated within stanzas, usually between or at the ends of lines.
7. Baez. 174.
8. BuckMulligan. Mudcat Café website. "Why is Kumbaya a dirty word?" Thread begun 16 February 2008. Comment added 16 February 2008.
9. Songbook. 130.
10. Baez. On Madrid, 256-257; Barcelona, 258-260. Joan Manuel Serrat was the Catalan singer who helped her.
11. Wikipedia. "Joan Baez."
12. Baez. 176-177.
13. taddyd1. YouTube video of French concert. Comment added 2009.
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