Uppsala Musikklasser - Kombaya

Topic: Movement - Origins
The origins of hand-gesture songs are obscure. When I was researching Camp Songs, Folk Songs, [1] the earliest ones I found in print were published by Asa Fitz. Movements in his 1846 The Primary School Song Book either were in the spirit of singing games ("This is the way we wash our face") or had literal pedagogic lyrics. One round began "horizontal, horizontal / perpendicular, perpendicular." [2]

He represented a beginning point in the evolution of the genre, because the songs were perceived to be physical exercises, rather than games. As such, they probably were influenced by the gymnasium in Germany. Rousseau’s Émile [3] inspired the movement to integrate physical education into the humanities curriculum. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi encouraged it. In 1856, Fitz published The Exercise Song Book that included "Here We Go ’round the Mulberry Bush." [4] He elaborated in 1865 with the Gymnastic Song Book. [5]

Within the dominant American culture represented by public-school texts, Fitz was an evolutionary tangent. Lowell Mason [6] elaborated Pestalozzi’s suggestion individuals should first learn the rudiments of music, but he did not accept movement. Gesture songs did not appear in public-school collections for another half century. When they did, they were very much like those used by Fitz.

The only song with motions in the popular Golden Book of Favorite Songs, "Smile Awhile," was called "A Gymnastic Relief." [7] The only gesture song in Henry Romaine Pattengill’s 1899 and 1905 Michigan rural-school collections was a "Hand Exercise Song." [8, 9]

Exercise songs did not die with Fitz, but continued evolving in a different environment. The Forest Choir of 1867 was the first song book I saw that anticipated the modern genre. Many of the "exercise songs" George Frederick Root included in his secular singing-school text used either rhythmic or arm motions. [10]

The idea of including gesture songs in singing-school books did not become widespread. Phoebe Palmer Knapp was the only person I found who used gesture songs immediately after Root. The Methodist hymn-writer included one as an "infant class exercise" in Notes of Joy, published two years later in 1869. [11]

The idea must have survived at the folk level in singing schools. Fully developed "motion songs" surfaced in William Howard Doane’s Sunny-side Songs in 1893 [12] and Edmund Simon Lorenz’s Temple Echoes in 1896. [13] Doane was raised a Congregationalist in Connecticut where his father ran a textile mill. He became a Baptist, then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1861. He managed a machine-tool manufacturing company, wrote hymns, and supervised the Mount Auburn Baptist church Sunday school.

Lorenz’s parents were Adventists who left the Volga community of Messer as part of the German exodus that began in 1871 when Alexander II began revoking draft exemptions [14] that had been granted to Anabaptists by Catherine II. She had encouraged immigration in 1762 and 1763. [15] The Lorenzes settled in Dayton, Ohio, where their son became a Brethren pastor, and religious music publisher.

The only video I saw on YouTube that used gestures with "Kumbaya" was in the spirit of the gymnasium songs. The students in the Uppsala Musikklasser began their concert performance by jumping then sitting in groups. The ripple effect was accompanied by the noise of their landing feet. They then knelt low, again in groups from left to right, before a young girl came out to sing the "kumbaya" verse with a piano accompaniment.

When she finished, the girl walked off stage and a woman took over the director’s podium from the man who had been there. The podium was in the center in front of the youngsters on stage, with the grand piano to the left from the audience’s view.

The young children in the first rows stood to repeat the "kumbaya" verse in unison. Then, the students in the middle rows stood to sing "Someone needs you Lord." The youth in back rose last to sing "Someone’s crying."

The pianist left the stage when the drums took over the accompaniment. Some girls walked to the front and began tossing their heads and raising their arms in a modern dance routine. They left the stage, and the students in the audience began standing in sections. They raised their right arms and moved their heads like pigeons.

The audience then began clapping and the students started walking from row to row in alternating directions with their arms moving up and down like they were marching. Meanwhile, on stage the youth in the back rows were raising one arm, then the other, then both.

The man returned to the piano while the children in the front rows repeated the raised arm pattern. Next they bobbled their heads to different compass points from right to left, paused, and repeated the gesture from left to right to return to their original positions facing front. Most raised their arms, while the group at the right bent down.

The Swedish music students crossed their arms over their chests with their hands on their elbows, bent down, then slowly rose before dropping their arms. The woman returned to the podium, and the older students with higher voices sang "someone’s singing" while the rest on stage and the students in the audience hummed in harmony. The piano played softly and the drums changed to a soft cadence.

The drums and piano grew louder as the group repeated "kumbaya" with more harmony, especially at the ends of the lines. They finished by repeating "Oh Lord" three times, then bent down. The drums got even louder as their raised their arms and sustained the last tone. They finished by crossing their arms over their heads.

The audience gave them a standing ovation. One girl later recalled on YouTube, "That was so fun to sing Kombaya." [16] A year later a boy added: "I was singing! it was so much fun!!!!!" [17]

Performers
Vocal Solo: young girl

Vocal Group: girls and boys. Three age groups each sang a verse with increasing musical complexity. This allowed everyone to participate, even those in the audience, without the limitations of the youngest or least musical constraining the others. It also allowed those not ready to sing harmony to participate, and thus absorb the aesthetic preferences needed to perpetuate harmony as a cultural musical form.

Vocal Group Director: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: grand piano played by man

Rhythm Accompaniment: two conga and three snare drums played by four boys

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: very short "kum," long "ba"
Verses: kumbaya, needs you, crying, singing

Vocabulary:
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Format: variable verse-burden
Verse Repetition Pattern: AAxxAxA
Line Length: 8 syllables
Ending: repeated "Oh Lord" three times
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: this was the only group I saw of YouTube that used drums in an African manner. They treated the drum music as a separate genre from the vocal, and did not mix them. Most videos of "Kumbaya" on YouTube that used drums used them to accompany singing. This group did that as well, but they played standard cadences when the supported the singers, and multiple rhythms when they were by themselves.

They managed this African effect while playing the instruments in a western manner, with sticks. Instead of African-style drums, the boys used what looked like conga drums that had been popularized in this country in the1930s by Cuban musicians. Desi Arnaz made them more famous in the 1950s when he played the form used in Santiago de Cuba on I Love Lucy. [18]

Notes on Performance
Occasion: spring concert, 2015

Location: University Hall, Uppsala University. The Grand Auditorium had a high arched ceiling and a stage at one end.

Microphones: none

Clothing: girls wore white dresses or skirts with white tops; boys wore slacks, some bright colored, and white shirts. The female conductor was wearing a black-and-white print dress with a fitted top and flared skirt. The male pianist wore a black suit.

Notes on Movement
The director stood on the podium with her feet widely spaced. She used her right hand to maintain the beat, and her left for other purposes. Her gestures stayed about six-inches from her torso, neither in front of her body nor wide-ranging.

The drummers stood at attention with their sticks cradled in their arms when they were not playing. They remained erect when they played and looked straight ahead. I never saw them eye one another or the conductor on stage. There may have been a director in front, below the stage.

Notes on Performers
Uppsala has been the center of religious life in Sweden from the earliest written records. [19] Roman Catholics built a church of the pagan site north of the current city in the early 1100s, and construction of the current cathedral was begun in the modern city in the 1270s. [20] Control was transferred to the Lutherans during the Reformation in 1531. [21]

The music school held singing and orchestra classes for students in the third through ninth grades, with classes limited to 30 students. It was founded in 1982 and supported by a foundation, the Stiftelsen Uppsala Musikklasser. [22]

Availability
Two versions were uploaded to YouTube on 9 May 2015. One, from abijomha, was shot from the back of the auditorium and showed the entire stage from the beginning of the performance. A second, recorded by Tomas Brundin, focused on the drummers and did not begin until their solo. Brundin occasionally moved his camera to show the audience’s movements. The first lasted 7.20 minutes; the other was 4.23 minutes long.

End Notes
1. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 521-526.

2. Asa Fitz. The Primary School Song Book. Boston: W B Foyle and N Capen, 1846.

3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Émile. Paris: J. Néaulme [Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne], 1762.

4. Asa Fitz. The Exercise Song Book. Boston: Higgins and Bradley, 1856.

5. Asa Fitz. Gymnastic Song Book. Boston: Taggard and Thompson, 1865.

6. Lowell Mason’s first publication, a collection for the Handel and Haydn Society, introduced German musical ideas into U. S. church music. He next organized private singing schools to train teachers in the new style, then created the first school music program for Boston in 1838. At each step, he published songbooks to promote his ideas.

7. John W. Beattie, et alia. The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. Chicago: Hall, and McCreary Company, 1923 edition. My sixth-grade teacher used this as a supplement in the 1955-56 school year in Albion, Michigan.

8. Henry R. Pattengill. School Song Knapsack. Lansing: H. R. Pattengill, 1899.

9. Henry R. Pattengill. Pat’s Pick. Lansing: R. Smith Printing Company, 1905. One of my Camp Fire leaders said they used this book when she was in school in rural Michigan.

10. George Frederick Root. Forest Choir. Chicago: Root and Cady,1867. Some of the directions for "The Launch" were "describe circles above head" and "extended arms with waving motion or undulations."

11. Phoebe Palmer Knapp. Notes of Joy. New York: W. C. Palmer, 1869.

12. William Howard Doane. Sunny-side Songs. New York: Biglow and Main, 1893.

13. Edmund Simon Lorenz. Temple Echoes. Dayton: Lorenz and Company, 1896.

14. Andrii Makuch. "Mennonites." In Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Edited by Danylo Husar Struk. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, volume 3, 1993. Adventists were not Mennonites, but did tend to be pacifists like them.

15. Wikipedia. "Volga Germans." She invited Germans on any religious persuasion except Jews. Many who came were Reformed or Lutheran.

16. Anna-Maria Bjerneroth Lindström. Comment on YouTube, long version. 2015.

17. Herbert Sjödin. Comment on YouTube, long version. 2016.

18. Wikipedia "Conga." I Love Lucy was a CBS television program aired between 1951 and 1957 that starred Arnaz and his wife, Lucille Ball. His drum was called a bokú.

19. Wikipedia. "Uppsala."

20. Wikipedia. "Uppsala Cathedral."

21. Wikipedia. "Archbishop of Uppsala."

22. "Välkommen till Uppsala Musikklasser." School website.