American Sign Language - Kumbaya

Topic: Movement - Suppression
The emphasis on the word made by the Anglo-Scots Reformation had the intended consequence of eliminating ritual and reducing music to an unvarnished subservient tool. It apparently also had the effect of turning the tendency to use the hands to gesture while speaking into a negative quality that distracted from the text.

When George Whitfield arrived in this country in 1740, Puritan ministers were reading tightly argued sermons to their congregations. He introduced rhetorical techniques that came from the theater when he preached to large crowds in open air meetings in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. [1] He moved about the platform and altered his voice to fit a text that he extemporized on a theme with concrete images. Jonathan Edwards’ wife noted he

"made less of the doctrines than our American preachers generally do, and aims more at affecting the heart. He is a born orator. You have already heard of his deep-toned, yet clear and melodious voice. O it is perfect music to listen to that alone!" [2]

Whitefield introduced divine inspiration into revivals. The subsequent contacts with the Holy Spirit lead to "shrieks, cries, and other disturbances of those converted." [3] This revelation of the irrational substrata in humans led to demands for seemly behavior. Those Puritan divines who embraced Whitefield’s rhetorical techniques were condemned; the man who introduced mourning benches was criticized for yelling and pounding the pulpit. [4] The one who ignited the First Great Awakening in New England only adopted his dramatic use of language. Edwards’ most famous sermon was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." [5]

The tension between calls for conversions and the resulting emotional contacts with the Spirit arose again at the revival in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801 that sparked the Second Great Awakening. It remained part of the religious landscape. Among members of the established churches, the use of dramatic gestures became associated with the lower classes and, eventually, with Roman Catholic immigrants from the Mediterranean area.

Parents recognized infants responded to gestures before they did words: Arnold Gesell’s team found the ability to understand gestures developed just before they turned a year old. [6] However, adults considered the movements something to be outgrown once the ability to speak was mastered.

Whenever something individuals enjoy is censured, they find subterfuges that allow them to continue in some socially acceptable way. Older girls could always claim they were singing gesture songs to amuse younger children for whom they were babysitting. In the 1970s, a former Girl Scout counselor distanced herself from the material she was sharing with some folklore students at the University of Texas by saying, "Most of the songs we sang were not adult, but children’s songs. We only sang them in the role of song leaders." [7]

When even young children are not allowed to move while they sing, other excuses are found. Many who learned the gestures to "Kumbaya" believed they were deaf sign language. That utilitarian function not only made moving to music acceptable but gave them an opportunity to explore an otherwise forbidden world under the guise of empathy.

In fact, the motions used by the girls at the Wyandot County 4-H day camp mentioned in the post for 25 October 2017 probably began as American Sign Language. However, they were assimilated into the existing gesture song aesthetic.

The motions they used for "Lord" and "praying" were the same as ASL. [8] They altered the sign for "crying": instead of placing their fingers under both their eyes and pulling them down over their cheeks with a sad look, they had one finger wiggle down their faces without changing their expressions. For "someone," instead of placing an index finger near their face, pointing it upward and moving it in a small circle, they pointed to the sky.

One could not sign "kumbaya" if one considered it to be a vocable; the word had to have a literal meaning that could be interpreted for the deaf. "Come by here" came to be seen as a translation, rather than as the origin, of the word "kumbaya."

The ASL and Wyandot County motions for "here" were the same: both palms were held face up in front of the body at waist height. They differed for "come." In the deaf community, a person pointed both fingers or upward facing palms outward and brought them up toward the chest. A man on one website noted:

"When I was young I used to see this variation on the hands of signers who were using Signed English. Move both hands toward your body doing a rolling motion." [9]

William Vicars added the gesture was "not recommended." [10] Others rotated their fingers around each other, rather than their hands.

The girls in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, made the greatest change to "sing." Usually a deaf person holds one arm out from the waist palm up and sweeps the other, palm down, across it from the wrist to the elbow. One website did show a woman placing her hand on her chest and sweeping it outward and upward in something like their gesture. However, this site appeared to be for parents who wanted to help their hearing children learn words rather than for the deaf [11] and was an example of Signed English.


Notes on Movement
Summary comparison of ASL signs and gestures used by girls at the Wyandot County 4-H camp in 1974.

Come: ASL moved fingers or hands inward; girls in Wyandot County rolled their hands around outward each other.

Here: same.

Oh: I could find no ASL sign for "oh" as an interjection on the internet.

Lord: same.

Someone: ASL used single upright finger to draw a circle in the air; Wyandot County pointed to the sky.

Praying: same.

Crying: ASL drew a fingers straight down each cheek; Wyandot County wiggled a finger down one cheek.

Singing: ASL moved hand over the other forearm; Wyandot County traced a vapor from the mouth with one hand.


Participants’ Perceptions
One woman who answered my questionnaire about camp songs in 1976, wrote beside my query did she knew the motions to "Kumbaya":

"Only if you mean ‘gestures’ that are deaf language signs." [12]

Another woman told members of Mudcat Café:

"I don’t remember holding hands when this was sung at Methodist youth events and church camp worship services... we were too busy doing the ASL (American Sign Language) version as we sang (when singing it slow) or punctuating the song with handclaps (when singing a syncopated faster version I came to prefer)." [13]

End Notes
Three different communication systems exist for the deaf in the United States. The most sophisticated is American Sign Language, which is a coherent language with a unique vocabulary and syntax that was created by the deaf. Since it is largely unwritten, it varies by country, and by regions within nations. [14]

Fingerspelling is more familiar to outsiders, since it has been reproduced on a single card and distributed to raise funds. These alphabetic gestures only can be used by deaf persons who have learned to read and spell. [15]

Signed English is an iconographic pidgin used by the hearing with the deaf, sometimes in imitation of the motions used by Hollywood Indians. Pidgins are not complete languages; instead they "have reduced structures and restricted functions." [16] Traditionally, they "served as non-native lingua franca to users who maintained their native" languages, [17] in this case ASL and spoken English.

1. "George Whitefield." Public Broadcasting System website.

2. Sarah Pierpont Edwards. Letter to her brother, James Pierpont. Quoted by Michael A. G. Haykin. "The Revived Puritan: The Spirituality of George Whitefield (1714-1770). The Fellowship for Reformation and Pastoral Studies. September 2000. 12. John Piper, ""I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher!", Desiring God website, 3 February 2009, found it reprinted in Michael A. G. Haykin, The Revived Puritan: The Spirituality of George Whitefield, Dundas, Ontario: Joshua Press, 2000), 32-33.

3. John Fea. "Wheelock’s World: Letters and the Communication of Revival in Great Awakening New England." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 109:99-144:1999. 135.

4. Fea. 137. He was describing Eleazar Wheelock who supported Whitefield. The mourner’s bench was mentioned in the post for 12 August 2017.

5. Wikipedia. "Jonathan Edwards (Theologian)." The sermon first was delivered in Enfield, Connecticut, on 8 July 1741.

6. Arnold Gesell and Helen Thompson. Infant Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1934. 254. This also was mentioned in the post for 21 September 2017.

7. Naomi Feldman and Mary Rogers. "Make a Joyful Noise." 1970s. University of Texas, Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology.

8. A number of websites exist that provide gestures for specific words, usually with a short video clip. I checked several to confirm they agreed on a given sign. The ones I found most useful were Hand Speak, Lifeprint, and Singing Savvy.

9. William Vicars. "American Sign Language: ‘come’." Lifeprint website.

10. Vicars. Actually the ASL sign is intuitive. It was used by the women in Evelyn Turrentine-Agee’s backup ground described in the post for 6 August 2017.

11. Baby Sign Language had this simpler form. It suggested the parent use the sign before he or she did "some singing with your baby. [. . .] Hearing the same songs over and over again will help your baby learn to speak as well as drive her parents nuts."

12. The woman had attended a Girl Scout camp in Ohio, then worked at that camp, a YWCA camp in Ohio, and Girl Scout camps in Georgia and Florida. She was directing a Florida GS camp in 1976.

13. Cuilionn. Mudcat Café website. "Holding Hands and Singing ‘Kumbaya’." Thread begun 29 January 2007. Comment added 31 August 2010. Her other version will be discussed some time in the future.

14. Wikipedia. "American Sign Language."

15. Wikipedia, ASL.

16. S. S. Mufwene. "Pidgin and Creole Languages." 133-145 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, volume 18. Edited by James D. Wright. Oxford: Elsevier, 2015 second edition. 18:133.

17. Mufwene. 18:134.