Camp Kitanniwa - Kumbaya

Topic: Theology - Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventists rejected the Greek separation of body and soul. Instead, they believed the body, mind, and soul were one entity that must be maintained in good condition to be ready for Resurrection. That is, the health of the body was the health of the soul.

Shortly after the denomination organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1863, Ellen White had a vision that led to the establishment of the Health Reform Institute whose goal was to instruct believers on healthful living. [1] John Kellogg became its superintendent in 1876. He transformed it into a sanitarium that promoted vegetarianism, exercise, and natural remedies like water. [2]

Although the church broke with him in 1902, [3] and moved to Takoma Park, Maryland, in 1904, [4] he and his brother William Keith stayed in Battle Creek, one with the sanitarium, the other with the breakfast-food company. Each continued endeavoring to instruct and improve the health of his neighbors.

John organized the Race Betterment Foundation in 1913, [5] and invited Luther Halsey Gulick and his wife, Charlotte Vetter, to Battle Creek to discuss the Camp Fire Girls at the 1914 meeting. [6] Soon after, a woman associated with the Congregational church organized the city’s first Camp Fire group. [7] The next year, the local Seventh-day Adventist press published Ethel Rogers’ book-length description of Vetter’s camping program at Sebago-Wohelo. [8]

The Kiwanis Club helped the CFG council buy land for its own camp on Clear Lake in 1926. Kitanniwa’s appeal waned during the depression. In 1933, William’s Kellogg Foundation paid the mortgage debts and assumed ownership. The council received three-month summer leases, while the facilities were used in winter to teach healthier living to children. By 1937, the Foundation needed the camp all year, and bought the Camp Fire Girls a new site near Hastings, Michigan. [9]

Although I do not remember ever meeting anyone who was an Adventist when I went to Kitanniwa in the 1950s, its philosophy permeated the program. The director’s most important credential was her training as a dietician. [10] She had no experience in Camp Fire, and let the senior counselors run the activities.

The emphasis was on swimming, partly because the American Red Cross provided training and curriculum, and partly because swimming was part of Battle Creek’s county-club culture. It also fell within the Adventists emphasis on the importance of exercise for good health.

The 1950s director did stop insisting everyone drink a cup of water before they ate breakfast, but continued to schedule stewed prunes midweek to regulate digestion. [11] The emphasis on cleansing the internal plumbing with water was a relic of the Adventist’s interest in hydrotherapy.

Clear Lake became a model for public-school outdoor education programs. [12] Kitanniwa survived until 1974, when a fire destroyed the main lodge. I visited the camp during the last session that summer with a woman who had gone to the camp in the 1940s. She arranged for a group of counselors to come together and sing during a free period.

For most songs, the camp director or a counselor simply suggested a title, and they sang it through. "Kumbaya" was more complex because the group included young women from different traditions. They first had to settle on the verses they would sing. [13] Then, when they could not agree on the best key, they sang it twice. On the second set, one of the counselors continued the singing by adding one of her verses that was not included in the first.

When they began, another counselor set the beat. They began singing in timbraic harmony, that is, in unison with harmonic effects caused by the interaction between overtones of individual voices. On the second repetition, one person tried singing a lower, parallel part. In the third, another person tried a soprano parallel part. Harmonic effects resulting from overtones increased.

When they began the chorus the second time, timbraic effects with an added part changed into fully balanced two-part parallel harmony. In the fifth repetition, a third parallel part emerged. Tonal richness resulting from the overtones increased in the final two iterations. They sustained some notes so the transition between tones was modulated into a form of sostenuto.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: eight women

Vocal Director: none; the group made decisions following patterns established during the summer together

Instrumental Accompaniment: staff brought four guitars and an accordion

Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not noted at the time

Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying; come by here was added the second time

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

Basic Form: three-verse song

Verse Repetition Pattern: none; entire song was repeated instead

Ending: one felt the "come by here" verse should be used as an ending

Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: not recorded, probably moderate

Basic Structure: strophic repetition with increasing harmonic complexity

Notes on Performance
They sat on chairs set in the grass in the afternoon.

Notes on Performers
The group was typical of a CFG camp staff. It included five who had gone to Kitanniwa as girls; one who went to CFG camps sponsored by the Seattle, Washington, council; one who had gone to YWCA camps in Michigan, and one who had gone to church camps in Ohio and was attending a local college.

The women from Kitanniwa included two who were working to support the camp in town and three who were on staff. One staff member was the daughter of one of the women; one had been working with the youngest campers, the Blue Birds, since the early 1960s; and the third was the director.

Availability
As I indicated in the post for 25 October 2017, I have not attempted to play the tapes I made in 1974 because I do not how well they have aged. I used notes made at the time, and ones used to write Camp Songs.

End Notes
1. Gary Land. "Health Reform" 147-148 in Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005. 147.

2. Land. "Kellogg, John Harvey." 179-181 in Dictionary. 180.

3. Land, Kellogg. 181.

4. "General Conference Tours." Seventh-day Adventist website.

5. Land, Kellogg. 181.

6. The Gulicks founded Camp Fire; they were discussed in the post for 15 October 2017.

7. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 12-13.

8. Ethel Rogers. Sebago-Wohelo Camp Fire Girls. Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing Company, 1915. I could find no information on Rogers. Does anyone know anything about her?

9. Camp Songs. 13-14.

10. Her obituary.

11. Camp Songs quoted a woman who remembered the ways older campers circumvented this requirement in the 1940s. 266-267.

12. The Kellogg Foundation turned management of Clear Lake over to the Battle Creek school district in 1947, and deeded it to them in 1957. I and most of the girls who went to Kitanniwa also spent at least one week at Clear Lake if we attended public schools in Battle Creek or a cooperating school district. In the spring on 1956, there are no overlap in repertoire between the all-girls and the coed camp.

The district began having serious financial problems after 2000, when "the state’s Schools of Choice program eroded" the number of students enrolled. The camp was in danger of closing in 2014. (John Sherwood. "One More Year: Clear Lake Camp Lives On." Battle Creek Inquirer website. 18 August 2014). Even before 2000, the city’s population, and with it the tax base of the school system, was declining. (Wikipedia. "Battle Creek, Michigan.")

13. One girl’s songbook had the verse order: kumbaya, singing, crying, praying, come. Another had: kumbaya, crying, praying, singing, kumbaya.