Topic: Movement - Suppression
Puritans may have assumed a severe style in the pulpit, but apparently were not censorious of secular dance. Percy Scholes noted the first English collection of country dance music was published in 1651 while Oliver Cromwell was still Lord Protector. [1]
The introduction of the waltz in Vienna in the 1770s [2] provoke the ire of individuals who distrusted the placement of people’s arms. Instead of standing side by side, holding hands and moving to a XxXx cadence, men and women faced one another and placed their hands on each others’ torsos in three-quarter time.
John Wesley could not bring himself to condemn all dancing, but argued it should follow the example of "ancient Heathens" who kept men and women in separate rooms. [3]
The latent prohibitions became overt when missionaries were granted access to slaves on Southern plantations. Charles Lyell visited James Hamilton Couper while he was touring this country from England in 1849. He observed:
"At the Methodist prayer-meetings, they are permitted to move round rapidly in a ring, joining hands in token of brotherly love, presenting the right hand and then the left, in which manœuver, I am told, they sometimes contrive to take enough exercise to serve as a substitute for the dance, it being a kind of spiritual boulanger, while the singing of psalms, in an out of chapel, compensates for the songs they have been required to renounce." [4]
The geologist was describing a ring shout, an African ritual transplanted to the New World, and had observed several subterfuges used to maintain them. The first was claiming they were not dances but exercise. [5] The second was appending them to the end of Protestant services.
After the Civil War, freedmen organized their own churches. Some rejected the shouts as African survivals that hindered their full assimilation into American society. In 1878, the bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal church attended a "bush meeting" near Philadelphia. Daniel Payne recalled:
"After the sermon they formed a ring, and with coats off sung, clapped their hands and stamped their feet in a most ridiculous and heathenish way. I requested the pastor to go and stop their dancing." [6]
This was the restrained tradition adopted by the Harlem Seventh Day Adventist church mentioned in the post for 1 October 2017. It also was the practice of the SDA church in Windhoek, Namibia, that uploaded a video of its version of Lucas Deon Bok’s arrangement of "Kumbaya." They did not clap or turn their bodies like the Soweto Gospel Choir had done.
The female director of the youth choir used her right hand to set the beat, and, when necessary, used her left to mark changes in dynamics. The rest of the time, she held it in front of her body. She only moved when she turned from one section to another as their parts entered.
The girls stood in the front row; most had their arms at their sides and were wearing white blouses, black skirts, and red scarfs. They obviously had been told not to move, but their childhood experiences asserted themselves. To avoid detection, most moved their hands in small ways.
A girl who wore a gray dress held one hand over the other in front of her stomach. The inside hand was pointed down and moved to the music behind the cover of the other. Later, she rhythmically clasped and unclasped her hands.
The girl on her left side (from the camera’s view) held her hands down low to keep them from moving, while she bent her knees. Beyond her a girl with short hair let the ends of her scarf drop. She kept her hands behind the tails, and one could see her forearms move slightly.
On the other side of the girl in gray, a girl in a white jacket patted her thigh. The one next to the girl wearing a stripped jacket kept her hands clasped low in front of her body, and moved them back and forth from her body. The singer at the far end of the line moved her hands in a small arc that was the most visible of the gestures.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: Windhoek Central Seventh Day Adventist Church Youth Choir; twelve young women in the first row; the young men in the back row were obscured.
Vocal Group Director: woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: koom-BY-yah
Verses: crying/praying; despair
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: Lucas Deon Bok
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABACCC
Ending: repeated "Oh Lord Kumbaya" seven times
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lucas Deon Bok arrangement
Tempo: moderate
Singing Style: unadorned; the variations came from the interplay of vocal parts based on singing of the Soweto Gospel Choir
Notes on Performance
Occasion: probably a rehearsal
Location: it looked like a meeting room in a church. They stood behind a table holding a lectern; a video screen was behind them.
Microphones: two portable mikes lay on the table.
Clothing: The director wore a white blouse and black bottom; the lectern hid her body below the hips. The boys wore white shirts and black slacks or suits with red or maroon ties. The girls wore variants of the black, white, and red uniform with their hair styles ranging from cornrows to straightened.
Notes on Movement
The choir stood erect. The women were turned toward the director. The boys must have been facing front because one could see their eyes turned to the center.
Notes on Performers
The local Adventist church originated in Southern Rhodesia in the 1920s and moved into bordering Caprivi strip, and from there to the capital of Southwest Africa. [7] South Africa had taken control of the area from the Germans in World War I. [8] The church was segregated, and did not begin organizing separate Black and mixed-race churches until the 1960s’ [9] movements for independence. [10]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Davy Kambinda on 13 February 2016.
End Notes
1. Percy A. Scholes. The Puritans and Music in England and New England. New York: Russell and C Russell, Inc., 1962 edition. Legend for illustration opposite page 74. The collection was by John Playfield. English Dancing Master. London: Thomas Harper, 1651.
2. Wikipedia. "Waltz."
3. John Wesley. "The More Excellent Way." Sermon 89. In The Works of John Wesley. Edited by Thomas Jackson. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1872 reprint of 1831 edition. Version posted on UMC Global Ministries website edited by Michael Anderson with corrections by George Lyons. Wesley was responsible for the creation of Methodism.
4. Charles Lyell. A Second Visit to the United States. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849. 1:269-270. This comment immediately followed his note about banishing violins mentioned in the post for 11 September 2017.
5. This may have been a deliberate pun on the expression, "exercising one’s religion" if that usage was common in the late 1840s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it appeared in the 1700s. The use of the word for "training or improvement" was older. (OED definition of "exercise").
6. Daniel Alexander Payne. Recollections of Seventy Years. Compiled and arranged by Sarah C. Bierce Scarborough; edited by C. S. Smith. Nashville: Publishing House of the A. M. E. Sunday School Union, 1888. 253.
7. Shekutaamba Nambala. History of the Church in Namibia. Edited by Oliver K. Olson. No publishing information; copyrighted by Lutheran Quarterly, 1994.
8. Wikipedia. "Namibia."
9. Gary Land. The A to Z of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009. 209.
10. Wikipedia, Namibia.
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