Camp Glen - Kumbaya

Topic: Lullaby - Context
Summer youth camps used to perpetuate lullaby singing by providing older campers with habits of singing and a repertoire of songs that could be adapted for bedtime. The typical camp repertoire then was divided into three categories: fun songs, pretty songs, and ceremonial ones like graces. [1] Most campers did not appreciate the slow-paced pretty songs until after their voices changed and their ears were better able to detect harmony. [2]

After the commercial folk-music revival introduced guitars, groups of older campers would get together to sing and play. Many of the songs they selected were ones that had been recorded with harmony by groups like Peter, Paul and Mary or Simon and Garfunkel. [3] When I was attending Kitanniwa in the 1950s, most of the pretty song singing was done by counselors on the last night of the session.

Last night rituals existed in many camps: sometimes they were jocular, and sometimes sentimental. In ones sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls, the evening program began with a processional and council fire. Sometimes, they would be followed by a wishing boat ceremony at the lake edge. Then, after the usual close-of-day activities, came the serenade. [4]

A woman who worked at Kitanniwa in the early 1960s, told me:

"We sang ‘Kumbaya’ at Kitanniwa as one of the songs in the last night of the camping session counselor serenade of the cabins. (You are going to get more information here than you asked for.) As you may recall as a camper, after taps on the last night of camp the counselors went through the cabin area serenading the campers. We started, standing on the path by the bluebird lodge--I think it was called--and sang ‘Little Owlet’ and ‘Kumbaya’. We generally sang three verses to ‘Kumbaya’--someone’s singing, laughing?, sleeping. We never sang someone’s crying. We then moved on up to the area in front of the wash house and sang a couple of songs for the younger Campfire Girls–‘A Canoe May Be Drifting at Sunset’, as I recall, and one or two more that could vary. We then went up the path by cabins L, M, N and sang ‘God Gave The Wisemen Their Wisdom’ and ‘Long Long Trail’ that segued into ‘With Someone Like You’. I think we then finished up by singing ‘Remember’ standing in front of the wash house. When the Senior Unit was occupied, we would then go down on the waterfront and sing ‘Across the Stillness of the Lake’ and ‘Remember’--although I am not sure we sang across the lake to the Senior Unit on every occasion when campers were there. There were always a couple of the counselors who could harmonize." [5]

The ones I remembered hearing were "Remember," because it was a favorite of another camper, and "Little Owlet," because it was one song we did not sing ourselves and had a descant. The latter was a Mexican song introduced into the camp repertoire by a 1922 YWCA songbook. [6]

When I worked as a counselor at the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, CFG camp in 1963 we had a similar repertoire. However, the only songs I remember from Hiwela serenades were the ones I had not sung before: "Louisiana Lullaby" and "Lullaby Round." The first, which I have not found in print, began "dreamland opens here." The other simply repeated the word "lullaby."

The commercial folk-music revival did not change the serenade tradition, although pre-World War I songs like "Long, Long Trail" disappeared. At the Finley, Ohio, CFG in 1974, the counselors sang 21 songs, including "Remember" and "Kumbaya." The ones the Glen staff sang more than once were "May All of Your Dreams Be like Daisies in the Field," "Walk, Shepherdess Walk," "Barges," "I Am a Rover," "Mmm I Want To Linger," and "To Ope Their Trunks." [7]

None were specifically lullabies, but many were songs a mother could sing, or, if the words were forgotten or archaic, could hum.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: counselors

Vocal Director: at Hiwela and Glen the leaders would huddle and decided the songs before each stop.

Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Notes on Lyrics
Basic Form
Glen: four-verse song that began with kumbaya

Kitanniwa: the counselor did not remember if they sang "Kumbaya" as a four-verse song, or if they sang "kumbaya" after every verse

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5

Singing Style: usually timbraic harmony; Glen used parallel thirds.

Notes on Performance
Occasion: serenade on last night of camp session

Location: outdoors outside the cabins used for sleeping

Microphones: none

Clothing: counselors usually were still in the clothes they wore for the council fire, but some might have added slacks or sweatshirts if it was cold or mosquitoes were bad.

Notes on Movement
Counselors sometimes sang while they walked, but usually stopped so campers could hear them.

Notes on Audience
Bluebirds were the youngest girls in camp, usually seven- to nine-years-old. Homesickness was always a problem with that group. The counselors at Kitanniwa in the 1960s probably did not sing the crying verse as a kind of white magic; if they did not use the word, then maybe the girls would remain calm. The staff in 1974 also did not sing that verse. I do not know if that was because they had internalized this taboo or not. [8]

Availability
I have not replayed my tapes from Camp Glen, for the reasons mentioned in the post for 25 October 2017.

End Notes
1. Camp Songs, Folk Songs described the categories and labels used in camps. 85-86.
2. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 88-89.

3. Camp Songs, Folk Songs discussed the most important commercial folk-revival artists in 1976. 549-550.

4. Camp Songs, Folk Songs explored the origins of serenades in early college singing traditions. 342.

5. Email. 3 March 2016. Most of these songs were discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

6. "The Owlet." Translated by Muna Lee; arranged by Elena Landázuri. 86+. Florence Hudson Botsford. Botsford Collection of Folk Songs. New York: G. Schirmer, 1922, 2 volumes. Republished in three volumes in 1930. The 1930 version was included in Music Makers with very minor changed by Augustus D. Zanzig. 24. My copy of Music Makers was purchased in the 1955-1956 school year. It carried no publication information other than it was "prepared for Camp Fire Girls, Inc." and was produced by Cooperative Recreation Service.

7. "To Ope" was the first camp song I found in a singing school book like the ones mentioned in the post for 21 December 2017. It appeared in George F. Root. First Years in Song-Land. Cincinnati: John Church, 1879. Most of the rest of the Glen songs were anonymous. The exception was "Walk Shepherdess," which Eleanor Farjeon wrote for Nursery Rhymes of London Town. It was published with music in London: Oxford University Press, 1919.

8. The 1974 Kitanniwa version of "Kumbaya" was discussed in the post for 29 November 2017.