Heidi Cope - Kumbaya

Topic: Lullaby - Definition
Pete Seeger probably was the first commercial performer to use the "sleeping" verse with "Kumbaya." [1] He was singing it in Chicago in 1957. [2] When he recorded the song in a Carnegie Hall concert in December of that year the people in the audience already knew the verse. [3]

The Weavers were responsible for the popular perception of "Kumbaya" as a lullaby. [4] In 1958, they said: "It came to us as a song supposedly from Africa, and it only had one word. The pretty tune suggested that it might be a lullaby, so we added a few lines to make it that." [5]

What it was about the melody that signaled lullaby is a conundrum. Ontario researchers presented a sample of songs from "several regions of the world" to university students and asked them which were the lullabies in matched sets of adult and infant songs. They made sure each pair was the same tempo, since they knew if they did not, people would select the slower. 63% were able to identify the lullabies. [6]

More interesting were the error patterns. Some 85% were able to recognize lullabies from Ireland, Czechoslovakia, the Creek, and Pygmies. Nearly all had problems identifying infant songs from Chad, Ecuador, Samoa, and Ukraine. [7]

When Sandra Trehub’s team obscured the voices, most could no longer identify the lullabies on musical traits alone. The researchers thought the tone of voice was a determining factor. The students said their criteria were simplicity and repetitiveness. [8]

Repetition was easy to define, and certainly characterized "Kumbaya." The AAAB line pattern was mirrored by an AA₁AB melody. The lines were broken into statements and refrains, with only the statements changing from stanza to stanza. The refrains constituted the final B lines. Melodically, the statement phrases all used the same musical pattern; only the refrains on the A lines distinguished the second line from the first and third.

Simplicity was harder to define scientifically. In a followup study, the group made tapes of pairs of adult and infant songs from thirty cultures, making sure many were non-western. This time they simply asked students which ones were simpler. In most cases, the simpler ones were the lullabies, and again people were consistent in their mistakes. [9]

Anna Unyk transcribed the songs, and classified them by musical attrbutes the group thought might signify simplicity. A computer then compared the traits against the student identifications. The attributes related to the tone of voice were not significant. They speculated that might have been because they field recordings of lullabies were not done with infants present. [10]

The purely musical attributes that did correlate with the lullabies students thought were simpler were the higher numbers of descending phrases and fewer changes in melodic direction. When compared with the adult songs, the median pitches were higher. [11]

"Kumbaya" relied on musical phrases with one change of direction. The A lines initially ascended through a triad, and repeated the top note several times in the statement, before rising slightly and descending in the refrain. [12] The second, A₁, line used the same broken chord for the statement, but descended in the refrain. [13] The final line undulated around the base note of the chord. [14]

The team did not define high, and did not publish musical details on the songs they used [15] so it was impossible to know if "Kumbaya" would have been considered a higher or a lower song. Its standard range was from middle C to the orchestra’s A. The Weavers’ version was one tone higher, from D to B.

The only other change The Weavers made to the melody was to simplify it by altering the Xxx rhythm to some form of Xx. They sang the A lines in 3/2 and the B lines in 2/2 or 2/4. As for the tempo, they simply said they used "lullaby tempo."

The words they added were probably what cemented its linkage with a lullaby. They changed the pronoun "someone" to nature nouns, one of which, moon, was associated with the evening. Heidi Cope’s version dropped The Weavers’ trees verse and expanded the night symbols. Her moon was shining while her stars were twinkling. Her final verses were even more specific: the penultimate was baby’s sleeping, and the last was a series of uh’s.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Heidi Cope, soprano
Vocal Group: none
Vocal Director: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: harp
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Amazon
(C) 2008 Heidi Cope

CD Baby [16]
© Copyright - Cope Productions

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: koom bye yah, with slight emphasis on second syllable

Verses: kumbaya/moon/stars/sleeping

Vocabulary
Pronoun: moon, stars, baby
Term for Deity: none, used "oh"
Special Terms: nature images

Basic Form: five-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: repeated last line of "oh" verse
Unique Features: use of vocables

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

Basic Structure: repetition with variations in ornamentation and accompaniment

Singing Style: Cope altered the melody in one line of the second verse, changed the key in the third, and used glissandi in the fourth and fifth iterations.

Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the harp was subdued. It played arpeggios between the phrases of the first and second verses. In the stars verse, the style changed to a tinkling on the word "twinkling." In the fourth verse, the playing more resembled a keyboard instrument.

Notes on Performance
CD cover was plain lavender with a anthropomorphic yellow quarter moon and some scattered stars. The moon had closed eyes and a smile.

Cope assumed an audience that could understand the words, and would be bored by simple repetition. The testimonials she published suggested she sent copies to daycare centers for use during after-lunch rest periods.

One director wrote: "We use this in our nap rooms. It is wonderfully soothing music." [17]

A Montessori owner echoed: "We are enjoying Lullaby and Goodnight and it truly works at naptime. Thank you!!" [18]

Daycare centers are noisy places, even during their rest periods. Erin Carole Patterson noted in ones she visited in Florida it never really was quiet. The facilities’ layouts meant teachers and others had to walk through nap areas to get from one place to another. Other disruptions included "children being picked up by parents, construction outside the building, sick children." [19] and changes to the schedule that altered start times. [20]

She experimented with playing a Disney instrumental lullaby CD and one with rain sounds to see if simly masking the noise would help the children fall asleep. The lullaby worked best the first day, but once the children were used to both CDs, they fell asleep faster with the rain sounds. She had no control group to give her information about how quickly they would have napped with nothing to calm them. [21]

Audience Perceptions
Several participants in on-line forums have commented on "Kumbaya" as a lullaby. Echoing The Weavers, one wrote: "Kumbaya is, after all, a luulaby, not a protest song." [22]

Another responded, "I don’t think I’ve heard it sung for at least 32 years. I can remember singing it then because it makes a great lullabye, and I sang it to both my kids." [23]

A third told readers to "think of Kumbaya stripped of words. The rhythm and melody invite (almost compel) gentle rocking and swaying -- like a lullaby. Humans of any age will always need that from time to time." [24]

Notes on Performers
No information available.

Availability
CD: Lullaby and Goodnight. 7 November 2008.

End Notes
1. I suspect it already was in tradition in some of the camps where the song was treated as an open-ended song sung slowly in the evening.

2. Pete Seeger. "Kumbaya." Pete Seeger Live '57. Goldenland Records MP3. 2013. Thomas Stern identified this tape as a performance for the Folklore Society of the University of Chicago, 13 October 1957. (Reply to query "Pete Seeger Live '57". Mudcat Café website, 2 May 2016.)

3. Pete Seeger. "Kum Ba Ya" in "Goofing Off Suite." Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry. Folkways Records FA2412. Carnegie Hall, 27 December 1957; released 1958.

4. Their version was discussed in the post for 3 October 2017.

5. "Kumbaya." 156-158 in The Weavers Song Book. Edited by Ronnie Gilbert with musical arrangements by Robert De Cormier. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960. 156. This transcription was the one used for this post. They had to have heard Seeger’s version with sleeping; they could not have reproduced his form from hearing a single word.

6. Sandra E. Trehub, Anna M. Unyk, and Laurel J. Trainor. "Adults Identify Infant-Directed Music across Cultures." Infant Behavior and Development 16:193-211:1993. Summarized by Sandra E. Trehub and Laurel Trainor. "Singing to Infants: Lullabies and Play Songs." Advances in Infancy Research 12:43-77:1998. 58.

7. Trehub, Adults. Discussed by Anna M. Unyk, Sandra E. Trehub, Laurel J. Trainor, and E. Glenn Schellenberg. "Lullabies and Simplicity: A Cross-Cultural Perspective." Psychology of Music 20:15-28:1992. 19.

8. Trehub, Adults. Unyk, Simplicity. 17.
9. Unyk, Simplicity. 19.
10. Unyk, Simplicity. 23.
11. Unyk, Simplicity. 24.

12. C-E-G-G-G-A-A-G. Arc in bold.
13. C-E-G-G-G-F-E-D. Descent in bold.
14. F-E-C-D-D-C. Base note in bold.

15. Unyk did list all the recordings.
16. "Lullaby and Goodnight by Heidi Cope." CD Baby website.
17. Lori W. Director, Children’s World Center. CD Baby website.
18. Phyllis B. Director, Mountainside Montessori. CD Baby website.

19. Erin Carole Patterson. "The Effect of Lullaby Music versus Rain Sounds on Inducing Sleep in the First 20 Minutes of Daycare Naptime." Master’s thesis. Florida State University, 2011. 19.

20. Patterson. 20.

21. Patterson was a music major, not a science one. She believed repetitive sound was a critical factor and wanted to determine if the sounds of rain were as effective as lullabies. Given the logistics of fieldwork, she may not have been able to observe the infants before her experiment. However, it would have helped if she had talked with the teachers about what they normally did and asked to see any CDs they were using.

22. BuckMulligan. Mudcat Café website. "Why is Kumbaya a dirty word?" Thread begun 16 February 2008. Comment added 19 February 2008.

23. Nancy King. Mudcat Café website. "Holding Hands and Singing ‘Kumbaya’." Thread begun 29 January 2007. Comment added 7 January 2007.

24. mj. 31 August 2006. Comment on Eric Zorn. "Someone’s dissin’, Lord, kumbaya." Chicago Tribune website. 31 August 2006.