KidsLullabies - Come By Here

Topic: Lullaby - Context
The animated video that ran with KidsLullabies’ version of "Kumbaya" showed a young woman in a rocking chair patting an infant on the back. She was not a nanny or a mammy because both she and the young boy had light complexions and full heads of brown hair.

The assumption that mothers are the ones who sing lullabies is deeply ingrained in our culture’s idyllic stereotypes of motherhood. In Turkey, Sandra Trehub and Rebekah Prince found that while "mothers assumed the principal duties of infant care," it was assumed they "required rest for several weeks after childbirth." Thus, grandmothers and other older women were the first to sing to newborn infants. [1]

This had the secondary effect of perpetuating the family’s tradition. Alevi Islam women in the Taurus mountains moved to their husband’s home when they married. [2] This rest period allowed the older women to teach both the infants and their mothers the local songs.

In Albania, Kreshnik Duqi said the lullabies sung in the mountains south of Tirana always were done by grandmothers. The area had been taken over by Rome in 228 BC, and Italian influence continued after the Ottomans took power. He was told, "when we take our grandchildren to bed, we would start singing with ‘ninna-nanna’ which were the main words." [3] The Oxford English Dictionary reported Italians were using ninne nonne for lullabies in 1779. [4]

The poet Federico García Lorca believed poor women were the ones who created the lullabies in Spain, and took them "into the homes of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy" when they worked as wet nurses. [5] However, he said,

"that lullabies are seldom sung to a newborn child. A newborn child may be entertained with a fragment of melody hummed under the breath, the physical rocking rhythm of the cradle being more important. The lullaby requires a listener who can follow its events intelligently and delight in the anecdote, character or evocation of landscape the song expresses. The child that is sung to can already talk, is beginning to walk, knows the meaning of words, and often sings alone." [6]

Researchers have been curious if the image of mothers singing lullabies was grounded in culture or in the ways infants behaved. One group had men sing songs alone and like they would with an infant. They then played the tapes to 80 infants six- to seven-months-old in a quiet alert state. [7] The youngsters paid more attention to the men, than a similar group of infants had done to women in a similar test. [8]

In another test, scientists compared the responses of six- to seven-month-old infants to singing by women and by young children. They discovered those who had older siblings preferred the children’s version, while those who were more isolated preferred singing by unknown women. [9]

One of the few lullaby versions of "Kumbaya" sung only by children was the one posted by KidsLullabies. They were old enough to sing two parts with some complexity in the use of glissandi on a few words. Their voices no longer were the high-pitched ones of young children and may not have had the same affect as those in the experiment. However, they did sing softly and slowly.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: children
Vocal Director: not identified
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
None given

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not use kumbaya
Verses: come by here, praying, sleeping

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

Basic Form: four-verse song
Ending: none
Unique Features: used come by here, instead of kumbaya

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

Basic Structure: strophic repetition with verses demarcated by short instrumentals

Singing Style: soft, in two parts. One syllable to one note pattern broken by use of two tones on by. Three notes were used for the oh in the last line, and one for Lord. They sang the very last phrase slower.

Solo-Accompaniment Dynamics: guitar softly played arpeggios during the singing, between verses, and at the end.

Notes on Performance
Video: it opened with a picture of a full moon framed by bare tree branches. It pulled back to show an stone-lined arch suggesting a castle. The scene was lit by an oil lantern set on a table. She was wearing a floor length light-blue robe with a yellow band at the hem; the infant was in a rust-colored sleeper. His head was on her shoulder.

KidsLullabies posted the lyrics so people could sing along.

Notes on Movement
The woman’s hand moved with the rhythm of the song. It was the farthest from the infant when the rocking chair was the farthest forward, and on his back when the chair was back.

Audience Perceptions
One woman who watched the video commented on its affect on her:

"I have often thought that Kumbaya must be the most powerful song in the world because so many people make fun of it. I’ve sung ‘Come By Here’ in times of despair - in times of joy - outside of courthouses - inside of jail cells - holding the hands of the dying - and while cradling the fragile innocence of the newly born. This is a very sweet and simple version. Just what this weary minded woman needs at 4:41 in this deep, dark and quiet morning." [10]

Notes on Performers
The use of "come by here," instead of "kumbaya," paired with the reduction of the verses to just praying and sleeping suggested the video’s producer might have been a religious group trying to reach a conservative Protestant audience. The fact the song was accompanied by a video meant the producers had access to equipment and probably more money than others who uploaded songs to YouTube. However, I could learn nothing more than KidsLullabies was a subscription service on YouTube. It provided no information there or on its Facebook page about who owned it.

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by KidsLullabies on 19 February 2014.

End Notes
1. Sandra E. Trehub and Rebekah L. Prince. "Lullabies and Other Women’s Songs in the Turkish Village of Akçaeniº." Refereed E-Journal, October 2010. 4.

2. Trehub and Prince. 4.

3. Kreshnik Duqi. "The Cradle (Lullabies) Songs in the Villages of Tirana." European Journal of Language and Literature Studies 6:40-53:2016. 40.

4. "Lullaby." 9:93-94 in The Oxford English Dictionary. Edited by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 edition. 9:94.

5. Federico García Lorca. "Las nanas infantiles." Madrid lecture, 1928. Translated as "On Lullabies" by A. S. Kline in 2008.

6. García Lorca.

7. Colleen T. O’Neill, Laurel J. Trainor, and Sandra E. Trehub. "Infants’ Responsiveness to Fathers’ Singing." Music Perception 18:409-425:2001. 416.

8. O’Neill. 418.

9. S. E. Trehub and K. Fellegi. "Infant Preferences for Women’s and Children’s Songs." Society for Research in Child Development, 1997 meeting. Summarized by Sandra E. Trehub and Laurel Trainor. "Singing to Infants: Lullabies and Play Songs." Advances in Infancy Research 12:43-77:1998. 66.

10. Sing4peace. Posted to YouTube in 2014.