Lokhi Pai - Kumbaya

Topic: Lullaby - Context
Parents soon discover their intentions and experiences with lullabies do not matter. Infants either like or dislike what they hear based on reasons they themselves know and "will never confess." [1] Federico García Lorca told a Madrid audience in 1928:

"I have witnessed innumerable instances in my own extended family where the child emphatically opposed the singing. He cried, he kicked, until the wet nurse changed the record, much to her disgust and broke into another song." [2]

Similarly, Rivka Galchenoct recalled her daughter would only listen to "Cotton Fields." When she tired of singing it and "tried to switch songs on her, she would immediately cry. She had chosen her lullaby." [3] Likewise, Bess Lomax Hawes remembered

"I happen to know quite a number of lullabies myself, and I come from a lullaby-singing family; but the song that always seemed to ‘work’ best—my stand-by old reliable in times of stress—was the fine old Protestant hymn "I Am Bound for the Promised Land." [4]

One factor that influences an infant’s response is his or her age and auditory skills. The inner hair cells of the inner ear mature in the third trimester. Foetuses begin to respond consistently to sound tests around 28 weeks, [5] and mothers report feeling movements in response to sounds. [6]. Sound waves pass through the fluids surrounding the head, and are transmitted through the bone rather than the middle and outer ear. The frequencies they detect are between 250 Hz and 500 Hz. [7]

At birth, the inner ear is better developed than the middle and outer ear. [8] Infants still hear only the lower frequencies [9] as they adjust to air as a medium for sound waves. Men’s speaking voices typically fall between 85 Hz and 180 Hz and women’s between 165 and 155 Hz. [10] The standard version of "Kumbaya" ranges from a middle C of 261 Hz to an orchestra’s A of 449 Hz. [11]

Between the third and sixth month, infants’ abilities to hear the higher frequencies [12] needed to decipher labial and fricative sounds [13] reach adult levels. Ruth Litovsky thought the perception they lost some of their abilities to hear the lower sounds was a function of tests that required greater cognitive skills than the ones used earlier. [14]

At the same time the "conditioned head-turn behavior emerges, whereby the infant’s response can be shaped such that a reinforcing stimulus is associated with the behavior." [15] This is the mechanism exploited by scientists who test young children’s ability to detect particular traits in music, and is the reason so little is known about hearing and music in the first months. [16]

The other time there is intense testing is when the prematurely born are kept in ICUs. The infants auditory systems are still in a neonatal phase. The monitoring machines are noisy, up to 50 dB to 100 dB, and the infants have little human contact. Researchers have tried almost everything, based on our culture’s image of the ideal lullaby, to mask the sound. As mentioned in the post for 5 January 2018, attempts to measure the utility of music by watching the monitors gave mixed results. Those who simply looked at the infants’ general responses were more satisfied. Shmuel Arnon’s team observed live music had no effect at the time, but 30 minutes the infants were in deep sleep, while the recorded music had no such effect. [17]

Douglas Keith’s group noted the ones who cried the most were those who had just been taken off ventilators but still could not eat. Although it was possible they were exercising their newly strengthened lungs, inconsolable crying, as distinct from normal crying, was a problem. When he played recorded music in their area, the crying bouts were less frequent, began later, and lasted less long. [18]

Finally, Gail Molloy reported those who heard Brahm’s lullaby gained enough weight to be discharged 9.9 days earlier those who did not. Recordings of their mothers’ speaking voices reduced the hospital stay by 6.2 days. [19]

The music that has not been tested much is singing by men. Hyejung Lee and Rosemary White-Traut reasoned that since premature infants had not had the opportunity to hear their mothers’ voices in the womb, they might respond better to the lowest frequency sounds. They played tapes of both men and women reading Goodnight Moon [20] each week, and recorded the infants’ reactions while they were listening. As they matured, the infants responded more positively to the male version. [21]

I found only one male lullaby uploaded to YouTube and it was by someone from a non-western culture. Lohki Pai was club musician in Hyderabad, India, who made his tape of "Kumbaya" for one specific infant whose pictures were shown while it played. His voice was deep, and doubled, so the lower tones were emphasized. The woman who requested the lullaby was pleased, but Aanika’s response was not reported.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Lokhi Pai
Vocal Group: second male voice
Instrumental Accompaniment: acoustic guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: block of wood

Credits
None

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: Koom BY ah; Pai did not pronounce the D in Lord

Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying, crying

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

Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

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

Basic Structure: strophic repetition with little variation.

Singing Style: some vibrato on "by;" a certain raspiness to the voice at times.

Solo-Group Dynamics: second voice added on second verse. It might have been his own overdubbed.

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: arpeggios and chords

Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: widely spaced taps on wood

Notes on Performance
Occasion: "A lullaby done as per request of Arundhati" [22]

Researchers who asked fathers in southern Ontario to sing a song in the way they would in the shower and like they did with their five- to seven-month-old children thought the men sang more effusively than the women asked to make the same singing test. [23] That may have been because the men used songs normally associated with quiet alert time, like "Old MacDonald," rather than ones used as lullabies. Like many women, they may have considered the one a private repertoire, and the other a shareable public one.

Pai did not dramatize "Kumbaya" in any way, even though he added a second voice. As a musician he would have been able to alter the guitar accompaniment, but did not. Once he sang the verse through once, he repeated it with little intentional variation.

Audience Perceptions
The woman who requested the lullaby wrote:

"Thank you Mr Pai Sir. I love love love it." [24]

Notes on Performers
On his website, Pai wrote:

"Still on a journey, with music entering my life at nine, addiction to drugs at thirteen, marriage at 24, alcoholism at 30, death of my wife at 44, de-addiction at 51….am sober by the Grace of God since 16th March 2007 and intend to be so till my journey ends…." [25]

He then was playing guitar in rock bands influenced by Bob Marley, but said he had "loved folk rock and bands with harmony vocals" when he was growing up. [26]

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by lokhi pai on 20 October 2013.

End Notes
1. Paraphrase of a line by T. S. Eliot. "The Naming of Cats." Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939.

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

3. Rivka Galchenoct. "The Melancholy Mystery of Lullabies." The New York Times Magazine. 18 October 2015. "When I had a newborn I found that the main song that came to me, unbidden, was ‘Cotton Fields,’ as sung by Creedence Clearwater Revival — a song I hadn’t heard for years and years."

4. Bess Lomax Hawes. "Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby." The Journal of American Folklore 87:140-148:1974. 141.

"I am Bound for the Promised Land" was written by Samuel Stennett, and first was published by John Rippon. A Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors. London: Thomas Wilkins, 1787.

5. Ruth Litovsky. "Development of the Auditory System." Handbook of Clinical Neurology 129: 55-72:2015. 58.

6. Beatriz Senoi Ilari. "Music Perception and Cognition in the First Year of Life." Early Child Development and Care 172:311-322:2002. 33.

7. Kenneth J. Gerhardt and Robert M. Abrams. "Fetal Hearing: Characterization of the Stimulus and Response 1." Seminars in Perinatology 20:11-20:1996.

8. Litovsky. 58.

9. Anne Fernald. "Human Maternal Vocalization to Infants as Biologically Relevant

Signals: an Evolutionary Perspective." 391-428 in The Adapted Mind. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 418.

10. Wikipedia. "Voice Frequency."

11. B. H. Suits. "Frequencies for equal-tempered scale." Notes for Physics of Music course, Michigan Technical University. 1998.

12. Litovsky. 61.
13. Wikipedia. "Audio Frequency."
14. Litovsky. 61-62.
15. Litovsky. 70.

16. Ilari. 312. She noted, "neonates up to the age of 6 months are still in a drowsy state and can be difficult to work with."

17. Shmuel Arnon, Anat Shapsa, Liat Forman, Rivka Regev, Sofia Bauer, Ita Litmanovitz, and Tzipora Dolfin. "Live Music Is Beneficial to Preterm Infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Environment." Birth 33:131-136:2006.

18. Douglas R. Keith, Kendra Russell, and Barbara S. Weaver. "The Effects of Music Listening on Inconsolable Crying in Premature Infants." Journal of Music Therapy 46:191-203:2009.

19. G. B. Malloy. "The Relationship Between Maternal and Musical Auditory Stimulation and the Developmental Behavior of Premature Infants." Birth Defects 15(7):81-89:1979. Described by Charlene Krueger. "Exposure to Maternal Voice in Preterm Infants: A Review." Advances in Neonatal Care 10:13-20:2010.

20. Margaret Wise Brown. Goodnight Moon. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1947. While tests comparing reading and singing generally have shown reading was less effective, the nature of this book may have made a difference. It was a rhyming poem written specifically for use at bedtime.

21. Hyejung Lee and Rosemary White-Traut. "Physiologic Responses of Preterm Infants to the Male and Female Voice in the NICU." Journal of Pediatric Nursing 29:e3-e5:2014.

22. Lokho Pai. Comments on YouTube. 2013.

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

24. Arundhati Ann Gandikota. Comment posted on YouTube. 2013.

25. Lohki Pai. His website.

26. "Lokhi Pai, Guitarist in Hyderadad, Andra Pradesh." Fandalism website.