Thula Mama - Kumbaya

Topic: Lullaby - Context
Americans know very few lullabies, if one restricts one’s definition to lyrics that use the words "sleep" and "baby." Bess Lomax Hawes listed six in the post for 7 January 2018, [1] and of those "Rockabye Baby" was the only one used by mothers of newborns in southern Ontario in the early 1990s. [2] Of the other songs they sang, the closest to a lullaby was "You Are My Sunshine." [3] The others were "Puff the Magic Dragon" [5] and "Barney’s Theme Song." [5]

These women, at least, were willing to sing. One women recommended Susie Tallman’s lullaby CD because "my voice is so awful and hers is so amazing, singing along wasn’t really an option." She added "save your voice and let Susie put your kid to sleep!" [6]

Hawes was writing in 1974 and Laurel Trainor was doing her Canadian research in the early 1990s. In between, popular music changed. Through the 1950s and the commercial folk-music revival, people could and did sing along with records. Then, the Beatles generated so much enthusiasm, they could only satisfy audience demand by appearing in stadiums in 1965. [7] The Rolling Stones responded in 1966 with sound and lighting systems that addressed the audio problems encountered by the Beatles. [8] After that, audiences developed new participation rituals that coevolved with the technology used by rock musicians. Singing along became passé.

More recently, groups like Music Together mentioned in the post for 15 January 2018, have been holding workshops to teach pregnant women and newborn mothers how to overcome their inhibitions and sing lullabies. Helen Yeomans said she discovered the pleasures of chorale singing after the birth of her second child. When the third arrived, she started holding singing meetings for members of her playgroup in her home. [9]

Pregnant women in a class in Limerick, Ireland, reported singing had a soothing effect on them. More, Mary Carolan’s team found it helped them express their fears and anxieties. [10] Abbe Walker thought the same need was served by the surviving fragments of ancient Greek lullabies. She believed they were magical incantations intended to protect the infant from the known and unknown. [11]

Singing lullabies is often a solitary occupation, especially for the very young infant. Many scholars have observed the slow tempos prompted musings about fate. Luisa Del Giudice thought the accompanying texts often resembled dreams in their use of free associations [12] in which Italian women could lament their condition. [13] Hunger and the fear of want were recurring themes. [14]

In Nigeria, Uwemedimo Enobong Iwoketok found lullabies sung by mothers expressed concerns about how "she will cope with a lean financial situation and several children." [15] Babysitters had less security, and their songs often mentioned the fact they did not eat until "after everybody, including the baby, has eaten and probably gone to sleep." [16]

Sayyed Mojtaba Hosseini noted women in southern Iran used "desolate and sad" tunes to express the "bitterness of life." [17] Federico García Lorca said Spanish lullabies also used the country’s "saddest melodies and most melancholy texts to tinge her children’s first slumber." Many lyrics dealt with male infidelity, and some with female adultery. [18]

Even in this country the baby crashes to the ground in the final lines of "Rockabye Baby." Hawes thought the lullaby was a way for mothers to deflect the hostilities they felt when they were forcibly separated from their infants at birth in hospitals like the one described by Margaret Mead in the post for 15 January 2018. She reflected it might be a way of coping with the "abnormal degree of separation strain" placed on American mothers. [19]

One person who thought "Kumbaya" was a lullaby said "songs don’t become ‘traditional" unless they tap into something deep in human nature (beneath and across cultures). With Kumbaya, that ‘something’ is abandonment, loneliness, longing. By invoking the memory of a comforting other, those painful feelings are assuaged." [20]

Yeomans’ group in south Devon, England, recorded "Kumbaya" with no musical instruments. She modified the standard version by substituting sleeping for singing in the second and third lines of the final verse. It thus progressed from a crying infant through a mother’s lullaby to a sleeping child. The intervening praying verse was less a Christian term than a reference to the lullaby itself as a form of sympathetic magic.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: women
Vocal Director: Helen Yeomans
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Copyright: 2012 Musical Hedge

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: com by ah with no obvious accent; Lord sung with a soft /d/.

Verses: kumbaya, crying, praying, sleeping

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: substitute sleeping for singing

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

Singing Style: they began each line in unison, and changed to parallel harmony on the verbs; one syllable to one note except for final Lord.

Notes on Performance
CD cover: quilt-style design with dark-blue background. The outer pink-and-blue border had black picots on the outside. The inner frame was a series of small squares containing stars and hearts. That design was repeated in an outline of a bell jar containing a yellow new moon. Yellow stars were scattered inside and outside the jar.

Notes on Performers
Yeomans organized choirs in Totes, Devon, and began composing for them. After women heard her mothers’ group on radio, they wrote and asked how they could organize their own groups. That led to a franchise. [21]

She called the group Thula Mama, after a song recorded by Vusi Mahlasela. The South African Sotho-speaker dedicated it to "all the women in South Africa who refused to dwindle in the midst of apartheid at that time." He especially remembered his grandmother who protected them from the police with a pot of boiling water. [22]

"Thula Mama" mixed native words with references to childhood. Perhaps that was why Yeomans considered it to be an African lullaby. [23]

Availability
CD: Strictly Sleeping. 30 December 2011.

End Notes
1. Bess Lomax Hawes. "Folksongs and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby." The Journal of American Folklore 87:140-148:1974. 146. The list was in note 13.

2. Laurel J. Trainor. "Infant Preferences for Infant-Directed Versus Noninfant-Directed

Playsongs and Lullabies." Infant Behavior and Development 19:83-92:1996. She asked women in the maternity ward to sing a song with and without their infants. She then asked students to classify them as lullabies or playsongs. The playsongs were "Baa Baa Black Sheep," "Inky Dinky Spider," and "Skinamerink." They thought "Row Your Boat" was a lullaby when sung to an infant, and a playsong when sung without an infant present. They did not agree on the status of "ABCD," "Five Little Ducks," and "There’s a Hole in My Bucket."

3. "You Are My Sunshine" was recorded by Jimmie Davis in 1940.
4. "Puff the Magic Dragon" was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1963.

5. Barney and Friends originated as a series of videos about a purple dinosaur created by Sheryl Leach in 1987. PBS began broadcasting a version in 1992 that still was being aired when Trainor published her study in 1996. The theme song was written by Philip A. Parker. (Wikipedia. "Barney and Friends." and "Philip Parker." Barney Wiki website.)

6. Patricia Brahe. Comment on Susie Tallman. Lullaby Themes for Sleepy Dreams. Posted to Amazon 28 August 2006.

7. Wikipedia. "The Beatles’ 1965 US Tour."
8. Wikipedia. "Arena Rock."
9. "A Thula Mama Session." Its website.

10. Mary Carolan, Maebh Barry, Mary Gamble, Kathleen Turner, and Óscar Mascareñas. "Experiences of Pregnant Women Attending a Lullaby Programme in Limerick, Ireland: a Qualitative Study." Midwifery 28:321-328:2012.

11. Abbe Walker. "Ancient Greek Lullabies: Magic or Mundane?" Society for Classical Studies annual meeting. 2016.

12. Luisa Del Giudice. "Ninna-nanna-nonsense? Fears, Dreams, and Falling in the Italian Lullaby." Oral Tradition 3:270-293:1988. 273.

13. Del Giudice. 271.
14. Del Giudice. 277.

15. Uwemedimo Enobong Iwoketok. "Analysis of Lullabic Songs in Traditional African Communities: Some Nigerian Examples." African Research Review 3:147-157:2009. 149.

16. Iwoketok. 153.

17. Sayyed Mojtaba Hosseini. "A Study of Lullabies in Bushehr Province [Iran]." International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies 3:1115-1125:2016. 1117.

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

19. Hawes. 147-148.

20. mj. 31 August 2006. Comment on Eric Zorn. "Someone’s dissin’, Lord, kumbaya." Chicago Tribune website. 31 August 2006. Her comments on "Kumbaya" as a lullaby were quoted in the post for 3 January 2018.

21. "Thula Mama." Helen Yeomans’ website.

22. Vusi Mahlasela. Interviewed by Renee Montague. National Public Radio, Morning Edition. 24 April 2007.

23. Yeoman’s website.