Frank Macchia - Kumbaya

Topic: Jazz - Modern
Modern jazz musicians have been exposed to recordings by all their great predecessors, and have learned to play many styles, partly as a hedge against the vagaries of the job market. With that said, Bebop’s piano-drum set-string bass combinations seem to have been most important for men who uploaded recordings of "Kumbaya" to YouTube like Terell Stafford and the Human Voice Quartet. [1]

Thelonious Monk was one of the prime piano innovators of the Bebop style. His most famous performances were done with a bass, drums, and John Coltrane in 1957. [2] The saxophone is second only to the piano as the preferred instruments in jazz versions of "Kumbaya." Frank Macchia wrote:

"I wanted to portray it as a kind of tribute to Coltrane tunes like ‘Alabama’, [3] which I find to be very moving. I play the tenor sax solo and the band did a great job on a very ‘loose’ arrangement!" [4]

Bebop’s small groups encouraged individuals to improvise solos. [5] White instrumentalists who had spent their journeymen years in big bands, tried to restore a more orderly form with their Cool jazz associated with artists like Dave Brubeck. They used larger groups and included more instruments from symphonic bands. [6]

Maccia began playing clarinet in the mid-1960s in San Francisco, when Cool jazz was still important on the West Coast. [7] When he recorded his "modern big band album," [8] Folk Songs for Jazzers, he wrote:

"I rejected the traditional big band section of 4 trumpets, 4 trombones and 5 saxes because I wanted a more intimate setting. Instead I chose 4 multi-woodwind players, 1 trumpet, 3 trombones (doubling on euphoniums and tubas) and the standard rhythm section, enhanced with vibes on several numbers." [9]

Coltrane recorded "Alabama" in November 1963 in response to the bombing of a Birmingham church in September by members of the Ku Klux Klan. [10] He began with McCoy Tyner playing a rapid series of low notes on the piano. Macchia assigned that part to the trombones, but instead of rapid tone changes that required extraordinarily good tonguing, he had each instrument play a different tone simultaneously. At the slow tempo, it created a drone.

Bebop had reveled in its freedom from playing for dancing couples by using faster tempos. [11] The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz said the Cool jazzmen played slower, but reduced rhythm to a passive element. [12] Following the pattern of Martin Luther King’s remarks on the murder of four young girls, [13] Coltrane adopted more melodic phrasing with more obvious drums and piano chords in the midsection of "Alabama," before ending with the drums and low, rumbling piano.

Macchia’s version of "Kumbaya" fell into two parts: four repetitions of the melody and an extended solo. Maccia set the melodic pattern in the opening solo, when he played the long notes of the melody as expected and treated the short ones with vibrato. The other soloists, a horn and a sax, repeated his melody against a progressively more dissonant accompaniment by Macchia. His final solo, like any jazz solo, gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of the saxophone over its entire tonal range. He ended in the lower register.

It’s hard to know if there was any significance in using a jazz idea spawned by violence in the South for "Kumbaya." One reviewer noted:

"‘Kumbaya’ opens with Macchia’s hearty tenor solo and a loose-limbed, rumbling, brass-heavy accompaniment. It seems like an unusual choice for a jazz treatment, but Macchia and the band give it grit, and a foreboding feeling of oncoming calamity. This heard around the camp fire would conjure images of dangerous things lurking out there in the dark." [14]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none

Instrumental Soloist: Frank Maccia, tenor saxophone; Wayne Bergeron, trumpet; another sax

Instrumental Accompaniment: low brass dominant
Rhythm Accompaniment: Peter Erskine, cymbals

Credits
Arranged by Frank Macchia
Copyright: 2010 Frank Macchia

Macchia wrote: "Kumbaya seems to have come into being in the early 1920’s. The spiritual ‘Come By Yuh’ was sung in a creole dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia. It translates to ‘come by here, my lord’." [15]

Notes on Lyrics
There were none

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

Basic Structure: four iterations of the melody by different instrumentalists, followed by an extended sax solo that made no reference to the tune. The four repetitions were Macchia on sax, horn, horn and a different sax, and brass ensemble.

Instrumental Style: used vibrato

Solo-Group Dynamics: soloists dominant; parts of Maccia’s last solo were a capella. In the first repetitions, brass instruments played low, sustained tones. Later, Maccia added a counter-melody on saxophone. There were occasional sounds that mimicked the wind and a whimpering dog.

Group-Rhythm Dynamics: cymbals rarely heard until Maccia’s final solo.

Notes on Performance
Location: Entourage Studios, Sherman Oaks, California

Notes on Performers
Maccia was raised in San Francisco where he began playing clarinet when he was ten. By the time he was in high school, he had learned other reed instruments and was studying composition. He graduated from the Berkee College of Music in Boston, then returned to San Francisco where he worked as a sideman. After a German tour with a musical comedy troup, he moved to Los Angeles in 1992 where he began providing scores for films and television programs. [16]

Availability
CD: Folk Songs For Jazzers. Cacophony FMC516. 12 January 2010.

YouTube: uploaded by CDBaby on 20 July 2015.

End Notes
1. Terell Stafford was discussed in the post for 26 February 2018; the Human Voice Quartet was discussed in the entry for 28 February 2018.

2. Wikipedia. "Thelonious Monk."

3. John Coltrane. "Alabama." Live at Birdland. Impulse A-50. January 1964. (Discogs entry for album).

4. Frank Maccia. Liner notes. Reprinted by CD Baby website for his Folksongs for Jazzers.
5. Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Style Sheet. "Bebop." Jazz in America website.
6. Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Style Sheet. "Cool." Jazz in America website.
7. "Biography." Frank Macchia website.
8. CD Baby website for his Folksongs for Jazzers.
9. Macchia, liner notes.
10. "Alabama, by John Coltrane." Music Afficianado website. 14 April 2016.
11. Monk Institute, Bebop.
12. Monk Institute, Cool.

13. Music Afficianado and others have commented on the parallels in development between King’s speech and Coltrane’s "Alabama."

14. Dan McClenaghan. "Frank Macchia: Folk Songs for Jazzers." All About Jazz website. 25 February 2010.

15. Macchia, liner notes.
16. Macchia, biography.