Topic: Movement - Dance
Sang-Kil Lee, president of the Korean Federation for Choral Music, used the word "glocalism" to describe South Korea’s blend of global and local elements. He noted that, while choirs were introduced by Protestant missionaries before World War I, they were "significantly influenced by the hosting of big international events such as the Asian Games in 1986 and the Olympics in 1988." [1]
The Far East Broadcasting Company’s version of "Kumbaya" combined an American song and chorus lines with moves more acceptable to conservative religious audiences. The steps were simple, as was necessary for singers, but they were effective because of the precision with which they were executed.
The sponsor was an American evangelical group organized in the Philippines in 1945 to beam short-wave radio broadcasts to people living in Communist China. [2] It provided no information on its programs in South Korea. One only can deduce from watching the women’s chorus that the choreographer, if not some of the singers, watched American films carefully or had taken ballet lessons. [3]
The vocal arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry [4] was in 4/4, but all the dance combinations took two beats or half a measure. The chorus members had to know the choreography to perform in those small temporal units. At the same time, they were aware of their positions in the group, so they all faced the same angle and raised their arms to the same heights.
The lyrics began with four repetitions of the work "kumbaya." When the performance began the young women were dressed in ivory-colored tops and narrow-legged slacks, with their backs to the audience. Their feet were separated in ballet’s parallel second position.
On the first "kumbaya" the women on stage right turned around. On the first repetition, the women on the left turned, and on the third the ones in the center moved. They stayed in that position, with their arms at their sides for the remainder of the four-line verse.
The gestures that followed were abstract, with no connection to the English text. The separation of the two may have been related to the low levels of fluency among South Koreans. The language became part of the elementary school curriculum in 1993, and so people under 35 years of age were more likely to understand a sung text than older people. [5]
It’s also one trait that may have been cultural. While Presbyterians were the first to proselytize in Korea, [6] they apparently could not impose the requirement that one must understand what one sang, which had influenced Anglo and Scots Protestants.
For the first verse, "someone’s praying," the Busan women divided into two groups facing each other. They then did a wide pas de bourrée. As they stepped to the side, the singers again faced front. When they crossed their foot nearest the center behind the other, they also raised their arms over their heads in a high fifth position. In the final part they brought their front feet beside their back ones as they lowered their arms to their sides.
On the "kumbaya" refrain, they moved their right feet forward with their knees bent, then did the same with their left feet. To complete the measure, they moved their left feet back, then right ones.
The women stepped to a diagonal toward each other and raised their upstage arms on the second lines, with their weight on their upstage feet and the heels of their downstage feet off the ground. They walked forward on the final line. They repeated the forward/backward step combination for the refrain, and continued it through the third line of the verse.
On the final line they began in their original position, facing front. They raised their right arms up to their waist and moved them out, and repeated with their left arms to end in ballet’s second position. They dropped their arms to their sides on "kumbaya."
The key changed for the "singing" verse and the rhythm became louder. The women took two wide steps to the left followed by two to the right with their arms at forty-five degrees from their bodies with their hands flexed. On line two, they stood still and nodded their heads. They repeated the steps on line three, and the head nods on line four.
The final verse was a repetition of "praying." They spread their arms wider so they crossed those of their neighbors. On the first line the first and third rows stepped in one direction while the other rows stepped in the other. For the second line, the rows took turns bending their knees low while the others stood.
The version ended with two repetitions of "kumbaya." The women turned toward their partners with elbows bent and hands straight up with the palms forward. On the very last word, they turned their faces toward the audience.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: 34 woman spread among first and second sopranos and altos
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum, shaker
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum bye yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, singing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCB where B was praying. The Perry arrangement had used "let us praise the Lord" for the final verse.
Ending: kumbaya repeated twice
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: arrangement by Dave and Jean Perry. It will be discussed in a future post.
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with key change on final iteration
Singing Style: chordal harmony with few overtones
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano was loud and stressed the downbeats
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: drum and shaker were loud
Notes on Performance
Occasion: no information given
Location: stage, probably in Busan, the second largest city in Korea
Microphones: none
Clothing: ivory tops and narrow-legged slacks, with medium-height heels, and taupe-colored long scarves
Notes on Movement
The women were standing in four rows on three risers.
Notes on Audience
Applause at end.
Notes on Performers
Far East Broadcasting was organized by John Broger and Bob Bowman. It began using South Korea as a base for reaching North Korea in 1956. Its organization expanded to Busan in 2008, which it claimed had "a relatively low Christian population." Most of its broadcasting was in Korean, with only an hour a month in English. [7]
The two men met at the Assemblies of God’s Southern California Bible College in Pasadena in the 1930s. [8] During World War II, Broger was an radio technician in the United States Navy, and returned to the military when Arthur Radford became chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff under Eisenhower. From his position managing internal communications in the services, he indoctrinated men with the ideas of the John Birch Society, according to Trent Christman. [9]
Bowman took over managing FEBC after Borger left. [10] As an undergraduate he had sung baritone for Haven of Rest Quartet, which appeared on early Christian radio broadcasts [11] Mark Ward believed that experience allowed him to see the effectiveness of radio as an evangelical medium. [12]
Theologically, FEBC promoted the literal interpretation of the Bible, the Holiness emphasis on "regeneration by the Holy Spirit," and the millenialist belief "in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved into the resurrection of life, and they that are lost into the resurrection of damnation." [13]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Lee Young-mi on 12 June 2017. The notes were in Korean and translated by Google Translate.
End Notes
1. Sang-Kil Lee. "Korean Choral Music from its Inception to the Present Day." The IFCM Magazine website. 15 July 2012.
2. Wikipedia. "Far East Broadcasting Company."
3. The national ballet was organized in Seoul in 1962. (Wikipedia. Korea National Ballet.) I could not find any information on how many children took classes.
4. Dave and Jean Perry. "Kum Ba Yah." Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, 2002.
5. "The Future of English in Korea." The Diplomat website. 29 June 2014. Surveys indicated 50% could speak English, but differences by age, gender, locality, and fluency were averaged together in that number.
6. Jae Guen Lee. "Moffett, Samuel Austin." Boston University website. The Presbyterians arrived in Korea in 1890.
7. "South Korea." Far East Broadcasting Company website for South Korea.
8. Mark Ellis. "Far East Broadcasting Founder Bob Bowman Watched God Do the Impossible with Radio." Crossmap website. 29 December 2003.
9. Trent Christman. Brass Button Broadcasters. Nashville: Turner Publishing Company, 1992. 139.
10. Ruth A. Tucker. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004 edition. 385.
11. Haven of Rest was mentioned in the post for 27 November 2017.
12. Mark Ward. The Lord’s Radio. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. 96.
13. "What We Believe." Far East Broadcasting Company website.
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