The Selvys - Kumbaya

Topic: Movement - Dance
Ballet, as we think of it with bare-armed women in point shoes and long, white, tulle skirts, emerged in the early nineteenth century. Two features were taken up by the popular stage: the corps, which evolved into the chorus line, and the pas de quatre.

The Gaiety Theatre opened in London in 1868 and the Folies Bergère in Paris the next year. The Gaiety’s owner described himself as a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." [1]

The Folies became explicitly a place for men to watch women dance in 1887 when it staged the "Place aux Jeunes." [2] The Gaiety’s new director, George Edwardes, introduced a pas de quartre with four women who "did what is called ‘high kicking’." [3]

By the end of the century its advertisements featured renderings of two lines of young women standing in low heels, the one line showing its knickers when one leg was raised to the front while the opposing line was bent forward to thrust a leg to the rear. [4]

Flo Ziegfeld brought the Folies-style show to New York in 1910. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had noted dancing was more important at the Gaiety in 1894 than it was in "American entertainments of the same grade." [5] Ziegfeld’s women did not tease with glimpses of female anatomy forbidden in polite society, but wore elaborate costumes and used stairs to be seen. His entertainers included the Bahamian-born dancer, Bert Williams. [6]

Busby Berkeley took Ziegfeld’s format to Hollywood in 1930 with even more complex patterns of movement. He first worked on Eddie Cantor films, but a later film featured Gene Kelly. [7]

Elaborate production numbers did not survive World War II. Broadway musicals staged in the 1950s by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe had coherent narratives that reduced the dance sequences to accompaniments to singing. [8] Chorus lines moved to television where Cholly Atkins choreographed the June Taylor Dancers for Jackie Gleason’s shows. [9]

In 1955, he worked with an African-American vocal quintet from Harlem, the Cadillacs. [10] Adkins asked them

"to stop clutching their hearts to denote true love or pointing yonder when ‘far away’ was the subject and try counterpoint movements. The lead singer, usually the worst dancer, kept it simple by moving to the melody, while backing singers evoked the rhythmic subtleties of jazz hoofers remembered by Atkins"

from "riffdancing routines from the ensemble passages that swing sections played behind soloists in the 1930s". [11]

Thus was born the techniques he used when Berry Gordy hired him to coach his Motown Records’ artists in 1964. He merged the stylized moves of tap and Hollywood films, with the natural moves already known by the soul singers. The style was borrowed by groups like the Boltons and Skylar Patterson, who used fewer of the professional movements and more of the ones from African-American religious traditions. [12]

The Selvys included two dance sections in the version of "Kumbaya" they used to open their part of an afternoon concert in Chicago’s Washington Park in 2011. The singers nearest the camera in the right wings were large women encased in flowing, long-sleeved, floor-length, white robes with sleeveless, maroon surplices. Their gestures were accordingly big.

As soon as the keyboards and drum set began playing they began moving between diagonals and clapping. They spread their arms wide between claps near the collarbone. As much as I could tell through the costumes, most of their movements were done with bent knees like the Bolton Brothers had done.

They were wearing athletic shoes as they stood, widely separated, to sing. When one woman danced, she hopped at an angle, landing with her supporting bent knee and her back foot raised from the knee. Her arms swung in a semicircle as she moved, with the left arm going forward when she landed on her right foot. If she were in a ballet class, she would have been doing a small jeté.

The women didn’t follow a choreographed pattern, but each moved with the same arm gestures, occasionally crossing in front of one another. The accompaniment had changed to one drum that had the hollow sound of a tom tom.

They returned to their places to sing.

The group from northeastern Arkansas may have selected "Kumbaya" as their opening number to get the audience comfortable with them. The lead singer, Jessica Selvy-Davis, believed they knew the song and would sing along with her. They used the 1-5 melody of the HIghtower Brothers and the pronoun "somebody," but most of their verses were iterations of "kumbaya" rather than "come by here."

In the first verse, Jessica sang alone with the instrumental accompaniment. On the second, her four sisters sang in what sounded like unison or the timbraic harmony that developed in families. After that, Jessica sang the statements, and they sang refrain. On the final line of each verse, Jessica sang "oh Lord," which they repeated while raising their left arms. Jessica trailed them on the final "kumbaya."

The only variations after that were occasional verses like "somebody’s praying." Jessica’s voice grew raspier in later iterations.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Jessica Selvy-Davis

Vocal Group: Jennifer Selvy-Carr, Joy Selvy-Campbell, Jacklyn Selvy, and Joni Selvy Brown [13]

Instrumental Accompaniment: Jesse James Selvy III, keyboard; Antonio Bernard Parks, keyboard; Jarrett Deon Selvy, bass keyboard

Rhythm Accompaniment: Jeffrey Lynn Selvy, Junior, drum set

Credits
None given

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kome BAA ya
Verses: kumbaya, praying, waiting, come by here, needs you

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

Basic Form: open-ended

Verse Repetition Pattern: AAABBxxxAAAA where A was "kumbaya" and B was "praying"

Ending: repeat "oh Lord" seven times
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition

Singing Style: the soloist sang the first verse, the four women the second in unison; thereafter, the soloist sang statements and the group sang refrains.

Vocal-Instrumental Dynamics: the keyboards and drums accompanied the singing, but only the drums played during the dancing.

Notes on Performance
Occasion: African Festival of the Arts, 4 September 2011, sponsored on Labor Day weekend by Africa International House USA of Chicago

Location: Stage, Washington Park, Chicago
Microphones: each singer had a hand-held mike.
Clothing: the men wore white shirts and maroon vests.

Notes on Movement
The sisters never stood still.

Notes on Audience
The video camera was in the wings and did not pick up any audience response. It stopped before the applause.

Notes on Performers
The five sisters were trained to quartet singing by their father, Jesse Selvys. A keyboard player and the bass keyboard player were their brothers. The other keyboard player and drummer were cousins. [14]

Jesse was on the town council in Earle, [15] a small town located on Mississippi River bottom lands in Crittendon County. Slaves were the majority of the population before the Civil War, and attempts to suppress the political power of African Americans continue. [16] Earle’s population fell by a sixth between 2000 and 2013 as whites left the community. A tornado in 2008 no doubt contributed to the emigration. [17]

The Silvys never mentioned their religious affiliation, although several were associated with the Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts in West Memphis. That group said it believed "baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues is given to believers who ask for it." [18]

Availability
YouTube: uploaded by TheSelvys1 on 20 October 2011.

End Notes
1. John Hollingshead. Gaiety Chronicles. London: A. Constable, 1898.

2. "Folies-Bergère." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July1998; last updated by Richard Pallardy on 6 November 2008.

3. Lilly Grove Frazer. Dancing. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. The show was Faust up to Date. The pas de quatre was both a part of corps work done by four women in ballets like Swan Lake and a specific work choreographed by Jules Perrot for four famous soloists in 1845.

4. "Rice & Barton’s Big Gaiety Spectacular Extravaganza Co." Buffalo: The Courier Company, 1900." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 18 February 2009 by Adam Cuerden. It can be seen at Wikipedia. "Chorus Line."

5. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 23 December 1894. 9a. Quoted by Wikipedia. "Gaiety Girls."
6. Wikipedia. "Ziegfeld Follies" and "Bert Williams."

7. Michael Barson. "Busby Berkeley." Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July 1998; last updated 8 March 2018. The first Cantor film, Whoopee!, was originally a Ziegfeld show. For Me and My Gal featured Kelly in 1942.

8. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! included modern ballets choreographed by Agnes DeMille in 1943. (Wikipedia. Oklahoma!) Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Brigadoon also was choreographed by DeMille. (Wikipedia. "Brigadoon.")

9. Douglas Martin. "Cholly Atkins, 89, Dancer and Choreographer. The New York Times. 23 April 2003.

10. Wikipedia. "The Cadillacs."
11. Terry Monaghan. "Cholly Atkins." The [London, England] Guardian. 28 April 2003.

12. The Boltons were discussed in the post for 12 August 2017. Patterson was discussed in the post for 27 October 2017.

13. Jessica Selvy-Davis introduced her sisters, but I had a hard time hearing her. The names mentioned in an Italian review clarified what I heard. Jessica did not name the instrumentalists, but the Italian did in "Rassegna ‘Blues al femminile’." Villadossola city website. 4 December 2008.

14. "The Selvys." Reverb Nation website.
15. "Earle." Arkansas Municipal League website.

16. Grif Stockley. "Crittenden County." Encyclopedia of Arkansas website. Last updated 26 February 2016.

17. Wikipedia. "Earle, Arkansas."
18. Kingdom Seekers International Ministry of Arts website.