The Villagers - Kum Ba Ya

Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
Oral tradition is a broad stream of communication that encompasses everything from hazing traditions in wealthy fraternities to field hollers used by African-American farm workers in the South. For years, folklorists sought to narrow the scope with sociological definitions of the deserving folk.

D. K. Wilgus’ 1954 dissertation defined the legitimate, i.e., academic, collections from the less rigorous popular ones. [1] The Kingston Trio erupted into the popular music world in 1958. [2] The next year, Rutgers published Wilgus’ Anglo-American Scholarship since 1898. [3]

Ray Lawless sped the canonization process in 1960. In Folksingers and Folksongs in America he provided short descriptions of the genuine folk artists, folk song collections, folklore societies, and recordings. While his range was broad enough to include Bradley Kincaid, who appeared on Chicago radio station WLS, it did not include the Carter Family. He accepted Harry Belafonte, but not The Kingston Trio. [4]

He issued a revision in 1965 that admitted some artists who emerged after 1960, like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Odetta. He gave a brief mention of The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary with the caveat:

"However much some of the above groups may have commercialized or confused the folk music scene, they at least gave something that made more sense and music than Beatlemania." [5]

Lawless’ book was the sort of reference James Leisy could have used when he was preparing The Folk Song Abecedary. [6] Indeed, he included a higher proportion of songs from Lawless’ than it did from Sandburg and Lomax combined, 55% to 35%. The ones unique to Leisy included spirituals and Southern gospel songs, as well as ones from drinking and African-American traditions.

Leisy wanted to do more than guide his readers to the better folk songs. He wanted to educate their taste by listing the more authentic recordings. For that, he probably relied on Lawless’ list of albums. The artists mentioned most often by the two men were interpreters who were popular in the 1940s: Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennett, and Josh White.

This time Leisy did not mention The Weavers’ recording of "Kumbaya." Instead he listed albums by Baez and the Womenfolk. The latter made an album for RCA that included five songs by the women, five by The Villagers, and one with the two together. It was actually The Villagers who performed "Kum Ba Ya."

The recording was made in 1963 at the Ice House, a folk-music club in Pasadena, California. [7] The group followed what had become the accepted routine for "Kumbaya." The woman acting as spokesperson introduced it by repeating a variant of the legend introduced by Pete Seeger in 1957, [8] that it was an American spiritual taken to Africa by missionaries. [9]

Next she invited the audience to join them. Her technique was for the group to "sing one verse through for you first so you get a general idea of how it goes," and then shout out the verb as the group started each iteration. While this approach was popularized by Seeger, it was Baez’s 1962 recording that embedded it into the standard performance of "Kumbaya."

Their performance violated two of Leisy’s protocols. The tempo was quick, rather than slow, with the rhythm emphasized by hand claps. The Villagers treated another spiritual, "Good News," as a vehicle for comedy, rather than religion. For "Kumbaya" they added "sleeping" from Seeger and "shouting" to the usual verses. They treated "shout" as a verb for speaking as loudly as possible, rather than as a noun defining one way African Americans approached the Lord.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group: Elaine Fink, Janet Perlstein, Harvey Gerst, Steve Cohen

Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: hand claps

Credits
Arr: Fink, Perlstein, Gerst, Cohn
ASCAP

Introduction: "The origin or the title of this song comes from American missionaries going over to South Africa in the 1800s bringing with them a Negro spiritual called ‘Come By Here’ and the African interpretation of that was ‘Kumbaya’."

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum Ba YAAH
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying, sleeping, shouting

Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord

Special Terms: they used "shouting" to refer to the loudness of the voice rather than to a way African Americans addressed the Lord.

Basic Form: four-verse song framed by kumbaya repeated twice at start and end

Verse Repetition Pattern: A-A-x-x-x-x-A-A where A = kumbaya
Ending: repeated "oh Lord, Kumbaya" twice
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: quick; slowed the last "oh Lord, kumbaya"
Dynamics: uniform, except for shouting verse which was louder
Basic Structure: strophic repetition

Singing Style: one syllable to one note including final "Lord"
Group: parallel chordal harmony, with no low voices

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the guitar maintained a constant rhythmic pattern

Notes on Performance
Occasion: 1963 concert
Location: Ice House, Pasadena, California

Microphones: album photograph shows two floor mikes for the singers and one for one woman’s guitar.

Clothing: album photograph showed the group standing in order of the height with the women together and the men together. The men had short hair and wore dark suits with light-colored ties. The women were wearing identical pleated skirts, blouses, and weskits. They had bangs and their short, permed hair framed their faces.

Notes on Movement
In the album photograph, the women were standing with full-sized guitars. One man stood with a smaller guitar, and the other stood with a string bass.

Audience Perceptions
An industry trade organ said The Villagers added "humor and rousing singing to their material." [10]

Notes on Performers
The Villagers was an ephemeral group in a constellation of such groups. Harvey Gerst said he had started several groups before he met Elaine Fink. [11] He and Steve Cohen hung around the Troubadour coffeehouse in West Hollywood, where artists could perform on Monday nights. [12]

Terry Kirkman remembered one night in 1964 when a friend called people in the audience to come on stage. They sang songs they all knew: Baez’s "Banks Of The Ohio," The Highwaymen’s "Michael Row The Boat Ashore," The Kingston Trio’s "Darlin’ Corey," and Woody Guthrie’s "This Land Your Land." It was, he said, "twenty-plus minutes of the best musical fun anyone had experienced in some time." [13]

Cohen recalled "there was no planning or anything that led up to that moment. It was just unrehearsed. It just happened." [14]

Gerst and Cohen continued to sing with Kirkman’s group, which became The Men, but left in March 1965 before it became The Association. [15]

The Villagers evolved from a similar network of friends with a common repertoire who imbibed the air of Los Angeles area folk-music scene. Gerst was brought into the group by Fink, and brought in Cohen. Cohen was the most typical folknik in the group. He spent time around Washington Square in New York and was president of the Queens College folk song club. [l6]

Fink was born in Waukegan, Illinois, and studied voice and piano at the University of Illinois and University of Michigan. She met Janet Perlstein when she moved to Los Angeles to study how to score films at UCLA. [l7]

Perstein was raised in Los Angeles and studied music at Mills College in Oakland. After working for a music publisher in New York, she moved to Santa Monica to teach in a high school and study at UCLA. [18]

Gerst seems to have been the only member who remained active in professional music. He was born in Chicago and raised in California. [19] He began working with microphones and amplifiers, and was designing speakers for JBL while he was performing with The Villagers and The Men. He continued working in the technical areas of electric instruments, and in 1988 opened his own recording studio in Texas. [20]

The others had more common names, but I could find nothing more about them on the web.

Update 4 April 2020:
Laurie Burke sent me an email that identified her mother, Elaine Fink, was the spokesperson.  She added Fink continued “in music (mainly as an amazing pianist and orchestrator, musical writer, etc.) and she raised an entire family of professional musicians.”  Burke’s brother is a drummer and composer.  Burke is a singer and voice-over coach.

Burke also said her mother remembered well “what happened when they toured through the South in the 60's and the dealings with racism they encountered against an African American group touring with them(I believe they were in Texas and since the group was being denied the same treatment as the white groups, they all refused to play.”

Availability
Album: The Villagers. "Kum Ba Yah." On The Womenfolk and The Villagers. We Give a Hoot. RCA Victor LPM-2821, Ice House, Pasadena, California, 1963.

YouTube: The Villagers.  “KUM BA YA (Kumbaya).”  Uploaded by PS109VanBurenHigh, 24 August 2015.

End Notes
1. D. K. Wilgus. "A History of Anglo-American Ballad Scholarship since 1898." PhD dissertation. Ohio State University, 1954.

2. The Kingston Trio was discussed in the post for 13 October 2019.

3. D. K. Wilgus. Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959.

4. Ray McKinley Lawless. Folksingers and Folksongs in America. New York: Meredith Press, 1960.

5. Ray M. Lawless. Folksingers and Folksongs in America. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. 1965 edition. 704.

6. Leisy’s Folk Song Abecedary was discussed in the post for 22 December 2019.
7. Wikipedia. "The Ice House (Comedy Club).".  It is the subject of my article in Voices.  The abstract is available on the Papers tab.  A copy has been uploaded to the Academia.edu website.

8. Seeger’s legend is discussed in the post for 16 October 2022.  It is the subject of my article in Voices.  The abstract is available on the Papers tab.  A copy has been uploaded to the Academia.edu website.

9. She specified the missionaries went to South Africa in the 1800s. South Africa was divided between Dutch and British interests for most of the nineteenth century with the established churches of each jealously guardian its position. Some early attempts by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were subverted by wars between natives and Boer farmers. Most of the missionaries did not survive. [21]  Her comments are quoted in the Voice article.

It was only after the discovery of diamonds in 1871 and gold in 1886 [22] that colonial authorities saw a need to socialize Africans into becoming mine laborers. Methodist missionaries from the United States appeared in 1901, [23] toward the end of the Second Boer War. [24] The Pentecostals mentioned in the post for 29 August 2017 arrived in 1908. [25]

10. Review of We Give a Hoot. Billboard. 21 December1963. 28.
11. We Give a Hoot. Liner notes.

12. Malcolm C. Searles. The Association ‘Cherish.’ Leicester, England: Troubadour Publishing, 2018. 15–16.

13. Terry Kirkman. Quoted by Searles. 18. He was not part of The Villagers.
14. Steve Cohen. Quoted by Searles. 18.
15. Searles. 41–42.
16. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
17. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
18. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
19. We Give a Hoot, liner notes.
20. "Harvey Gerst." LinkedIn website.

21. J. du Plessis. A History of Christian Missions in South Africa. London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1911. Chapter 13, The American Zulu Mission, 219–232.

22. Wikipedia. "History of South Africa."
23. du Plessis. 391.
24. Wikipedia, History of South Africa. The war was fought between 1899 and 1902.
25. Wikipedia. "Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa."