I was scheduled to read a paper on the "African Iconography of ‘Kumbaya’" at the annual meeting of the Western States Folklore Society at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, on 18 April 2020. Needless to say, the meeting was cancelled.
I placed a copy in the Academia.edu website where it should be available to anyone who is interested. It only requires a Facebook account to access material. Below is a copy of the abstract.
"Kumbaya" developed from an African-American religious song, "Come by Here." However, many believed it came from Africa. Publishers used art work with images of Africa to attract attention. A watercolor in a music textbook illustrated a primitive African lifestyle for nine-year-old students. A woodcut on a sheet-music cover showed a Nigerian drummer. In a later edition of the school book, a statue of an African-American man in prayer replaced the watercolor. The pieces of art combined bits of knowledge their creators had assimilated from many sources. Members of the targeted audiences responded because each had a similar reservoir of folklore, book learning, and popular facts. This constituted part of the shared culture associated with "Kumbaya" that contributed to its persistence as a folk song.
The watercolor by Carl Martin appeared in a textbook edited Charles Leonhard that is discussed in the post for 8 July 2018. The revised edition with the photograph of a statue by Ed Wilson is the subject of the entry for 10 August 2018.
The sheet music accompanied a version by Albert Gamse. It is discussed in the posts for 26 April 2020 and 21 February 2021. His first version was featured in the post for 12 January 2020. It is preceded by the version by Tommy Leonetti that is discussed 12 April 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment