Bernard Gasso - Kum Ba Yah (Come By Here)

Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
Tommy Leonetti’s version of "Kumbaya" was released when the various components of the music industry were adapting to the transition from songs to performances. As mentioned in the posts for 12 April 2020 and 19 April 2020, radio acknowledged what then was called the generation gap with the creation of a separate adult, East Listening format that attracted different advertisers than did the one used by stations which played songs from Billboard’s top forty records.

The music publishing business already had adapted to the folk-music revival with popular collections like the one edited by Albert Gamse that was discussed in the post for 12 January 2020. When Leonetti’s version became popular, Gamse’s publisher repackaged his version under the name Bernard Gasso.

It issued a sheet music edition that attempted to reconstruct the African original for Leonetti’s arrangement. The spoken interlude asked the Lord to "speak to me" because the singer was "lost in a jungle of bewilderment." The deity was imagined as a "voice in the murmur of a breeze." It ended with a request that the Lord "come be here and help me find my way."

Gamse thought "Kum Ba Yah" came from Nigeria. When this was published, the Biafran war for independence was in its second year and footage of starving Igbo was being aired by United States television stations. [1]

The United Kingdom had taken control of the mouth of the Niger River in the 1865 and extended its control north to the area where the river forked. The Islamic Hausa lived north of the river, the Yorùbá to the west, and the Igbo to the east. The Igbo had revolted when they feared their autonomy was threatened by the increased power of groups in the north. [2]

Jazz historians had traced important elements of the music in Cuba and Brazil to the Yorùbá, [3] who had been exported as slaves to those areas after the slave trade with the United States ended. As mentioned in the posts for 8 September 2020 and 29 September 2019, Igbo were the primary group brought to Virginia.

The sheet music cover page alluded to this Afro-Caribbean heritage with a black-and-white woodblock reproduced on a yellow-orange background. The bare-chested African male was beating a large floor drum like the Congas used by Latin music groups in New York. [4]

Gamse probably had no say in the choice of artwork. It may only be a coincidence that he had begun as an arranger and adapter of Cuban music for United States artists.

Except for the interlude, the arrangement was the same as the one published earlier with the personalization of the lyrics to "I" and "me" rather than "someone." It ended with the "I need you" verse.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
"This was originally a Nigerian chant, interpreted in a negro gospel song as ‘Come By Here, Oh Lord’."

Adaptation by Bernard Gasso

© Copyright 1969 by Lewis Music Publishing Co., Inc.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no specification
Verses: kumbaya, crying, praying, need

Vocabulary
Pronoun: me, I
Term for Deity: Lord

Special Terms: spoken interlude used African imagery ("I’m lost is a jungle of bewilderment")

Basic Form: 5-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: spoken interlude between first and third verses

Notes on Music
Exactly like version discussed in post for 12 January 2020.

Notes on Performers
Bernard Gasso was a pen name used by Albert Gamse, [5] who was discussed in the post for 12 January 2020.

Availability
Sheet Music: Bernard Gasso. "Kum Ba Yah (Come By Here)." New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1969.

End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Nigerian Civil War," and "Biafran Airlift."
2. Wikipedia. "History of Nigeria."

3. Melville Herskovits suggested slaves from Dahomey sired drumming patterns in the New World. [6] The Oye Empire, Dahomey, and Yorùbá were terms that followed one another historically, but covered much the same area in Benin and Nigeria. [7] Marshall Stearns adopted Herskovits’ taxonomy of African-descended groups in the New World [8] in The Story of Jazz in 1956. [9]

4. The cover is reproduced in the copy of "African Iconography of ‘Kumbaya’" posted to Academia.edu.

5. Entry for "Guantanamera." 1968. Library of Congress. Copyright Office. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third series. July-December. 1734. "adaptation & m arr. Bernard Gasso, pseud. of Albert Gamse."

6. Melville J. Herskovits. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958 edition. It first was published in 1941.

7. Paul E. Lovejoy. "The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade." 40-55 in The Yoruba Diaspora. Edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

8. Herskovits. 16.

9. Marshall Stearns. The Story of Jazz. New York: New American Library, 1958 edition. Chapters 2 and 3.