Student Volunteer Movement - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Student Volunteer Movement was the third organization that introduced “Kumbaya” before Lynn Rohrbough released his Song Sampler in January 1956.  It held a convention in Athens, Ohio, over the 1955–1956 holiday break.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot remembered “the song was sung alternatively by the gathering.” [1]

SVM was an offshoot of the activities of  William Taylor.  As the Missionary Bishop of Africa for the Methodist Episcopal Church North from 1884 to 1896, he organized the denomination’s first missions to Liberia, the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique. [2]  In 1886, the Chicago-based evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, organized a conference to support Taylor’s activities.  This led to the organization of SVM in 1888.  Their goal was to “evangelize the world in one generation.” [3]

Harlan Hatcher, president of the University of Michigan, noted “such quadrennial conferences have been held for more than fifty years, but this was the first one in which over half the students who attended were from countries throughout the world where the Younger Churches had been established during the past century.” [4]

Three thousand attended. [5]  Rosa Page Welch remembered “an African student led the conference in singing” the song. [6]

Rohrbough also attended.  He recalled:

“Rosa Page Welsh led the singing at the Athens SVM Convention; the Negro was F.Talbot; from B.Guiana; a Theo. student from Yale; we have tapes of all singing; and the Africans were from Kenya,Ghana.” [7]

Talbot did not specifically say he led the singing.  He was not from Africa, but from British Guinea, [8] then a colony of the United Kingdom on the northern coast of South America.  However, Welch, who was an African American from Port Gibson, Mississippi, [9] may have made an assumption based on context and skin color.

The identity of the singer is less important than how the individual learned “Kumbaya.”  It is possible the song leader had attended the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, or even been the one who introduced the song there.  It is less likely he learned it from Melvin Blake.

The most likely possibility is that Rohrbough, himself, was responsible.  His Song Sampler is dated January 1956.  No doubt he had proofs, and may even have had copies that were ready for mailing.  It also is likely he had some kind of vendor’s booth at the convention, where he may have distributed copies of the Sampler or the song to promote his business.  It is not likely he distributed the songbook itself to the entire crowd of 3,000.

Someone had given him $1,000 to distribute issues of the Sampler for one year. [10]  It included an article by Janet Tobitt on “You Can Lead in Singing,” and profiled her as a world traveler.  It claimed the selection of songs were ones “which have been popular at Paris Y Centennial, the Purdue Convocation, and Sing Sessions in Pennsylvania and Indiana.” [11]

The collection was a poor fit for a group with half its members committed to missionary work.  Eight of the twenty-one titles were religious in a broad sense, but few were actual hymns that could be used in formal sessions.

The other half of the attendees were international students from countries where Protestant church missionaries were active.  The U. S. State Department had begun promoting “educational exchanges with other nations” as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.  In 1940, the University of Michigan’s contacts were mainly in Latin America, with some exchanges with Turkey. [12]

After the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, the federal government began providing financial support for international students.  In 1957, Asher Lubotszky said a quarter of the foreign students at Indiana University had such support.  He indicated that the state-sponsored school had 500 students in 1957, up from less then 50 in the early 1940s. [13]

Protestant churches’ missionary efforts primarily had been directed toward countries with religions that were not based on the Bible.  The most populous such areas were in Asia, followed by Africa.  These were the nations targeted by the State Department.  At IU, Lubotzky said in the 1950s that “Europe and South America, which traditionally were important suppliers of international students, reduced in size” while the numbers from Asia increased more than those from the Middle East, and Africa. [14]

When people first look through songbooks, they look for ones that might be interesting.  Headnotes and titles are the first clues.  It is only later that individuals may look at each song carefully.

Only two of the songs in the Sampler were from Africa and two from the Middle East, while none came from Asia or Latin America.  One African song was a love song from white South Africa [15] and one from Turkey was a round in Turkish. [16]  That left the religious “Kum Ba Yah” and the round “Shalom Chaverim.” [17]

Title
“Come By Here” with “Kum Ba Yah” as the subtitle.  This is a continuation of the change introduced at the Buckeye Workshop in 1955 to make the song’s meaning more obvious and more familiar to individuals who were uncomfortable with nonsense or foreign words. [18]

Credits
Africa (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: note that pronounced “Koom-bah-yah”
Verses: Kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no flats or sharps

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: vocal line only
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Occasion: songbook created to publicize Cooperative Recreation Service
Cover: treble clef sign in circle at top left; otherwise just table of contents

Color Scheme: cover has brown ink on yellow paper; inside pages use brown ink on cream paper

Plate: made by Jane Keen

Notes on Performers
Rosa Page was born in 1900.  Her great-grandmother had been a slave who married a Creek. [19]  Her grandparents went to church meetings every night that rotated between the Baptist, Methodist, and Christian churches. [20]  Her father directed the local band in Gibson [21] until he joined the church. [22]

A neighbor, who was in a Methodist choir, was the first to teach her how to sing. [23]  Her training was erratic; it included a visit to a minstrel show where Bessie Smith was performing. [24]  A local minister’s daughter got her into a Christian Church college, [25] where she received more training.

After the war, Page moved to Chicago where she married E. C. Welch in 1927. [26]  There she had more training, and was offered a chance to sing at a Nebraska Student Conference of the church. [27]  This began a career as a song leader for large conventions.  She had 101 engagements in 1945. [28]  The first one for SVM may have been in 1952 in Lawrence, Kansas. [29]

In 1953 she went on a world tour [30] that took her to Asia, then the Belgium Congo [31] and Liberia. [32]  Eight years after the Athens meeting, she spent time as a missionary in Nigeria for the Church of the Brethren. [33]  Rather than letting her evangelize, local male missionaries expected to perform to raise money for them. [34]  Although her biography about this period is called “Kum Ba Yah,” it does not mention the song.                

Talbot is discussed in posts for 7 August 2022 and 14 August 2022.

Availability
Book.  “Come By Here/Kum Ba Yah.”  15 in Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.

End Notes
1.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  Letter, 18 October 2016.
2.  Taylor is discussed in the post for 7 March 2021.

3.  “Student Volunteer Movement.”  Wikipedia website.  Moody is discussed in the posts for 17 January 2021 and 24 January 2021.

4.  Harlan Hatcher.  The President’s Report for 1955-1956.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1957.  74.

5.  Hatcher.

6.  Rosa Page Welch.  Paraphrased by Shawnee Press.  Letter to Lynn Rohrbough, 14 May 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

7.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 4 June 1959.  Uncorrected typed carbon.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

8.  “Frederick H. Talbot, 57 M.Div.”  Yale Divinity School Alumni Awards website.
9.  Oma Lou Myers.  Rosa’s Song.  Saint Louis, Missouri: CBP Press, 1984.  11.
10.  Song Sampler.  B.
11.  Song Sampler.  A.

12.  “75 Years of the International Center at the University of Michigan.”  University of Michigan website.

13.  Asher Lubotzky.  “Diplomacy, Diversity, and Dollars: How the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement Shaped International Student Policy at Indiana University, 1950-1970.”  Indiana University website, 20 August 2018.

14.  Lubotzky.

15.  “Sarie Marais.  South African Folk song from Jan Perewiet; English by Katharine Ferris Rohrbough.  Van Gorcum and Comp. N.V. 1948.  Aan den Brink, Assen, Nederlands.  10 in Song Sampler.

16.  “Rally Song.”  Turkish round from Janet Tobitt.  Yours for a Song.  15 in Song Sampler.

17.  “Shalom Chaverim.”  Palestinian round; English by Augustus D. Zanzig.  16 in Song Sampler.

18.  The Buckeye Workshop version is discussed in the post for 24 July 2022.
19.  Myers.  21.
20.  Myers.  17–18.
21.  Myers.  20.
22.  Myers.  23.
23.  Myers.  18–19.
24.  Myers.  22.

25.  Myers.  27.  The Christian Church is the name of a merged group of denominations founded after the Cane Ridge Revival.  They are discussed in the post for 8 November 2020.

26.  Myers.  33.
27.  Myers.  38.
28.  Myers.  75.
29.  Myers.  91.
30.  Myers.  94.
31.  Myers.  116.
32.  Myers.  124.
33.  Myers.  144.
34.  Myers.  148, 150.