Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Frederick Hilborn Talbot was a talented man lucky enough to attract the attention of people outside his family. Like many parents, his mother thought he was special and worked to earn the money for his school fees. [1] His uncle was the minister at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in British Guiana’s capital city of Georgetown [2] where Talbot became a soloist in the choir. [3]
While he was an adolescent Talbot began singing in Vesta Lowe’s choir, where again he became a soloist. [4] His exposure to her led him to organize a youth choir named for the then current AME district bishop. When William Reid Wilkes heard the group, he arranged a scholarship for Talbot to study at Allen University, the premier AME school in the United States. [5]
This led to a fellowship to the Yale Divinity School where he did field work for the Wesley Foundation. Talbot recalls the foundation’s head, Douglas Cook, “made it possible for me to attend several ecumenical conferences and I soon developed a special interest in collecting folk tunes from around the world.” [6] One of the conferences was the meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement in Athens, Ohio, where he became aware of the work of Lynn Rohrbough. [7]
Talbot’s first job after Yale was at Shorter College in Arkansas, [8] where he took over the English department when his cousin left for another position. [9] Talbot then took classes at the Pacific School of Religion. [10] It was in this period that he worked on the Guinea Sings project described in the post for 7 August 2022.
His musical style still was influenced by the arranged spirituals sung by Lowe [11] and by Allen University. [12] Paul Robeson was the ideal when Talbot was young in British Guinea. Vibert Cambridge said Cheddi Jagan used his recordings in his 1953 election campaign. [13] Talbot’s bass-baritone voice [14] fit the aesthetic.
At this point, Talbot seems to have been pursuing an academic career. His next position was with AME’s Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. However, while he was at Payne, his uncle died in Georgetown and he volunteered to return to Guiana to serve the Saint Peter congregation. [15] He said, when he returned, he began “incorporating Caribbean music and art forms into the liturgy.” [16]
Talbot had left British Guiana while independence was more a chimera than a reality, and had been “acculturated in the United States.” [17] His wife was from the Virgin Islands with a master’s degree in Public Health from Yale. [18] He obviously returned to visit his family, or else he would not have been involved with the Guinea Sings recording.
He returned to a country plagued by riots between descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants. The United Kingdom introduced a new electoral system in 1964, and a Black, Forbes Burnham, led the government through independence in 1966. [19] In 1971, Burnham asked Talbot to represent Guyana in the United Nations. [20]
Since the late 1940s, the AME hierarchy had been pressured to elect bishops born outside the United States, and, in 1948, elevated Ormonde Walker and Joseph Gomez. [21] However, neither was assigned to the Caribbean district. Wilkes was from Georgia. [22]
In 1971, someone sent a letter to the AME newsletter, The Christian Recorder, demanding a native bishop. Talbot was elected in 1972, and assigned the Caribbean district. [23] It was in this position that he hosted a district youth conference in 1973. The church issued a commemorative album that included performances from artists from member countries. An unidentified trio sang “Kum Ba Yah.”
Title
Kum Ba Yah
Performers
Vocal Soloists: unidentified young male trio
Vocal Group: children’s choir [24]
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano with stringed instrument
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: even stress on syllables
Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: quick
Basic Structure: solist supported by humming group alternates with group singing
Singing Style: one note to one syllable
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano provides rhythmic accompaniment
Ending: sung slowly in chordal harmony, with divergent harmony on last line
Notes on Performance
Occasion: first meeting of the Caribbean Conference of Churches, 20–22 June 1973
Location: Guyana
Microphones: The album cover says it was recorded live and that Radio Demerara made “their recording facilities available.” It probably was taped using the station’s equipment, and then edited for the recording in their building. Dave Braithwaite, who worked on projects for Ray Charles, [25] was the re-mix engineer. The album itself was produced by The Dave Nelson Company in Los Angeles.
Cover: green with photograph of girl and flags of participating countries
Notes on Performers
Talbot served two four-year terms in the Caribbean, the maximum allowed by the church. He then was assigned to the Georgia-South Carolina district. After eight years, he spent four devoted to ecumenical affairs. From 1992 to 1996 he was in the Arkansas-Oklahoma district, and for the eight years before he retired in the Tennessee-Kentucky jurisdiction. [26]
With the move into the bureaucracy in the United States he sacrificed some of his freedom to organizational politics. When he was serving both the church and Guyana in the 1970s, some had complained he was “mixing religion and politics.” [27] While he was in Georgia, he began working on a PhD from Columbia Theological Seminary. He remembered this “radical and unprecedented step” was met with “consternation or wonderment, and it even strained the credulity of many.” [28]
It was while he was in Little Rock that Talbot published a book on liturgy, which included a résumé that tied his professional advances to his involvement with different forms of worship. [29] In 2016, I contacted him to confirm he had heard “Kumbaya” at the Athens meeting. When I asked him if he has sung “Kumbaya” elsewhere, he told me:
“I do recall leading a version of ‘Come by Here’ which is often referred to as ‘Kumbaya’. ‘Come by Here’ is the American version sung in small rural American churches. I often led both versions in the song as a young pastor in South Carolina and elsewhere. [30]
Talbot died in 2019. [31]
Availability
Album: “Kum Ba Yah.” Partners in Mission. 16th A.M.E. Records 1001. Released 1974.
End Notes
I would like to thank Andrew Franklin of Yale who helped me identify Frederick Talbot as the one Rohrbough called “B.Talbot” on the carbon copy of his letter that was reprinted in the post for 31 July 2022. [32] I would also like to thank the Allen University alumni office who forwarded my inquiries to him.
1. “Frederick Talbot.” Lewis and Wright Funeral Directors website, April 2019.
2. “Retired Bishop Frederick Hilborn Talbot, S.T.M., D.Min Appeal for St. Peter’s AME Church Restoration Fund.” The Christian Recorder Online, 16 October 2015. His uncle was David Patterson Talbot.
3. Frederick Hilborn Talbot. African American Worship. Lima, Ohio: Fairway Press, 1998. Reprinted by Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2007. 18.
4. Talbot, Worship. 18. Lowe is discussed in the post for 7 August 2022.
5. Lewis and Wright.
6. Talbot, Worship. 20. Cook became head of SVM in 1958. [33]
7. The Athens meeting is discussed in the post for 31 July 2022.
8. Talbot, Worship. 20.
9. “Dr. David Arlington Talbot.” Texas A&M University Commerce website. David was the son of David Patterson Talbot.
10. Talbot, Worship. 21.
11. Talbot, Worship. 18. He recalled that “along with great anthems and other choral arrangements, the choir interpreted Negro spirituals in a very moving way.”
12. Talbot, Worship. 19. At Allen, Talbot studied “voice and conducting” with John Wesley Hunter. Hunter had graduated from Juilliard, and emphasized “high class music.” Talbot remembers “excerpts from operas and a variety of anthems from famed composers were sung with style, but he also interpreted the Negro spirituals with pathos.”
13. Vibert C. Cambridge. Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. 126. Jagan brought recordings back after he was a student at Northwestern University. [34] Perhaps this contributed to the British view that Jagan was too close to the Communists. Robeson’s association with the Soviet Union is mentioned in the posts for 17 August 2017 and 12 October 2017.
14. Talbot, Worship. 23. While at Saint Peter’s, Talbot entered the National Music Festival and won the “national award as bass soloist and later an award in the baritone class.”
15. Talbot, Worship. 22.
16. Talbot, Worship. 22. This was after the Vatican changed its view of the liturgy in 1964 and folk elements were given legitimacy in masses. This first is mentioned in the post for 25 November 2017.
17. Dennis C. Dickerson. The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 492.
18. “Sylvia Ross Talbot Ed.D Bio.” The AMEC Supervisors Council website. She later earned a PhD in Health Education from Teacher’s College, Columbia.
19. “History of Guyana.” Encyclopædia Britannica website; revised by Heather Campbell and Jack K. Menke on 12 November 2009.
20. Talbot, Worship. 23.
21. Dickerson. 488–489.
22. Item on 1948 AME convention. Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 May 1948.
23. Lewis and Wright.
24. The last side of the double album includes songs from each country. While a few performers are named, most are not. It is possible the base group was the United District Choir.
25. “David Braithwaite.” Rate Your Music website.
26. Lewis and Wright.
27. Talbot, Worship. 23.
28. Talbot, Worship. 25. He noted that after he had broken the barrier, other pastors also pursued advanced degrees.
29. Talbot, Worship. 15–26.
30. Frederick Hilborn Talbot. Letter, 18 October 2016. As soon as he was ordained a deacon, Talbot was assigned the Little Mountain Circuit with churches in Chapin and Little Mountain. [35] Chapin is a rail town about 25 miles from Columbia, where Saint John’s AME church was organized before 1892. [36] Little Mountain is five miles farther on the rail line. It has been the home of a folk festival sponsored by Newberry College since 1882. [37] As mentioned in the post for 27 July 2022, Thomas H. Wiseman learned a variant of “Come by Here” in an AME church in Columbia, South Carolina.
31. Lewis and Wright.
32. Andrew Franklin. Email, 21 September 2016. “The man you’re looking for is Bishop Frederick H. Talbot. He graduated from YDS with an M.Div. in 1957, which would mean he matriculated in 1955. He is an AME Bishop in the Virgin Islands.”
33. “Student Volunteer Movement.” The Christian Scholar 41(3):433–434:September 1958.
34. Cambridge. 118.
35. Talbot, Worship. 19.
36. “Chapin, South Carolina.” Wikipedia website.
37. “Little Mountain, South Carolina.” Wikipedia website.
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