Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough planned to send his Song Sampler “to music people of 200 organizations in every state and to correspondents in 60 overseas countries. [1] The first consequence may have been a letter from Claire Lovejoy Lennon that disputed “Kumbaya” was from Angola. As mentioned in the post for 18 October 2020, she was the first to tell him it was an African-American song. She learned it before World War I in Georgia. [2]
The first surviving consequence of the 1955 Student Volunteer Movement convention, which was mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022, is a 1959 songbook associated with Frederick Hilborn Talbot. I have no idea if Rohrbough remembered him from the convention before they began work on Guiana Sings. I rather suspect that Talbot reminded him, and that is the reason Rohrbough told Shawnee Press that Talbot was the meeting’s song leader. [3]
The songbook was a more ambitious project for Rohrbough, perhaps stimulated by the activities of Vesta Lowe and others in British Guiana. Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) also issued a recording with an extract of Guianese songs. [4] Some of the pages in the songbook, like the one above, have line drawings.
British Guiana, now Guyana, is located on the northern coast of South America. It began as a Dutch colony that attracted English and Scots planters. [5] Control of the area changed several times during the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but finally was taken by the British in 1814. [6]
Sugar plantations dominated the lowlands from the beginning. Since they were entering the business after methods had been perfected on Barbados and other Caribbean islands, owners were able to import the most modern equipment and be more competitive. [7]
Slave labor was used until Britain outlawed the practice in 1834. During the next five years, before emancipation was complete, owners overworked their crews, since they no longer had an incentive to treat them well. With abolition, African workers left and plantations returned to using indentured servants. [8] After experiments with men from different areas, owners important help from India. [9] Many stayed after their five-year terms and moved closer to the coast where they grew rice. Today, descendants of African slaves make up 40% of the population of Guyana, and offspring of Indian servants represent 50%. [10]
The next major change occurred when sugar beets contributed 65% of the world’s sugar supply in 1900, up from 40% in 1875. [11] Planters in British Guiana responded to lower prices by cutting wages and introducing more machinery. The economic dislocations led to riots in 1905, [12] which, Vibert Cambridge said, accelerated the migration from the countryside into Georgetown. This, in turn, led to changes in musical styles. [13]
The genesis of the song project probably was India’s independence from the British Empire in 1947. Cambridge recalled the British governor began preparing the colony for its own liberation. The local African and Indian elites believed it only would succeed if it were “constructed upon a foundation of cultural confidence. [14]
A new constitution in 1953 led to Cheddi Jagan’s election. Britain considered him to be pro-communist and declared martial law. [15]
It was during this period when Guiana was occupied by British troops that the program director of the colony’s radio station, Rafik Khan, recorded some of the songs that appear on the record with introductions to some. Although the liner notes give no information, the tapes may have been meant for a program on Radio Demerara. [16]
The songs were re-recorded in 1959 under Talbot’s direction, but Khan’s comments were retained. Abbreviated versions appear with some of the songs in the CRS book.
Guiana Sings preserves the traditions derived from Africa. The first group are work songs, primarily related to crewing boats or boat races. These began developing in the late nineteenth century when Afro-Guyanese men worked in gold fields upriver from Georgetown and on timber grants in the interior. [17]
Many texts in the second half of Guiana Sings are gwe-gwe, also spelled “kwe-kwe,” [18] “Kweh-Kweh” [19] and “queh-queh.” [20] Gwe-Gwe is a wedding ritual that developed from African roots in the colony. “There is no known equivalent in African society and it is a practice that evolved in Guyana.” [21]
After the Guianese songs, Guiana Sings has religious songs, American Negro spirituals, and international songs. The first ones are from Indonesia [22] and India. [23] The rest come from a number of countries, not just the German-Czech tradition that dominated earlier CRS books. “Kum Ba Yah” appears in the section of spirituals, and shares a page with “Jacob’s Ladder.” The other two from the Song Sampler are the German “Echo Yodel” and the Palestinian “Shalom Chaverim.”
Kum Ba Yah, with no mention of “come by here.”
Credits
The headnote has been changed to “Spiritual.”
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: the pronunciation note has been removed as John Blocher, Jr., requested. [24]
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022
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; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F G7; the second line chords are different from the tablature distributed at the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, shown in the post for 24 July 2022.
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Ending: none
Notes on Performance
Occasion: “this little book is dedicated to the 4-H Clubs of British Guiana”
Cover: parallel diagonal lines create diamond patterns, with some breaks to create large spaces; some of the larger spaces are filled with drawings; rows without large diamonds are filled with horizontal lines
Color Scheme: both cover and inside pages use green ink on light green paper; the Guianese songs are printed on heavier stock at the beginning and end of the songbook
Plate: made with music typewriter
Audience Perceptions
Cambridge remembered that
“about 15 years ago, one of my colleagues at Ohio University gave me the LP Guiana Sings that was used by his mother when she taught school in rural Ohio. This is one of the most treasured items in my Guyana collection. On that album we have recorded for posterity the voice of Rev. Fred Talbot. The LP also features the voice of a young Rafiq Khan, then Programme Director of the British Guiana United Broadcasting Company, providing descriptions of the 13 folk songs on the LP.” [25]
Notes on Performers
The inside cover of Guiana Sings has a photograph of Vesta Lowe and a note she was a “collector of Guiana Folk Songs” and had been a “Rural Youth Instructor (4-H) in Agriculture Department, since 1956.”
Vesta Hyacinth Winifred Lowe [26] was born in 1909 and lived in Manchester, [27] a rail stop on the Corentyne Coast Road from New Amsterdam to the Surinam border. [28] She was one of the first graduates of the Teachers’ Training Center, [29] which was found in 1928. [30] The young woman was working as a student-teacher in 1931 when she was sent to Tuskegee Institute by the Negro Progress Convention. [31]
Her parents were members of church choirs, and she was part of Tuskegee’s first choir. [32] Previously, the school had sponsored male quartets that had recorded for Victor from 1914 to 1916 and again from 1926 to 1927. [33] When she returned to Guiana, Lowe formed her first choir in 1939, which she named for Tuskegee’s choir director, William Dawson. [34]
She also began collecting songs, some of which her choirs sang. In 1947, she presented a program “of Guyanese Folk Songs, in which the Qweh-Qweh Dancing [was] accompanied by African Tom-Toms.” [35] Like Lydia Parish, she had found the best way to preserve traditions was to present them in publically acceptable venues. [36]
The Negro Progress Convention had sent her to Tuskegee to study Home Economics in hopes she could improve the lot of members. However, the British colony was so poor, “she was never able to obtain a tenured position in the British Guiana civil service.” [37] She worked on a number of projects, especially through 4-H, [38] until it was disbanded by the government in the early 1960s. [39]
Guiana Sings gives special thanks to two people besides Talbot on the inside cover. Stanley Sutton was a county agent from Maryland. He and his wife, the former Helen Shriley, spent the years from 1955 to 1957 in Guiana. [40] He may be the one who hired Lowe, and also may have provided the money needed to pay CRS.
Charlotte Vandiver Churaman, then the Assistant Superintendent for Rural Youth Work, was from Burlington, West Virginia. She met her husband, Oscar Churaman, when he was an agricultural student in the United States. [41] His grandfather had been a cane cutter who migrated from Maharashtra, India. [42] The couple lived in Guyana from 1949 to 1962. She later was a professor in the Home Ecology Department of the University of Maryland. [43] She may have done the detail work necessary to putting together the recording and songbooks. Talbot did not, because his name is misspelled. [44]
Talbot is discussed in the post for 14 August 2022.
Availability
Book. “Kum Ba Yah.” 23 in Guiana Sings. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service; individual songs copyrighted in 1959.
Graphics
“Where Me Go.” Guiana Folk Song. 58 in Guiana Sings. It includes a drawing of the sugar plant when it most resembles grass.
End Notes
1. Song Sampler number 1, January 1956. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956. B.
2. Claire Lovejoy Lennon’s photograph appears on the Photo K tab, and references to her can be found in the index at the right.
3. The post for 31 July 2022 quotes Rohrbough’s reference to Talbot.
4. Guiana Sings. 7.5" recording at 33 1/3 rpm issued by World Around Songs, Informal Music Service of Delaware, Ohio. Choral group led by Fran Thomas, with guitar by Prentiss Choate. Talbot is one of the 12 singers, and may be the uncredited soloist. The liner notes only say he was a “one time soloist of the Vesta Lowe Choir.” Cambridge hints he was the singer.
5. “Demerara.” Wikipedia website.
6. “British Guiana.” Wikipedia website.
7. Library of Congress. “Guiana: History of the Economy.” Country Studies website.
8. Library of Congress.
9. “History of Guyana.” Encyclopædia Britannica website; revised by Heather Campbell and Jack K. Menke on 12 November 2009.
According to Wikipedia:
“Most Indo-Guyanese are descended from indentured laborers who migrated from North India, especially the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt in the present day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. A significant minority of Indo-Guyanese are also descended from indentured migrants who came from the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. However, among the immigrants there were also labourers from other parts of South Asia, such as Afghanistan, Nepal and northwestern India.” [45]
10. Library of Congress.
11. Charles S. Griffin. “The Sugar Industry and Legislation in Europe.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 17(1):1–43:November 1902. 5.
12. Mellissa Ifill. “The 1905 Protests in British Guiana.” Stabroek News website, 13 August 2009.
13. Vibert C. Cambridge. Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. 34.
14. Cambridge, Guyana. 120.
15. Britannica.
16. Liner notes.
17. Cambridge, Guyana. 35.
18. Cambridge, Guyana. 12–13.
19. Gillian Richards-Greaves. Rediasporization: African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
20. Al Creighton. “Kwe Kwe traditons in Guyana.” Guyanese Association of Barbados website, 9 August 2009.
21. Creighton.
22. “Sarimandé.” Indonesian Folk Song sung by Noramaj Sumakano of Java; English by Katherine Ferris Rohrbough; copyrighted in 1956 by Cooperative Recreation Service. 25 in Guiana Sings.
23. “Chol Chol (On! On!).” Old Bengali Song; translated by Amrit Varuah; English verse by Augustus D. Zanzig. 27 in Guiana Sings.
24. This is discussed in the post for 15 July 2022.
25. Vibert C. Cambridge. “Vesta Lowe (1907 -1992).” Stabroek News, 14 September 2003. Ohio University was the site of the Student Volunteer Movement meeting mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022. By one of those coincidences that dot history, Cambridge earned his PhD there in 1989 and has remained on the faculty.
26. “Tenth Annual Assembly of Negro Progress Convention 1931.” Reprinted on Guy Gen Bio Society website, 28 July 2006.
27. Cambridge, Lowe.
28. “Contract for Construction and Working of Steam Tramway in British Guiana.” The Railway News 62:472:29 September 1894.
29. Cambridge, Lowe.
30. “Cyril Potter College of Education.” Wikipedia website.
31. Negro Progress Convention. The NPC was an improvement organization in the tradition of Marcus Garvey. [46]
32. Cambridge, Lowe.
33 According to the University of California, Santa Barbara, two of the six spirituals in Guiana Sings were recorded by Tuskegee vocal groups. [47] Tuskegee Institute Singers, a double male quartet, recorded “Steal Away” in 1914 [48] and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in 1915. [49] The Tuskegee Sextet had recorded both spirituals in 1914. [50] The male Tuskegee Institute Quartet recorded “Steal Away” in 1927. [51]
34. Cambridge, Lowe. The group was the Dawson Music Lovers’ Club.
35. Cambridge, Lowe.
36. Parrish is discussed in the post for 2 October 2018. She wanted to do more than collect spirituals from Saint Simons Island in Georgia; she wanted to overcome the shame people felt about the past so they could value their heritage. To this end, she organized singing societies that performed before appreciative white audiences. Her hope was the praise would overcome the debasement that came from living in a racially stratified society. [52] This is not meant to imply Parrish influenced Lowe. Instead, it suggests that similar ideas emerge from similar conditions.
37. Cambridge, Guyana. 110.
38. Cambridge, Lowe.
39. “A champion of community development…Waveney Dorsett is a ‘Special Person’.” Kaieteur News Online website, 14 February 2016.
40. “Stanley Sutton, Was County Agent.” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, 7 March 1984. 51. Posted to internet by pekastal on 18 Mar 2019. The United States had bases on the territory in World War II; [53] in 1955 it opened an office of the US Information Service. [54]
41. “Charlotte Vandiver Churaman.” Greenbelt News Review, Greenbelt, Maryland, 57(22):4:21 April 1994.
42. “Oscar Churaman.” Gini website, 15 December 2014.
“James Churaman.” Gini website, 31 December 2014. Oscar’s father.
“James Churaman, Singh (Sr).” Gini website, 10 January 2015. Oscar’s grandfather.
43. Greenbelt News Review.
44. “Special Thanks To [. . .] Mr. Fred Talbutt.”
45. “Demographics of Guyana.” Wikipedia website. Its sources are:
Helen Myers. Music of Hindu Trinidad. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 30.
“Indian Diaspora.” Indian Diaspora website.
46. Nigel Westmaas. “The Negro Progress Convention of Guyana (1922 – circa 1938).” Stabroek News website, 22 August 2021.
47. “Discography of American Historical Recordings.” University of California, Santa Barbara Library website.
48. Tuskegee Institute Singers. “Steal Away.” Victor B-15172. 31 August 1914.
49. Tuskegee Institute Singers. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Victor B-16512. 20 September 1915.
50. Tuskegee Sextet. “Steal Away.” Victor, not released. 23 June 1914.
Tuskegee Sextet. “Swing Low.” Victor, not released. documented, 23 June 1914.
51. Tuskegee Institute Quartet. “Steal Away.” Victor BVE-15172. 29 January 1927.
52. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. xxvi, 12, 17.
53. Cambridge, Guyana. 95.
54. Cambridge, Guyana. 136.
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