Iowa 4-H - Come By Here Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Max Exner brought new skills to Lynn Rohrbough’s Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) when he began working as a consultant in 1956.  He released a songbook in late 1957 that contained “Kum Ba Yah.”  The date is a bit confusing, because the inside cover says The Bridge of Song was copyrighted in 1957, but in contained one song with a 1958 registration date. [1]

The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” shows Rohrbough had responded to the letters from Claire Lovejoy Lennon and Larry Eisenberg.  They had told him the song was known in the American South.  The letter from Lennon, discussed in the post for 28 October 2020, was dated 19 November 1956.  Eisenberg’s letter was dated 29 January 1957, and described in the post for 23 October 2022.

The music plate was still the one created by Jane Keene for Indianola Sings in 1955.  However, the title was changed and the note about an Angolan origin was obliterated.

Exner was with the Agricultural Extension office at Iowa State College.  Although 4-H was sponsored by that group, its main concern was providing information to farmers.  This meant Exner had to work with many age groups.  Unlike editors of songbooks for youth groups, he included a large section of “Familiar” songs like “Loch Lomond” and “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”  There were so well known, many did not have music.

Many times, Exner or other extension agents, were using music to open programs.  It may be one reason he composed so many rounds that could be easily taught and worked with large audiences.  Exner also include more humorous songs that some youth groups leaders might have found offensive.  A crow in the Danish “Sim Bala Bim” is turned into soup.  “Herr Doktor Eisen Bart” ridiculed physicians and used rhyming nonsense rather than sung syllables. [2]

The Extension Office had to serve all the farmers in the state.  This may have influenced Exner’s choice of music.  The largest numbers of international songs came from three of the countries that supplied the largest numbers of foreign-born citizens living in rural areas in the 1920s: Germany, Sweden, and Denmark.  There were no songs representing the other two groups (Norway and the Netherlands), but there were songs from Czechoslovakia. [3]

Beyond hiring Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig, CRS seems to have been undergoing some organizational changes.  One of them, or perhaps one of Rohrbough’s sons-in-law, may have made him more aware of the importance of copyrights.  Not only was the songster copyrighted, but nine of the songs had been registered between 1956 and 1958.  Five carried some credit for Exner.  He provided CRS with five new pieces of music, seven arrangements, seven translations, and one text.  Many were rounds.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line

Credits
Songbook inside front cover: © 1957, Cooperative Recreation Srvice, Inc.  Delaware, Ohio, U.S.A.  All rights reserved.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: “Koom-bah-yah,” same as that published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022

Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings

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
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final “Lord”
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Cover: Arched bridge, with title above

Color Scheme: the cover uses dark teal ink on mustard stock; inside, the pages employ dark gray ink on white paper

Plate: Same music plate used in Indianola Sings, made by Jane Keen; title has been changed and reference to Angola has been removed.  The layout has returned to the standard one used by CRS with rounds scattered through the collection.

Notes on Performers
Max Vernon Exner was born in 1910 in Shanghai, China, to a YMCA medical officer. [4]  Max Joseph Exner had migrated to Iowa from the Sudetan in Austria when he was eleven years old.  While he was attending the YMCA’s college, he worked under Luther Halsey Gulick on the project to devise a new urban game that became basketball.  When he returned to this country in 1913, he worked in Newark, New Jersey. [5]

Max, the son, studied literature at Columbia College in New York City, then went to Vienna where he took courses in conducting.  He returned to New York where he worked for the state Extension Service.  Following his service in World War II, he earned a masters in music from Columbia University. [6]  At Columbia, he probably studied with, or heard about the work of, Lilla Belle Pitts and Harry Wilson.  She was promoting the use folk songs in public school music programs. [7]  He taught choral conducting [8] and published a collection of rounds in 1943. [9]

In 1947, Exner joined the Iowa Extension office, where he taught leadership workshops and directed choral activities. [10]  Sometime in the late 1940s, he published his first songbook through CRS.  Music of One World: U.N. Songs for U.N. Singing was dominated by songs from Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Italy.  He wrote three rounds and two choral arrangements. [11]

Exner continued with the Extension service until he turned 70, then continued directing church choirs and leading a folk dance group in Ames, Iowa.  He died in 2004.  His memorial service was held in the local Congregational church. [12]  His photograph appears in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

Availability
Songbook: “Come By Here” “Kum Ba Yah.”  30 in The Bridge of Song, edited by Max V. Exner for the Iowa State College Extension Music Program.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1957.

End Notes
1.  “Song of the Seasons.”  94-95 in Bridge.  The English words were by GBB and Augustus D. Zanzig.  Exner did the arrangement of the Hungarian folk song.

2.  The refrain is: “Twilli willi witt, boom boom.  50 in Bridge.

3.  Germany supplied 60,548 residents, followed by Sweden (18,021), Norway (15,546), Denmark (15,035), and the Netherlands (12,0440).  Czechoslovakia had sent 5,908 rural residents and Exner’s Austria 3,268 by 1920.  Figures calculated from state totals in the Census report for 1920, [13] with numbers subtracted for Des Moines, [14] Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Dubuque, Sioux City, and Waterloo. [15]

4.  Sue Haug.  “Max Vernon Exner.”  In Iowa State University Faculty Senate.  “Memorial Resolutions.”  26 April 2005.

5.  Janice A. Beran.  “Max J. Exner: Naismith’s Roommate—Later Coach, Teacher and Public Health Physician.”  13 in North American Society for Sport History.  Proceedings, 1991.  It is the same Gulick discussed in the posts for 5 September 2021 (note 35) and 27 November 2022.

6.  Haug.
7.  Pitts is discussed in the post for 30 August 2018.

8.  Wilson is discussed in the post for 15 July 2018.  He directed “vocal and choral activities” at Teachers College from 1939 to 1958. [16]

9.  Harry Robert Wilson.  Rounds and Canons.  Chicago: Hall and McCreary Company, 1943.

10.  Haug.

11.  Music of One World, compiled by the Extension Music Office, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa; Max V. Exner, Extension Specialist in Music.  Delaware, Ohio: Coop. Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service.  Last copyrighted song was 1948.

12.  Haug.

13. Table 6.  Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, by Divisions and States, 1920.  697-699 in “Chapter VI.  Country of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population.”  United States Census, 1920 census.

14.  Table 12.  Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, for Cities Having 100,000 Inhabitants or More: 1920.  729-731 in Chapter VI.

15.  Table 17.—Country of Birth of Foreign-Born Population, for Cities Having from 25,000 to 100,000 Inhabitants: 1920.  760-767 in Chapter VI.

16.  “Harry Robert Wilson.”  World Biographical Encyclopedia Prabook website.