Folksmiths - KUM BA YAH (COME BY HERE)

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Folksmiths introduced “Kum Ba Yah” to New England residential camps in the summer of 1957.  The four young women and four young men were students at Oberlin College who had been inspired, in part, by Pete Seeger.

As mentioned in the post for 26 March 2023, Seeger and his group, The Weavers, lost their recording contract and had their tour dates cancelled in 1953.   In 1954, two Oberlin students from New York City [1] asked Seeger to perform at the college.  250 went into the basement of the art museum.  Freshman Joe Hickerson wrote his family: “I have never seen anything so wonderful in my life.” [2]

Seeger returned in 1955 when 500 came to hear him in the chapel. [3]  In the summer he was at Camp Woodland and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. [4]  By then, junior Robert Fuller remembers, Seeger had become “a heroic figure to Oberlinians.” [5]

The following fall Hickerson, then a senior, organized the Oberlin Folk Song Club. [6]  In December, David Sweet suggested they form the Folksmiths.  Over the Christmas holiday, the eight talked to their parents and began planning their summer experiment. [7]

Rickey Shoverner recalled they searched for songs and games they could teach.  Someone must have put them in contact with Lynn Rohrbough because they became agents for Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) and the closely allied World Wide Games. [8]  Their workshop topics could have been dictated by Rohrbough: folk dancing, making instruments, indoor and outdoor games, Lemmi Sticks, and Swing Poi Balls. [9]

Over spring break, Hickerson and some others went to the Swarthmore Folk Festival where they heard Tony Saletan sing “Kumbaya.” [10]  In May, the club organized a folk festival on campus.  Saletan was one of the guests.  He lead them in singing spirituals. [11]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: man on singing, woman on sleeping, man on shouting
Vocal Group: four women and four men
Instrumental Accompaniment: banjo
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
“One version appears in print in several pocket songbooks of the Cooperative  Recreation Service of Delaware, Ohio and is Copyrighted by them.  They collected it from a professor at Baldwin College in Ohio, who heard it from a missionary in Angola, Africa.” [12]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KUM ba yah
Verses: kumbaya, singing, sleeping, shouting
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: “verses can be made up ranging from ‘Someone’s reading’ to ‘someone’s groaning’ etc.” [13]

Verse Repetition Pattern: begin and end with “kumbaya”
Ending: repeat “kumbaya” verse

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: moderate
Length: 2:10 minutes
Basic Structure: strophic repetition

Singing Style: timbraic harmonie with occasional divergent harmony on “ya” at ends of “kumbaya”

Solo-Group Dynamics: An individual sings the first line of a new verse, and the group joins on the second; they all sing the “kumbaya” verses.  This demonstrates how campers can sing songs they have not heard before.

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: banjo introduction, then strummed to keep rhythm
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
The group made their demo tapes in a building on the Goddard College campus during a period when they had no engagements. [14]  The recording has more than those four songs.

Notes on Audience
The Folksmiths visited 20 camps and an unspecified number of resorts in New England.  The camps varied in style from tightly structured, competitive ones, to more relaxed progressive ones.  Thirteen were co-ed; one spoke only Hebrew.  The first one they visited was in Brewster, New York. [15]  It may have been Green Chimneys, a camp dedicated to children with special needs.  If so, they probably faced their greatest challenges on their first job, before they had built any expectations for what would happen.

Audience Perceptions
Sherover mentioned two songs more than once.  She noted: “We visited camps which were slightly familiar with folk singing and we saw others whose children had never sung a folk song and who listened entranced to Deep Blue Sea.” [16]

The other was “Kum Ba Yah.”  She wrote: “We remember being greeted by Kumbaya, My Lord, Kumbaya, when we returned to a girl’s camp in the Poconos.”  It’s the only song they knew entered local tradition from their singing. [17]

Notes on Performers
Profiles of the Folksmiths appear in the posts for 9 April 2023 and 16 April 2023.

Availability
Album: Folksmiths.  “Kum Ba Yah (Come by Here).”  We’ve Got Some Singing To Do: The Folksmiths Travelling Folk Workshop.  Folkways Records FA 2407, released 1958.

Reissue: Folksmiths.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  We’ve Got Some Singing To Do.  Smithsonian Folkways FA 2407, CD released 2006.  Versions of the song and the album can be downloaded from the Smithsonian’s Folkways website.

YouTube: Folksmiths.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  Uploaded on 24 May 2015 by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

End Notes
1.  Michael Horowitz went to high school in the Bronx and earned a PhD in anthropology from the State University of New York - Binghamton. [18]  He specialized in the processes of development.  As such, he was an advisor to the World Bank [19] before he died in 2018. [20]

Kent Sidon graduated from Great Neck High School and majored in music at Oberlin.  After a short career as a performer, he founded the Guitar Workshop on Long Island in 1963 to teach classical technique and introduce traditional music to children and adults. [21]  He died in 1975. [22]

2.  Ted Gest.  “A Folk Legend’s Fertile Ground.”  Oberlin Alumni Magazine 109(3):14-17:Summer 2014.  14.

3.  Pete Seeger.  Quoted by David King Dunaway.  How Can I Keep from Singing?  New York: Villard Books, 2008 edition.  232.

4.  Dunaway.  204.

5.  Gest.  14.  Robert Works Fuller left Oberlin before he graduated to earn a PhD in physics from Princeton in 1962.  He returned as college president in 1970.  He left in 1974, and became involved with The Hunger Project and informal international diplomacy.  He now lives in Berkeley, California. [23]

6.  Sue Angell.  “A Community of Folk.”  Oberlin Alumni Magazine 20(4):Spring 2005.

7.  Ricky Sherover.  “The Folksmiths: Eight Students Who Had Some Singing to Do.”  Sing Out! 8(1):17-20:Spring 1958.  17.

8.  World Wide Games is discussed in the post for 22 May 2022.

9.  Sherover.  17-18.  She identifies “Lummi Sticks” as “An American Indian stick game.”  On pages 424-425, Folk Songs, Camp Songs traces it back to a Maori tradition introduced into this country by a Mormon, Leona Holbrook.  Holbrook’s photograph appears on page 78.

10.  Saletan and the Swarthmore festival are discussed in the post for 26 March 2023.

11.  Sarah Newcomb.  “Marathon Folk Festival Features Singing, Dancing.”  The Oberlin Review, 14 May 1957.

12.  Liner notes for We’ve Got Some Singing To Do.
13.  Liner notes.
14.  Sherover.  20.
15.  Sherover.  18-19.
16.  Sherover.  19.
17.  Sherover.  21.

18.  “Michael M Horowitz.”  Ernest H. Parsons Funeral Home, Binghamton, New York, website, 20 November 2018.

19.  “Michael M. Horowitz.”  Prabook website.
20.  Parsons Funeral Home.

21.  George Vecsey.  “Guitar Workshop Stresses Tradition.”  The New York Times, 16 December 1973.

22.  Mattan Segev-Frank.  “Kent Sidon.”  Geni website; last updated 12 January 2021.
23.  “Robert W. Fuller.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 25 March 2023.