Albion High School Band - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough was expanding the reach of Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in the middle 1950’s.  While he was experimenting with recordings [1] and his agents were contacting secular youth groups, [2] “Kumbaya” was spreading through the arteries of the Methodist Church.

It is difficult to document the flow because CRS songbooks were ephemeral, and few survive.  Of those, few have dates.  One exception is the one produced for Lake Poinsett in 1958, which was discussed in the post for 9 July 2023.

One never knows what is actually sung from a songbook, and within that group, what is remembered.  Asking people involves unraveling memories, which can be tricky.  One woman, who lived about an hour north of my hometown, said:

“I am thinking that I first sang ‘Kumbaya’ in the early 50’s at the Sunday evening Youth Fellowship meetings of the Dowling Methodist Church.” [3]

She graduated from high school in 1957, so the early 50’s may have been 1956 or 1957.  Since the song was not publicized by CRS until 1956, she could not have learned it earlier.

A high-school classmate of mine wrote:

“My memories seem to flow together, one setting mixes in with others, so don’t trust anything I say about this as being accurate, although I’ve tried to find some time markers.  I remember singing Kumbaya around the fire at Lake Louise.  I was only there one year, in the summer of 1960, and after high school I was never in a setting where it was sung, so I doubt that I have it mixed up with some other large gathering around a fire.  [Name] was an MYF leader when we were in 9th grade, and I have a picture of him leading us in the song.  He left to teach in another school system the next year, so it was no later than that, the 1958-1959 school year.  I don’t remember if it was he who introduced the song or someone else.  I don’t have a memory of singing it in Jr. High MYF, but that may be my faulty memory.” [4]

MYF was the Methodist Youth Fellowship.  As my friend recalled, members were sent to Lake Louise between their sophomore and junior years in high school.  It was similar to Epworth Forest’s Senior Institutes mentioned the post for 30 May 2021.  The only other person I talked to about the camp remembers just the baseball games.

I learned it on the band bus.  Like my friend, I cannot be precise.  I was in the senior band from  ninth grade, 1958, to 1962.  Each year we took two trips, one to band day at Michigan State University, and another to an away game.  My junior year the father of one of the football players paid for us to attend every away game.

Games were played at night in Michigan.  When we boarded the school buses for the return trip home, we were cold and tired.  After heat filled the bus, and some became drowsy, we began singing slow songs like “Kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”  We could not have sung the latter until 1961, the fall of our senior year, because it only became popular in the fall of 1961. [5]

I do not recall if we were singing my freshman year, but I know it was an established tradition by my junior year, the fall of 1960.  I remember I sat next to a friend that year who wanted to talk, and I was a bit annoyed because I could npt join the singing.  I know it was that year because I was a majorette and he was the drum major.  He did not return the next year, and someone else was the drum major.

I mention these trivial details because they are the sort of secondary evidence individuals marshal when they are trying to reconstruct their memories of past events.

Based on that, I assume we were singing by my sophomore year.  I sent emails to some of my classmates on the bus.  Only one responded, and she did not recall singing.  She was Black, and her comment revealed another aspect of the sociology of our high-school class.

There were two buses, and people wanted to get on the one with one’s friends or, perhaps more accurately, the ones one wanted to be associated with.  Her comment suggests the African Americans in the band deliberately chose the bus that did not have the “cool white kids.”  It may have been self-segregation or simple logistics.  If the one group took many of the seats on the one bus, that left the other available for them.

If the singing was not initiated by the Black members of the band, then, I thought, it had to be someone who had gone to camp or was in a church group.  Our high school was small, and I knew the religious affiliation of many of the people in the band.  The largest number, who were in a social position to initiate the singing when I was a sophomore, were both Methodists and in Camp Fire Girls.
 
We did not sing it at either the day camp or the resident camp sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls.  The director of the local day camp confirmed by recollection.  She told me:

“I loved that” but “I don’t think I ever sang it at our day camp.” [6]

Her husband was on the faculty of the local Methodist college, and I assume she sang it at some of the church’s weekly fellowship meetings for adults.

The woman from Dowling remembered singing it at Kitanniwa, the summer resident CFG camp that people from my hometown attended.  As mentioned in the post for 21 January 2018, she recalled it from the 1960s, and then it was a counselors’ song, not a campers’ one.

The process of elimination led me to ask someone who was not in the band, but I knew still was active in the Methodist church if she remembered the song from MYF.  That led to the correspondence quoted above.

Our version no longer was the four-verse song publicized by CRS.  We repeated the “kumbaya” verse after every “someone’s xxx” verse as a burden.  While we probably sang the standard verses, they were not sung in any particular order.  My recollection is that someone started a verse and we began at the same time, but waited to hear the verb to join in on the “ing.”  This led to the possibility that verses were improvised to prolong the singing.

We probably only sang the melody, but because our voices were not trained to precise notes, the sound in our ears, while we were singing, was what I call timbraic harmony.  This is the effect of voices with different qualities singing together.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group: adolescent, mainly female, members of the marching band

Vocal Director: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
None

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: probably equal emphasis on syllables

Verses: standard verses in any order, with ad libbed ones sometimes 

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: “kumbaya” as burden
Ending: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for final “Lord”
Harmony: timbraic

Notes on Performance
Occasion: return trips from football games at night
Location: school bus
Microphones: none
Clothing: band uniforms worn for the game

Notes on Movement
Girls generally sat together, scattered the length of the bus.  The bus was warm, and people were relaxing from the cold.

Notes on Performers
I have not been able to contact the teacher, and so have not included his name.

His family was from West Virginia, [7] and he graduated from Hillsdale College in 1958, where he played football.  The young white man was tapped for Omicron Delta Kappa, [8] an honorary that included athletes. [9]  The school was founded by Free Will Baptists, but began allowing other congregants to attend in 1907.  It did not begin taking strong conservative stances until 1963. [10]

As my friend recalls, the new college graduate taught arithmetic and social studies in our school, which spanned grades seven to twelve.  He also coached junior varsity football and seventh-eighth grade basketball. [11]

He worked in other schools until he received a masters’ degree in 1963 from Michigan State University. [12]  He was on the Hillsdale faculty from 1967 to 1972, then returned to teaching.  Later, he moved to northern Michigan where he worked for the state prison system. [13]

I assume he learned “Kumbaya” at some sort of workshop for MYF leaders.

Availability
None

End Notes
1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  143-149.  Tony Saletan’s participation in the CRS recordings is mentioned in the post for 26 March 2023.

2.  See the posts for 27 November 2022 through 18 December 2022 that discusses the work of Max Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig in the 1950s.

3.  Email, 3 March 2016.
4.  Email, 11 May 2016.
5.  “Michael” is discussed in the posts for 29 January 2023 and 26 March 2023.
6.  Lucille Parker Munk.  Interview, fall 1974.
7.  Find a Grave website entry for his father.
8.  LinkedIn website entry.
9.  “Omicron Delta Kappa.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
10.  “Hillsdale College.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
11.  The Breeze, Albion High School, Albion, Michigan, yearbook, 1959.
12.  LinkedIn website entry.
13.  Hillsdale Chargers website.