Topic: Movement
The hand gestures used with “Kumbaya” commonly are believed to be from the sign language used by the deaf. The post for 2 November 2017 argues they, in fact, emerged in Midwestern summer camps, but did not spread until adults had a rationale for allowing children to use their hands while singing. Then the movements were corrected to conform with American Sign Language standards.
The post for 2 November 2017 suggests the reason people needed an explanation for gestures is that, while movement is accepted by infants, it is regarded as something to be outgrown. People who are not allowed to move their hands while they sing could not imagine others might have had different childhoods. When they finally saw imitative hand gestures, their only analogy was what they had heard about communication in deaf communities.
The explanation that the gestures are ASL is an example of what Hugh Jansen calls exoteric folklore, a belief held by one group about another. He labels a group’s internal beliefs esoteric. [1] In this case, the exoteric belief is the deaf communicate with their hands. The deduction based on that belief is: therefore, these motions are ASL.
Folk beliefs are not quaint vestiges of the past; if people believe something to be true, they act as if it were, and their actions can create a reality. Versions of “Kumbaya” have been published in books that give credence to the belief. In 1976, two years after I saw the imitative gestures at a 4-H day camp in Ohio, the National Grange published Lift Up Your Hands for people working with the deaf. Hal Leonard intended Sing Language for Singers for outsiders. The first is on the border of esoteric lore, while the second represents exoteric perceptions.
Neither editor, Donna Gadling nor John Jacobson, are deaf, nor are the consultants who worked with them. The one with the most experience is Lottie Riefhof. She learned ASL in the 1940s at Gallaudet College, the school for students with hearing problems in Washington, DC. She began interpreting lessons for deaf students at Missouri’s Central Bible College in 1949. [2]
Jacobson does not identify his sources. He simply says: “I am not a sign language expert, but have learned from experts to know that the signs on the DVD are accurate.” [3] To him that is sufficient.
Michele P. believes one common exoteric belief is that ASL is “just a signed version of English, word-for-word.” [4] Jacobson’s book meets this requirement with a glossary of signs. Then, it tells the reader which words are signed in “Kumbaya.”
ASL grammar does not conjugate verbs, and places them before the subject. Thus, “someone’s singing” would be “sing someone.” Both Gadling and Jacobson use the standard word order.
Additional meaning is given by facial expressions. Thus, one should look sad with the word “crying,” and happy with “singing.” This is intuitive, and is illustrated by Jacobson. Sue Hart’s drawings for Lift Up Your Hands do not show this. The same figure appears with each sign. Except for “laughing.” which involves opening the mouth, only the hands change.
The literal selection of gestures by an outsider can lead to the deaf equivalent of broken English, in which the burden of understanding is placed on the receiver of a message, not the well-intentioned sender.
On the other hand, when one departs from literal translation of Jacobson, then something may be perceived to be missing by outsiders who can hear the melody. When she was working on Lift Up Your Hands, Gadling was directing a Sign Choir at Gallaudet. She tells readers to “show the rhythm of the music through the swaying of your body of the Signs themselves.” [5]
If this advice sounds contradictory, it must be remembered the deaf community does not conform with exoteric view that they all were born unable to detect any sound. Many have some ability to hear, but not enough to communicate easily with outsiders. Most can feel music vibrations, [6] and so would be able to maintain a beat if they signed to a strong accompaniment.
Performers
Gadling
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Gadling: African (Angola)
Jacobson: Congan Folksong
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English, American Sign Language
Verses:
Gadling: kumbaya, crying, praying, laughing, singing
Jacobson: kumbaya, crying, praying, singing
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form:
Gadling: verse-burden
Jacobson: open-ended song
Notes on Music
Gadling
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar/Autoharp Chords: C F G
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable for one note except final “Lord”
Jacobson
The book comes with a DVD that includes him performing “Kumbaya” [7]
Notes on Performance
Jacobson assumes people learn by imitation. He suggests one should watch the DVD several times, and then consult the book for clarification. [8]
While Jacobson’s method emulates modern pedagogy, it overlooks a key element. People only see what their culture values. ASL is demanding in its precision, but, as the post for post for 4 November 2017 shows, people see esoterically, not exoterically.
As an example, J. W. Pepper has a still from a Jacobson seminar on stage movement. He is standing with his back to the audience with his right arm raised in a fist. All but one woman imitate this action. She sees only the upraised arm and has her hand open. [9]
In contrast, Hart made careful drawings for Life Up Your Hands that show the exact position of the fingers and hands. The abstraction is more useful for the esoteric community, than the photographs from life.
Notes on Performers
Jacobson was raised in a singing family in western Wisconsin [10] in an area settled by Norwegians. [11] After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he spent ten years working for Walt Disney Productions in Florida. This trained him in the large movements and smiling demeanor required to please large crowds. He has been working for Hal Leonard since the early 1980s. [12]
Gadley is from Flushing, New York, [13] and sang with a Christian rock back in Maryland, Sons of Thunder, from 1967 to 1974. [14] When she was working on Lift Up Your Hands, she was employed by the ministry of Tom Skinner at Galluadet College. [15] WorldCat has the book under three names: Donna C. Gadley, Donna Gadley Weaks, and Donna Gadley Walters.
Jenny Grobusky suggested the Grange sponsor Lift Up Your Hands. [16] While the Grange and 4-H are separate organizations, they both exist in rural areas where adult 4-H leaders also may be members of the local grange. She was born Virginia Brown in Walhalla, South Carolina, [17] where her husband is a leader in the state Grange. [18] She was Director of Women’s Activities for the national organization in the 1970s. Her main projects were in the traditional areas of cooking [19] and sewing. [20] It is not known if she suggested the book after seeing children sing gesture songs, or if she had a more personal reason.
Availability
Book: “Kum Ba Yah.” 6–7 in Lift Up Your Hands, edited by Donna C. Gadling. Washington, DC: The National Grange, 1976.
Book: Kumbaya. 46 in Sign Language for Singers, edited by John Jacobson. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Hal Leonard, 2004.
End Notes
1. Wm. Hugh Jansen. “The Esoteric-Exoteric Factor in Folklore.” Fabula 2:205–211:1959. Reprinted on pages 43–51 in The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965.
2. Wikipedia. “Lottie Louise Riekehof.”
3. Jacobson. 2.
4. Michele P. “An Intro to ASL Grammar Rules.” Take Lessons website.
5. Gadling. 4.
6. Venkat Rao. “Can Deaf People Hear Music? (Answer: Yes, They Can).” Assistive Technology website, 1 June 2016.
7. The book is not, as advertized, a book with a DVD, but a DVD with an accompanying booklet. I do not have a DVD player, and know nothing about his version.
8. Jacobson. 2.
9. Brendan Lyons. “An Interview with Choreographer John Jacobson.” J. W. Pepper website, 1 November 2018. The video is John Jacobson. Together a Chord Can Happen.
10. Lyons.
11. Wikipedia. “Blair, Wisconsin” and “Trempealeau County, Wisconsin.”
12. Lyons.
13. Item. The Daily Independent, Kannapolis, North Carolina, 17 July 1966. 3.
14. “SOT: A History.” VK website, 4 May 2014.
15. Gadling. Back cover profile.
16. William A. Steele, The National Grange. “Acknowledgments.” Gadling. Inside front cover.
17. “Eleanor Elizabeth Brown Alexander.” Hockaday Funeral and Cremation Service website, 26 February 2013.
18. “Community Progress Judges Visit Connecticut.” Connecticut Granger 7:1:Novmber 1967. It lists George Grobusky as Master of the South Carolina State Grange.
19. “National Grange to Publish Cookbook.” Lancaster Farming, Ephrata, Pennsylvania, 28 June 1975.
20. “Grange Sewing Contest Marks 20th Year.” The Gaffney Ledger, Gaffney, South Carolina, 3 April 1978. 4.
Showing posts with label ~ Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ~ Movement. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Donna Gadling - Kum Ba Yah
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Jeffrey Lampkin - Come by Here Lord
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
Liturgical dance was attacked by religious conservatives. In the Roman Catholic church, Kathryn Mihelick said critics based their opinion "on a 1975 unsigned essay which appeared in Notitiae, a Vatican canon law digest. This essay declares that dance is appropriate for liturgical worship in other cultures, because it has always been a part of their tradition; but it then states that this has not been so in Western culture, and it is, therefore, not appropriate." [1]
This argument wasn’t much different from Jean Calvin’s response to David dancing "before the Lord" in 2 Samuel 6:14 [2] and Miriam dancing in Exodus 15:20. [3] He conceded it was "evidently in accordance with common and received custom. Yet must it be observed, at the same time, that musical instruments were among the legal ceremonies which Christ at His coming abolished." [4]
As was mentioned in the post for 23 August 2017, Calvin relented and allowed the psalms to be sung without instrumental accompaniment. King James’ translators of The Bible rendered Psalm 149:3 as:
"Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp." [5]
This provided a better theological foundation for movement than David and Miriam for churches that adopted the term "praise music" for any contemporary Christian song. Once musical instruments used by rock and rap musicians were permitted, the associated dance forms followed, so long as they did not offend. Not only did churches organize praise bands, but some leaders drew on football to establish praise teams that cheered the Lord.
Grace Cathedral Ministries in Sumter, South Carolina, only had a choir for children. For others, it sponsored an adult praise team, a young adult praise team, and a dance ministry. The last promised it would:
"provide a positive environment for spiritual and artistic growth while teaching youth techniques of worship in motion. The dancers are taught, ‘to be a dancer for God is about making a sacrifice to our Lord and Savior’." [6]
When Jeffrey Lampkin performed "Come by Here" with the praise team, two women and a man danced in the mourning-bench area. He and the young praise team were above the steps in the carpeted, altar area.
His arrangement combined "Come by Here" with "At the Cross" and an "aye aye aye" chorus. Unlike performances that followed the prelude-denouement format, "At the Cross" was much slower and more solemn than the opening.
The dancers used different combinations for each section, but without variations. When Lampkin was introducing the song, they swung their arms across their bodies from side to side.
During "Come by Here," they usually lifted one arm at a time, then turned, taking several steps. The shoes of the woman at stage left had low heels. The man took leaping steps to the left and right during the "aye aye aye" interludes. The women walked forward with low kicks, turned and walked back. The three then crossed their arms in front as they moved them overhead in wide sweeps.
The movements for "At the Cross" were more lexical. The dancers spread their arms wide on the first phrase, then brought them down on one side with a slight knee bend. On "light" they raised them in ballet’s high fifth, before emphasizing one on each side and turning. The man raised his hands high in prayer on "faith." For "my sight," his right arm crossed to the left, then swept back. They leapt on "happy," turned on "all," and lowered their arms on "day."
The movements were paced, with slight pauses between combinations. The video was eight minutes long, and they began moving after five seconds.
Performers
Dancers: one man, two women
Vocal Soloist: Jeffrey Lampkin
Vocal Group: four young women, two young men
Vocal Director: Chaste’y Gibson
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard or synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, now is the needed time
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: medley of "Come by Here" and "At the Cross," linked by a shared "aye aye aye" chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: repeated each verse and refrain twice.
AAxxAAxxBBxxCCxxCCxx
A is "come by here"
B is "needed time"
C is "at the cross"
x is "aye aye aye"
Ending: the video cut off before Lampkin finished repeating the phrases he used in his introduction.
Unique Features: Lampkin introduced the song with phrases like "we come to celebrate," "give him glory," and "an amazing God." He repeated these phrases when the group was singing.
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: medley
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Solo-Group Dynamics: Lampkin sang a verse, and had the praise team and audience repeat it. While they were singing, he spoke.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: not specified, but three floral arrangements were placed at the front edge of the altar area.
Location: Grace Cathedral Ministries in Sumter, South Carolina
Microphones: everyone had hand-held mikes
Clothing: singers wore slacks and tee-shirts; some were football jerseys; Lampkin’s had the letters of his fraternity. The female dancers wore ankle-length, black dresses with blue surplices. The male dancer wore black slacks and long-sleeved shirt with a purple sash.
Notes on Movement
Lampkin did a march-type step lifting his knees high during parts of "Come by Here;" he sometimes bent his torso forward a little. The backup singers stood, widely spaced, behind him. They stepped from foot to foot; one young man used more knee bends than others.
He moved less during "At the Cross" and the six singers began swaying from the ankles, rather than stepping. Toward the end, some held one arm high; two were clapping silently.
In later repetitions, Lampkin jumped during the "aye aye aye" section. The choral group jumped a few times, and quickly returned to the less physically demanding stepping. On the last iteration of the chorus, Lampkin skipped across the stage.
The musicians were seated at stage left on the altar. Two older people, probably the pastor and his wife, stood at stage right behind two Chesterfield chairs. They came and went, sometimes talking to one another. At other times they moved quietly to the music.
Notes on Audience
Individuals sang when requested; the ones in the front pews stood for the entire song.
Notes on Performers
Lampkin was raised on the South Carolina piedmont in Manning, where his father was a deacon. [7] After earning a degree in music from Newberry College in 2005, he taught in the local high school, and was minister of music at New Enoree Baptist Church. [8]
His life changed in 2008 when he competed in the early rounds of American Idol. [9] He finished an on-line master’s program in human resources from Webster University, and worked as a consultant for Verizon. [10]
In 2011, he became the director of the Young, Gifted, and Blessed choir at Francis Marion University in Sumter [11] that served the same kinds of functions as the the Kuumba Singers of Harvard, mentioned in the post for 16 September 2018. He also became the music director of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church and Fairfield Central High School Gospel Choir. [12]
His ties to Grace Cathedral Ministries were both personal and professional. His wife was their general counsel, [13] while the pastor had graduated from Manning high school [14] a decade before Lampkin did. [15] The church evolved from Sammy Smith’s work at Shaw Air Force Base to become part of the Church of God in Christ. The Ministries became independent in 1999. [16]
Notes on "At the Cross"
The original hymn, "Alas, and did my Savior bleed" was published without music by Isaac Watts in 1707. [17] A Methodist evangelist, Ralph Erskine Hudson, added the "at the cross" chorus with a new melody in a songbook he published in 1885. [18] Two years later, Ira D. Sankey included it in a gospel song collection that gave it much wider distribution. [19]
Donald Hustad found the tune for the chorus "appears with other words and is also credited to other individuals in late 19th century publications." He concluded it was "a possibility that both words and melody of the refrain were commonly known and used in the campmeeting tradition, and that Hudson simply added them to his own original melody." [20] Lampkin used only the chorus.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Karen Heaven on 6 February 2017.
End Notes
1. Kathryn Mihelick. "Catholics Can’t Dance?" Sacred Dance Guild Journal 53:11:spring 2011.
2. "And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod." King James version of The Bible.
3. "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." King James version of The Bible.
4. John Calvin. Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony. Translated by Charles William Bingham. Edinburgh: Calvin Translations Society, volume 1, 1852. 173. Available online from Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and republished by others.
5. A timbrel was similar to a tambourine, with a parchment head. Wikipedia said "The Israelites learned to use the timbrel during their sojourn in Egypt" ("Timbrel"). The Book of Exodus, where Miriam used one, described the journey from that country.
6. "Worship Arts Ministry." Church’s website. Angela Conyers directed the Another Level troup. The choreographers were O’Kicha White (Al) and Trinity Conyers (KP).
7. "Huell-Lampkin." The Sumter [South Carolina] Item website. 7 July 2013.
8. "About Jeffrey Lampkin." Facebook.
9. Sharron Haley. "Jeffrey Lampkin Live in Concert." The Sumter Item website. 26 February 2013.
10. Facebook.
11. John Sweeney. "Joyful Noise." Francis Marion University View. 1 February 2015.
12. Huell-Lampkin.
13. "Phenomenal Woman Series – Harriet H. Lampkin, Esq." Podcast, 8 March 2018. Historically Black Colleges and Universities website.
14. "Bishop Anthony Gibson." Church web site. He was born in 1975, and was a barber in Manning when Lampkin was in high school.
15. Lampkin graduated from Manning high school in 2000. (Facebook)
16. "Apostle Sammy C. Smith." Church web site.
17. Isaac Watts. Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book II. London: printed by J. Humphreys for John Lawrence, 1707. Publication information from Karen B. Westerfield Tucker. "Song as a Sign and Means of Christian Unity." 3-25 in Exploring Christian Song. Edited by M. Jennifer Bloxam and Andrew Shenton. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017. 25.
18. R. E. Hudson. Songs of Peace, Love, and Joy: For Sabbath Schools and Gospel Meetings. Alliance, Ohio: R. E. Hudson, 1885. 81. He also included Watts’ words alone with the tune "Mear" as song 118.
19. Ira D. Sankey, James McGranahan, and George C. Stebbins. Gospel Hymns No 5. Cincinnati: John Church Co. and New York: Biglow and Main, 1887. 41.
20. Donald P. Hustad. Dictionary Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church. Chicago: Hope Publishing Company, 1978. 103.
Liturgical dance was attacked by religious conservatives. In the Roman Catholic church, Kathryn Mihelick said critics based their opinion "on a 1975 unsigned essay which appeared in Notitiae, a Vatican canon law digest. This essay declares that dance is appropriate for liturgical worship in other cultures, because it has always been a part of their tradition; but it then states that this has not been so in Western culture, and it is, therefore, not appropriate." [1]
This argument wasn’t much different from Jean Calvin’s response to David dancing "before the Lord" in 2 Samuel 6:14 [2] and Miriam dancing in Exodus 15:20. [3] He conceded it was "evidently in accordance with common and received custom. Yet must it be observed, at the same time, that musical instruments were among the legal ceremonies which Christ at His coming abolished." [4]
As was mentioned in the post for 23 August 2017, Calvin relented and allowed the psalms to be sung without instrumental accompaniment. King James’ translators of The Bible rendered Psalm 149:3 as:
"Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp." [5]
This provided a better theological foundation for movement than David and Miriam for churches that adopted the term "praise music" for any contemporary Christian song. Once musical instruments used by rock and rap musicians were permitted, the associated dance forms followed, so long as they did not offend. Not only did churches organize praise bands, but some leaders drew on football to establish praise teams that cheered the Lord.
Grace Cathedral Ministries in Sumter, South Carolina, only had a choir for children. For others, it sponsored an adult praise team, a young adult praise team, and a dance ministry. The last promised it would:
"provide a positive environment for spiritual and artistic growth while teaching youth techniques of worship in motion. The dancers are taught, ‘to be a dancer for God is about making a sacrifice to our Lord and Savior’." [6]
When Jeffrey Lampkin performed "Come by Here" with the praise team, two women and a man danced in the mourning-bench area. He and the young praise team were above the steps in the carpeted, altar area.
His arrangement combined "Come by Here" with "At the Cross" and an "aye aye aye" chorus. Unlike performances that followed the prelude-denouement format, "At the Cross" was much slower and more solemn than the opening.
The dancers used different combinations for each section, but without variations. When Lampkin was introducing the song, they swung their arms across their bodies from side to side.
During "Come by Here," they usually lifted one arm at a time, then turned, taking several steps. The shoes of the woman at stage left had low heels. The man took leaping steps to the left and right during the "aye aye aye" interludes. The women walked forward with low kicks, turned and walked back. The three then crossed their arms in front as they moved them overhead in wide sweeps.
The movements for "At the Cross" were more lexical. The dancers spread their arms wide on the first phrase, then brought them down on one side with a slight knee bend. On "light" they raised them in ballet’s high fifth, before emphasizing one on each side and turning. The man raised his hands high in prayer on "faith." For "my sight," his right arm crossed to the left, then swept back. They leapt on "happy," turned on "all," and lowered their arms on "day."
The movements were paced, with slight pauses between combinations. The video was eight minutes long, and they began moving after five seconds.
Performers
Dancers: one man, two women
Vocal Soloist: Jeffrey Lampkin
Vocal Group: four young women, two young men
Vocal Director: Chaste’y Gibson
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard or synthesizer
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, now is the needed time
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: medley of "Come by Here" and "At the Cross," linked by a shared "aye aye aye" chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: repeated each verse and refrain twice.
AAxxAAxxBBxxCCxxCCxx
A is "come by here"
B is "needed time"
C is "at the cross"
x is "aye aye aye"
Ending: the video cut off before Lampkin finished repeating the phrases he used in his introduction.
Unique Features: Lampkin introduced the song with phrases like "we come to celebrate," "give him glory," and "an amazing God." He repeated these phrases when the group was singing.
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: medley
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Solo-Group Dynamics: Lampkin sang a verse, and had the praise team and audience repeat it. While they were singing, he spoke.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: not specified, but three floral arrangements were placed at the front edge of the altar area.
Location: Grace Cathedral Ministries in Sumter, South Carolina
Microphones: everyone had hand-held mikes
Clothing: singers wore slacks and tee-shirts; some were football jerseys; Lampkin’s had the letters of his fraternity. The female dancers wore ankle-length, black dresses with blue surplices. The male dancer wore black slacks and long-sleeved shirt with a purple sash.
Notes on Movement
Lampkin did a march-type step lifting his knees high during parts of "Come by Here;" he sometimes bent his torso forward a little. The backup singers stood, widely spaced, behind him. They stepped from foot to foot; one young man used more knee bends than others.
He moved less during "At the Cross" and the six singers began swaying from the ankles, rather than stepping. Toward the end, some held one arm high; two were clapping silently.
In later repetitions, Lampkin jumped during the "aye aye aye" section. The choral group jumped a few times, and quickly returned to the less physically demanding stepping. On the last iteration of the chorus, Lampkin skipped across the stage.
The musicians were seated at stage left on the altar. Two older people, probably the pastor and his wife, stood at stage right behind two Chesterfield chairs. They came and went, sometimes talking to one another. At other times they moved quietly to the music.
Notes on Audience
Individuals sang when requested; the ones in the front pews stood for the entire song.
Notes on Performers
Lampkin was raised on the South Carolina piedmont in Manning, where his father was a deacon. [7] After earning a degree in music from Newberry College in 2005, he taught in the local high school, and was minister of music at New Enoree Baptist Church. [8]
His life changed in 2008 when he competed in the early rounds of American Idol. [9] He finished an on-line master’s program in human resources from Webster University, and worked as a consultant for Verizon. [10]
In 2011, he became the director of the Young, Gifted, and Blessed choir at Francis Marion University in Sumter [11] that served the same kinds of functions as the the Kuumba Singers of Harvard, mentioned in the post for 16 September 2018. He also became the music director of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church and Fairfield Central High School Gospel Choir. [12]
His ties to Grace Cathedral Ministries were both personal and professional. His wife was their general counsel, [13] while the pastor had graduated from Manning high school [14] a decade before Lampkin did. [15] The church evolved from Sammy Smith’s work at Shaw Air Force Base to become part of the Church of God in Christ. The Ministries became independent in 1999. [16]
Notes on "At the Cross"
The original hymn, "Alas, and did my Savior bleed" was published without music by Isaac Watts in 1707. [17] A Methodist evangelist, Ralph Erskine Hudson, added the "at the cross" chorus with a new melody in a songbook he published in 1885. [18] Two years later, Ira D. Sankey included it in a gospel song collection that gave it much wider distribution. [19]
Donald Hustad found the tune for the chorus "appears with other words and is also credited to other individuals in late 19th century publications." He concluded it was "a possibility that both words and melody of the refrain were commonly known and used in the campmeeting tradition, and that Hudson simply added them to his own original melody." [20] Lampkin used only the chorus.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Karen Heaven on 6 February 2017.
End Notes
1. Kathryn Mihelick. "Catholics Can’t Dance?" Sacred Dance Guild Journal 53:11:spring 2011.
2. "And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod." King James version of The Bible.
3. "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." King James version of The Bible.
4. John Calvin. Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony. Translated by Charles William Bingham. Edinburgh: Calvin Translations Society, volume 1, 1852. 173. Available online from Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and republished by others.
5. A timbrel was similar to a tambourine, with a parchment head. Wikipedia said "The Israelites learned to use the timbrel during their sojourn in Egypt" ("Timbrel"). The Book of Exodus, where Miriam used one, described the journey from that country.
6. "Worship Arts Ministry." Church’s website. Angela Conyers directed the Another Level troup. The choreographers were O’Kicha White (Al) and Trinity Conyers (KP).
7. "Huell-Lampkin." The Sumter [South Carolina] Item website. 7 July 2013.
8. "About Jeffrey Lampkin." Facebook.
9. Sharron Haley. "Jeffrey Lampkin Live in Concert." The Sumter Item website. 26 February 2013.
10. Facebook.
11. John Sweeney. "Joyful Noise." Francis Marion University View. 1 February 2015.
12. Huell-Lampkin.
13. "Phenomenal Woman Series – Harriet H. Lampkin, Esq." Podcast, 8 March 2018. Historically Black Colleges and Universities website.
14. "Bishop Anthony Gibson." Church web site. He was born in 1975, and was a barber in Manning when Lampkin was in high school.
15. Lampkin graduated from Manning high school in 2000. (Facebook)
16. "Apostle Sammy C. Smith." Church web site.
17. Isaac Watts. Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book II. London: printed by J. Humphreys for John Lawrence, 1707. Publication information from Karen B. Westerfield Tucker. "Song as a Sign and Means of Christian Unity." 3-25 in Exploring Christian Song. Edited by M. Jennifer Bloxam and Andrew Shenton. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2017. 25.
18. R. E. Hudson. Songs of Peace, Love, and Joy: For Sabbath Schools and Gospel Meetings. Alliance, Ohio: R. E. Hudson, 1885. 81. He also included Watts’ words alone with the tune "Mear" as song 118.
19. Ira D. Sankey, James McGranahan, and George C. Stebbins. Gospel Hymns No 5. Cincinnati: John Church Co. and New York: Biglow and Main, 1887. 41.
20. Donald P. Hustad. Dictionary Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church. Chicago: Hope Publishing Company, 1978. 103.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Economy Jackson - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
Liturgical dance, as mentioned in the post on 11 November 2018, was used as part of a religious ritual or to explicate scripture. The girls in Heimerdingen, discussed in the post for 15 November 2018, were examples of the ceremonial use of movement. Economy Jackson used "Kumbaya" to illuminate the meaning of Genesis 21:1, which she paraphrased as "now the Lord with gracious to Sarah and as he had said and the Lord did with Sarah what he had promised." [1]
The African-American woman wore a white, wide-legged jumpsuit disguised as a dress with a royal-blue sash that reached diagonally from her right shoulder to her left hip. As the video began, she was speaking at a floor microphone about Sarah’s feelings seeing the child her husband had fathered with her handmaiden. [2]
While commentators emphasized it was God who initiated contact with Sarah, Jackson suggested a "modern-day Sarah" would cry out to the Lord, who would then respond. Thus, she replaced the Calvinist view that God acted as God chose, [3] oblivious to the actions of humans, with a Lord rooted in Ring Shouts who would respond to human supplication.
Jackson used the recording by Kurt Carr that was discussed in the post for 26 August 2017. During the instrumental introduction, she bent her knees and snapped her fingers. She then started stepping to the diagonals, and twisting her body while she stepped. Her arms moved up and down from the elbows. At this point, many of her movements were borrowed from secular dance.
When Carr’s female backup singers began repeating "kumbaya," she raised both arms from the elbows and looked skyward. Carr sang the phrase "somebody needs you" and Jackson returned to her introductory movements, but with more emphasis. When he said "somebody’s praying" she placed her palms together, but returned to her dance when the chorus repeated his line.
The backup singers marked the transition by repeating "oh Lord." Jackson picked up two flags of filmy white attached to poles that had been resting on the podium. Sometimes she waved or twirled one scarf at a time, sometimes both.
When Carr sang, "we need a blessing" and the group repeated "we need a miracle," Jackson moved forward with the flags in both hands. She moved them more energetically while raising them high on one side at a time. As they group repeated "Oh Lord," she placed them in one hand and gestured with the other.
The denouement began with music that, on the video, was reduced to drums. She did three steps to the left, then to the right, with occasional turns. When the women reentered singing "shower down on me," Jackson knelt on the floor like a modern dancer. Sometimes she contracted her stomach muscles to move from place to place. Finally, she dropped the flags to use her arms in supplication. She stood at the end.
Jackson performed in a conference room in the Vinings Worshop Center in Smyrna, Georgia. She was active there as early as 2011 when she prayed a blessing. [4] Her son killed himself in June 2012, [5] and she posted her first dance video in August 4013 to honor him. [6] "Kumbaya" was the second movement video she uploaded to YouTube.
She never mentioned why she turned to dance. Psalm 30 had said: "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." [7] Years later she did write:
"Today I can say my heart is filled with JOY. Not because my son is gone But because God has sustained me over the 6 years. I have had times grief & unbearable pain. But God, He said He would never leave us or forsake us. So today, I celebrate the life of my son Edward Jay Jackson, III. The Joy is because I know my child is with God so therefore he lives. The Joy because his legacy still lives. Many have have told me that because of Jay they push harder to be successful. The Joy because in moments when I feel like crawling under a rock, the Holy Spirit comes in and lifts every burden. The Joy because Jesus Christ died for my sins & He is my personal Savior. The Joy because, Nehemiah 8:10..... the JOY of the LORD is MY STRENGTH!" [8]
Performers
Dance Soloist: Economy Jackson
Accompaniment: Kurt Carr’s recording of "Kumbaya"
Credits
None given
Notes on Audience
They applauded at the end.
Audience Perceptions
One woman complained about another video by Jackson:
"Dance ministry is not something you do because you like to dance; instead it a true calling. Your movements are far too worldly for praise dance. We are all meant to dance for the Lord, but we are not all called to be dance ministers. I hope my comments are not hurtful; that is not my intention, but I’m a dance minister and I would not dare try to preach because that is not my calling, Rev. Jackson, and perhaps you should think about what you are doing here also. God bless you and your praise unto the Lord." [9]
Elsewhere on YouTube, the woman mentioned a video she liked. The dancer wore pointe shoes and liturgical dresss with her hair pulled back in a bun. She began with modern dance moves while lying on the floor. [10]
Notes on Performers
Economy McGee was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, where she graduated from high school in 1982. [11] She earned a bachelors degree in 1987 from New York Institute of Technology. From there, her biography was sketchy until she posted a resume on LinkedIn that began with the jobs she held in Atlanta beginning in 2000. [12]
She may have met and married Edward Jackson in New York or in Atlanta. His father was from Savannah, but had moved to Waterbury, Connecticut, where he founded the Ingathering Pentecostal Temple. [13] Their son was born in 1999. The video he posted of their son’s life included a number of baby pictures that included her. [14] They held the funeral at the Chapel of Christian Love Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta. [15]
The Vinings Worship Center where Jackson danced was founded by Parett Smith as "a multi-cultural house of worship that allows the Holy Spirit to flow freely." [16] Smith was listed as Secretary when Jackson registered The Refreshing Center in 2015. [17] She began the ministry in 2013, after her son died, but before she posted videos to YouTube. Jackson wrote then:
"If you are available, I invite you to be my guest. I will dance and share the vision of this ministry. I also ask for your prayers that God continues to strengthen me on my journey." [18]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Refreshing Center on 20 January 2014.
End Notes
1. YouTube notes. This was closest to the International Standard Version translation: "The LORD came to Sarah, just as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised." ("Genesis 21:1." Bible Hub website.)
2. Abraham had fathered Ismail with Hagar.
3. For example, David Guzik said that the Lord was fulfilling a promise he had made 25-years before. He added "The promise of a son was not fulfilled because Abraham was perfect in his obedience, but because God was faithful to His Word." He concluded "Some promises of God are conditional and depend on something we must do. Other promises of God are unconditional, and God will fulfill them not because of what we do, but because of who He is." ("Genesis 21 – The Birth of Isaac." Enduring Word website.)
4. "Vinings Worship Center Offering Blessing Declaration for 2011." Uploaded by Harriet Bradley on 1 January 2011.
5. Isabelle Taft. "Jackson’s Promising Life, Sudden Death Draw Hundreds to Grant Park Memorial Service." The Sountherner Online website. 7 July 2012. Taft was in his graduating class.
6. Economy Jackson. "Greater Is Coming." Uploaded to YouTube by The Refreshing Center on 15 August 2013.
7. Psalm 30:11. King James version of The Bible.
8. Economy McGee Jackson. Facebook. 23 June 2018.
9. Merdis Hill. Comment posted 2016 to YouTube video by Economy Jackson. "Grace of God." Uploaded by The Refreshing Center on 27 August 2015.
10. Jocelyn Renee Lamkin. "I Surrender All." Uploaded to YouTube by GWC INTENSITY on 29 March 2007.
11. "About Economy McGee Jackson." Facebook.
12. "Economy Jackson." LinkedIn.
13. "Bishop Edward Jackson Sr. Founded Church; NAACP Waterbury Chapter President." [Waterbury, Connecticut] Republican-American. 10 November 2010.
14. "Thoughts of My Son." Uploaded to YouTube by Ed Jackson on 24 August 2012.
15. Obituary for Edward Jackson III. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 29 June 2012.
16. "Vinings Worship Center." Victory 91.5 Directory website.
17. "Economy F. Jackson - Atlanta." Corporates Wiki website. "F" stood for Fitzgerald.
18. "The Refreshing Center." Wordpress website. 15 May 2013.
Liturgical dance, as mentioned in the post on 11 November 2018, was used as part of a religious ritual or to explicate scripture. The girls in Heimerdingen, discussed in the post for 15 November 2018, were examples of the ceremonial use of movement. Economy Jackson used "Kumbaya" to illuminate the meaning of Genesis 21:1, which she paraphrased as "now the Lord with gracious to Sarah and as he had said and the Lord did with Sarah what he had promised." [1]
The African-American woman wore a white, wide-legged jumpsuit disguised as a dress with a royal-blue sash that reached diagonally from her right shoulder to her left hip. As the video began, she was speaking at a floor microphone about Sarah’s feelings seeing the child her husband had fathered with her handmaiden. [2]
While commentators emphasized it was God who initiated contact with Sarah, Jackson suggested a "modern-day Sarah" would cry out to the Lord, who would then respond. Thus, she replaced the Calvinist view that God acted as God chose, [3] oblivious to the actions of humans, with a Lord rooted in Ring Shouts who would respond to human supplication.
Jackson used the recording by Kurt Carr that was discussed in the post for 26 August 2017. During the instrumental introduction, she bent her knees and snapped her fingers. She then started stepping to the diagonals, and twisting her body while she stepped. Her arms moved up and down from the elbows. At this point, many of her movements were borrowed from secular dance.
When Carr’s female backup singers began repeating "kumbaya," she raised both arms from the elbows and looked skyward. Carr sang the phrase "somebody needs you" and Jackson returned to her introductory movements, but with more emphasis. When he said "somebody’s praying" she placed her palms together, but returned to her dance when the chorus repeated his line.
The backup singers marked the transition by repeating "oh Lord." Jackson picked up two flags of filmy white attached to poles that had been resting on the podium. Sometimes she waved or twirled one scarf at a time, sometimes both.
When Carr sang, "we need a blessing" and the group repeated "we need a miracle," Jackson moved forward with the flags in both hands. She moved them more energetically while raising them high on one side at a time. As they group repeated "Oh Lord," she placed them in one hand and gestured with the other.
The denouement began with music that, on the video, was reduced to drums. She did three steps to the left, then to the right, with occasional turns. When the women reentered singing "shower down on me," Jackson knelt on the floor like a modern dancer. Sometimes she contracted her stomach muscles to move from place to place. Finally, she dropped the flags to use her arms in supplication. She stood at the end.
Jackson performed in a conference room in the Vinings Worshop Center in Smyrna, Georgia. She was active there as early as 2011 when she prayed a blessing. [4] Her son killed himself in June 2012, [5] and she posted her first dance video in August 4013 to honor him. [6] "Kumbaya" was the second movement video she uploaded to YouTube.
She never mentioned why she turned to dance. Psalm 30 had said: "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." [7] Years later she did write:
"Today I can say my heart is filled with JOY. Not because my son is gone But because God has sustained me over the 6 years. I have had times grief & unbearable pain. But God, He said He would never leave us or forsake us. So today, I celebrate the life of my son Edward Jay Jackson, III. The Joy is because I know my child is with God so therefore he lives. The Joy because his legacy still lives. Many have have told me that because of Jay they push harder to be successful. The Joy because in moments when I feel like crawling under a rock, the Holy Spirit comes in and lifts every burden. The Joy because Jesus Christ died for my sins & He is my personal Savior. The Joy because, Nehemiah 8:10..... the JOY of the LORD is MY STRENGTH!" [8]
Performers
Dance Soloist: Economy Jackson
Accompaniment: Kurt Carr’s recording of "Kumbaya"
Credits
None given
Notes on Audience
They applauded at the end.
Audience Perceptions
One woman complained about another video by Jackson:
"Dance ministry is not something you do because you like to dance; instead it a true calling. Your movements are far too worldly for praise dance. We are all meant to dance for the Lord, but we are not all called to be dance ministers. I hope my comments are not hurtful; that is not my intention, but I’m a dance minister and I would not dare try to preach because that is not my calling, Rev. Jackson, and perhaps you should think about what you are doing here also. God bless you and your praise unto the Lord." [9]
Elsewhere on YouTube, the woman mentioned a video she liked. The dancer wore pointe shoes and liturgical dresss with her hair pulled back in a bun. She began with modern dance moves while lying on the floor. [10]
Notes on Performers
Economy McGee was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, where she graduated from high school in 1982. [11] She earned a bachelors degree in 1987 from New York Institute of Technology. From there, her biography was sketchy until she posted a resume on LinkedIn that began with the jobs she held in Atlanta beginning in 2000. [12]
She may have met and married Edward Jackson in New York or in Atlanta. His father was from Savannah, but had moved to Waterbury, Connecticut, where he founded the Ingathering Pentecostal Temple. [13] Their son was born in 1999. The video he posted of their son’s life included a number of baby pictures that included her. [14] They held the funeral at the Chapel of Christian Love Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta. [15]
The Vinings Worship Center where Jackson danced was founded by Parett Smith as "a multi-cultural house of worship that allows the Holy Spirit to flow freely." [16] Smith was listed as Secretary when Jackson registered The Refreshing Center in 2015. [17] She began the ministry in 2013, after her son died, but before she posted videos to YouTube. Jackson wrote then:
"If you are available, I invite you to be my guest. I will dance and share the vision of this ministry. I also ask for your prayers that God continues to strengthen me on my journey." [18]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Refreshing Center on 20 January 2014.
End Notes
1. YouTube notes. This was closest to the International Standard Version translation: "The LORD came to Sarah, just as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised." ("Genesis 21:1." Bible Hub website.)
2. Abraham had fathered Ismail with Hagar.
3. For example, David Guzik said that the Lord was fulfilling a promise he had made 25-years before. He added "The promise of a son was not fulfilled because Abraham was perfect in his obedience, but because God was faithful to His Word." He concluded "Some promises of God are conditional and depend on something we must do. Other promises of God are unconditional, and God will fulfill them not because of what we do, but because of who He is." ("Genesis 21 – The Birth of Isaac." Enduring Word website.)
4. "Vinings Worship Center Offering Blessing Declaration for 2011." Uploaded by Harriet Bradley on 1 January 2011.
5. Isabelle Taft. "Jackson’s Promising Life, Sudden Death Draw Hundreds to Grant Park Memorial Service." The Sountherner Online website. 7 July 2012. Taft was in his graduating class.
6. Economy Jackson. "Greater Is Coming." Uploaded to YouTube by The Refreshing Center on 15 August 2013.
7. Psalm 30:11. King James version of The Bible.
8. Economy McGee Jackson. Facebook. 23 June 2018.
9. Merdis Hill. Comment posted 2016 to YouTube video by Economy Jackson. "Grace of God." Uploaded by The Refreshing Center on 27 August 2015.
10. Jocelyn Renee Lamkin. "I Surrender All." Uploaded to YouTube by GWC INTENSITY on 29 March 2007.
11. "About Economy McGee Jackson." Facebook.
12. "Economy Jackson." LinkedIn.
13. "Bishop Edward Jackson Sr. Founded Church; NAACP Waterbury Chapter President." [Waterbury, Connecticut] Republican-American. 10 November 2010.
14. "Thoughts of My Son." Uploaded to YouTube by Ed Jackson on 24 August 2012.
15. Obituary for Edward Jackson III. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 29 June 2012.
16. "Vinings Worship Center." Victory 91.5 Directory website.
17. "Economy F. Jackson - Atlanta." Corporates Wiki website. "F" stood for Fitzgerald.
18. "The Refreshing Center." Wordpress website. 15 May 2013.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Gospelchor Heimerdingen - Kum ba yah my Lord
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
Costumes for liturgical dance performances are easily available from companies that supply dancers. Most are empire-style dresses with flowing, ankle-length skirts that cost between $25 and $40. Individuals usually don’t wear shoes.
In the early years, the steps used by liturgical dancers looked like animations of photographs of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan. As mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018, both were known for dramatizing the spiritual roots of dance.
The latter may have been especially influential because a biographical film starring Vanessa Redgrave was released in 1968. [1] Even people who didn’t see the movie, saw photographs of Duncan and knew she died when her scarf got caught in the wheels of an automobile.
A performance of "Kumbaya" by the gospel youth choir of the Lutheran church in Heimerdingen, Germany, featured two girls who danced with long, thin, red scarves. They were dressed, like the rest of the group, in dark slacks and tops.
They began kneeling on the floor. As the stood, they crossed their arms in front, raised them over their heads, brought them down to a stretched out position before lowering them in a standard port de bras. On the second line of the verse, they lifted their outside arms with the scarves into a modified first arabesque a terre.
After turning slowly one time with their arms stretched wide, they took two large chassé steps away from each other. As they moved they swept their arms in circles in front of their bodies twice. Finally, they knelt down again sweeping their scarves with them.
The arrangement alternated vocal parts with saxophone solos. The dance routine was repeated without variation during every instrumental interlude.
The youth choir was formed in 2010 for a concert. [2] Since then, they’ve met weekly for ninety minutes [3] to prepare music for "music service, choir day in Ludwigsburg, communion of the newly confirmed, summer serenade, gospel concert, Christmas Eve family worship." [4] This performance was a concert. I don’t know if they used dancers during services.
The group believed gospel music was "originally the Christian songs of black Americans" that did not rely on the Old Testament. "Their lyrics tell of the joy of life and confidence born of faith, and of the love of God and of men." [5]
Their instruments were borrowed from the African diaspora, but they were assimilated into European ideas of orchestration. Instead of a bass drum hitting a downbeat and a snare playing the off beats, a floor drum was hit with a stick on the first count. A woman used her hands on two other floor drums on the other beats. Two cajones played on the final beat of each measure, while two other drum heads were beaten.
Instead of an organ, the group used a digital piano as its primary accompanying instrument. I could see a string bass and electric guitar being played, but couldn’t hear them.
The choir stood in the altar space with the bass and guitar to its left. Instead of an open area in front of the altar rail for a mourning bench, space was reserved between the rail and the steps to the altar for communers. The drummers were seated at the choir’s right, and the piano and saxophone at its left. The dancers were behind the rail, with the first pews nearby.
The saxophone did not embellish its part with repetitions, but the vocal part became more complex. It began with a soprano soloist singing "kumbaya." After the saxophone interlude, the choir repeated the "kumbaya" verse. The reed and choir continued to trade the melody, which the choir repeated with some harmony. Its final repetition of the "kumbaya" verse used a descant.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: soprano
Vocal Group: young men and women
Vocal Director: Ricarda Kost
Instrumental Soloist: saxophone
Instrumental Accompaniment: digital piano, electric guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: three floor drums, string bass
Credits
There were none.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum BY yah, Lort
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying, crying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: the German translation used "herr" for "Lord"; "kumbaya" was "come to us." [6]
Basic Form: three-verse song framed by kumbaya
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxA with A = kumbaya
Ending: repeated "oh Lord kumbaya" six times
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: alternated vocal and instrumental parts with the vocal part increasing in complexity with repetitions.
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the instruments provided a simple cadence for both the singers and the saxophone; the camera’s microphone only picked up the sax and piano.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: concert, 2016
Location: altar, Peter-und-Paul-Kirche, Heimerdingen, Baden-Württemberg
Microphones: the soloist had a hand-held mike
Clothing: everyone wore dark slacks and tee-shirts with the choir’s name in white on the backs.
Notes on Movement
The singers stood still with their arms at their sides facing front. The musicians also exerted no extra movements. The director used his arms.
Notes on Audience
All the seats were taken that could be seen in the video. During the performance, no one made any response. The film ended before any applause.
Notes on Performers
The parish of Heimerdingen dated back to the ninth century. The area came under the control of the Grafen von Württemberg who turned it Protestant in 1534. The current building was erected after a 1776 fire destroyed the previous one. The interior was simplified in 1964. [7]
The area was ravaged by wars, epidemics and famines during the Reformation, and was occupied by the French in 1945. It since has been absorbed into the city of Ditzingen within the region of Stuttgart. [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Gospelchor Heimerdingen on 13 March 2016.
End Notes
1. Isadora. Directed by Karel Reisz. Universal Pictures. 18 December 1968. Its focus on Duncan’s personal life would not have attracted conservative religious viewers, so knowledge about her dance would have been a consequence of publicity on television.
2. "Go Gospel." Choir’s website. Translation by Google Translate.
3. "Gospelchor." Church’s website.
4. Choir website.
5. Choir website. Translation by Google Translate. They believed Negro spirituals relied on the Old Testament.
6. Google Translate of "komm zu uns, herr."
7. German Wikipedia. "Peter-und-Paul-Kirche (Heimerdingen)."
8. German Wikipedia. "Heimerdingen."
Costumes for liturgical dance performances are easily available from companies that supply dancers. Most are empire-style dresses with flowing, ankle-length skirts that cost between $25 and $40. Individuals usually don’t wear shoes.
In the early years, the steps used by liturgical dancers looked like animations of photographs of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan. As mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018, both were known for dramatizing the spiritual roots of dance.
The latter may have been especially influential because a biographical film starring Vanessa Redgrave was released in 1968. [1] Even people who didn’t see the movie, saw photographs of Duncan and knew she died when her scarf got caught in the wheels of an automobile.
A performance of "Kumbaya" by the gospel youth choir of the Lutheran church in Heimerdingen, Germany, featured two girls who danced with long, thin, red scarves. They were dressed, like the rest of the group, in dark slacks and tops.
They began kneeling on the floor. As the stood, they crossed their arms in front, raised them over their heads, brought them down to a stretched out position before lowering them in a standard port de bras. On the second line of the verse, they lifted their outside arms with the scarves into a modified first arabesque a terre.
After turning slowly one time with their arms stretched wide, they took two large chassé steps away from each other. As they moved they swept their arms in circles in front of their bodies twice. Finally, they knelt down again sweeping their scarves with them.
The arrangement alternated vocal parts with saxophone solos. The dance routine was repeated without variation during every instrumental interlude.
The youth choir was formed in 2010 for a concert. [2] Since then, they’ve met weekly for ninety minutes [3] to prepare music for "music service, choir day in Ludwigsburg, communion of the newly confirmed, summer serenade, gospel concert, Christmas Eve family worship." [4] This performance was a concert. I don’t know if they used dancers during services.
The group believed gospel music was "originally the Christian songs of black Americans" that did not rely on the Old Testament. "Their lyrics tell of the joy of life and confidence born of faith, and of the love of God and of men." [5]
Their instruments were borrowed from the African diaspora, but they were assimilated into European ideas of orchestration. Instead of a bass drum hitting a downbeat and a snare playing the off beats, a floor drum was hit with a stick on the first count. A woman used her hands on two other floor drums on the other beats. Two cajones played on the final beat of each measure, while two other drum heads were beaten.
Instead of an organ, the group used a digital piano as its primary accompanying instrument. I could see a string bass and electric guitar being played, but couldn’t hear them.
The choir stood in the altar space with the bass and guitar to its left. Instead of an open area in front of the altar rail for a mourning bench, space was reserved between the rail and the steps to the altar for communers. The drummers were seated at the choir’s right, and the piano and saxophone at its left. The dancers were behind the rail, with the first pews nearby.
The saxophone did not embellish its part with repetitions, but the vocal part became more complex. It began with a soprano soloist singing "kumbaya." After the saxophone interlude, the choir repeated the "kumbaya" verse. The reed and choir continued to trade the melody, which the choir repeated with some harmony. Its final repetition of the "kumbaya" verse used a descant.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: soprano
Vocal Group: young men and women
Vocal Director: Ricarda Kost
Instrumental Soloist: saxophone
Instrumental Accompaniment: digital piano, electric guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: three floor drums, string bass
Credits
There were none.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum BY yah, Lort
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying, crying
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: the German translation used "herr" for "Lord"; "kumbaya" was "come to us." [6]
Basic Form: three-verse song framed by kumbaya
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxxxA with A = kumbaya
Ending: repeated "oh Lord kumbaya" six times
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: alternated vocal and instrumental parts with the vocal part increasing in complexity with repetitions.
Singing Style: one syllable to one note
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the instruments provided a simple cadence for both the singers and the saxophone; the camera’s microphone only picked up the sax and piano.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: concert, 2016
Location: altar, Peter-und-Paul-Kirche, Heimerdingen, Baden-Württemberg
Microphones: the soloist had a hand-held mike
Clothing: everyone wore dark slacks and tee-shirts with the choir’s name in white on the backs.
Notes on Movement
The singers stood still with their arms at their sides facing front. The musicians also exerted no extra movements. The director used his arms.
Notes on Audience
All the seats were taken that could be seen in the video. During the performance, no one made any response. The film ended before any applause.
Notes on Performers
The parish of Heimerdingen dated back to the ninth century. The area came under the control of the Grafen von Württemberg who turned it Protestant in 1534. The current building was erected after a 1776 fire destroyed the previous one. The interior was simplified in 1964. [7]
The area was ravaged by wars, epidemics and famines during the Reformation, and was occupied by the French in 1945. It since has been absorbed into the city of Ditzingen within the region of Stuttgart. [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Gospelchor Heimerdingen on 13 March 2016.
End Notes
1. Isadora. Directed by Karel Reisz. Universal Pictures. 18 December 1968. Its focus on Duncan’s personal life would not have attracted conservative religious viewers, so knowledge about her dance would have been a consequence of publicity on television.
2. "Go Gospel." Choir’s website. Translation by Google Translate.
3. "Gospelchor." Church’s website.
4. Choir website.
5. Choir website. Translation by Google Translate. They believed Negro spirituals relied on the Old Testament.
6. Google Translate of "komm zu uns, herr."
7. German Wikipedia. "Peter-und-Paul-Kirche (Heimerdingen)."
8. German Wikipedia. "Heimerdingen."
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Holy Dancing
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
Alma White gave the term "Holy Dancing" a bad odor, but not because she brought ridicule to movement. Holy Jumper was less pejorative than Holy Roller. The problem arose in the 1920s when she published books like The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy [1] that supported the organization. [2]
Her ingrained bigotry had ebbed somewhat when she lived in the West, [3] but probably was reignited by the success of William Seymour. [4] As his doctrine of speaking in tongues was accepted by many Pentecostals, her own popularity waned. Worse, when her wayward husband [5] finally was sanctified, it was by speaking in tongues at a church in England in 1910. [6] The same year she attacked Seymour in Demons and Tongues:
"With due consideration for the colored people, and with a heart interest in their spiritual uplifting, we must say it was very fitting that the devil should choose a colored man to launch out the ‘Tongues’ movement in which the works of the flesh are so plainly manifest in these last days when the Old Red Dragon has well-nigh swallowed up every religious movement on the globe. There is no other race through which the Dragon could work more effectually than through the colored race." [7]
Charles Harrison Mason did not use the term "holy dancing" in 1926 when he defined acceptable and unacceptable forms of movement for members of the Church of God in Christ. After reviewing Old Testament references to dance, he explicated the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:25. "Dancing here denotes or expresses joy." More specifically, it was "the heavenly joy over the repentance of one sinner." [8]
This use of movement differed from the shouts of abandoned and runaway slaves observed by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1862. On Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, the ritual included a phase when individuals used movement to invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. Gestures changed when people were affected by Its presence. [9]
Mason and White agreed dance was not part of the sanctification experience. Instead, it came after as an expression of joy at being saved. She used it in revivals as an enticement to commitment, but the commitment still took the form of repentance, not dance.
Dorothy Love Coates used the term in a list of responses an individual might see in church in 1961. In the denouement section of "Let’s Come In The House," she sang about getting happy, speaking in an unknown tongue, crying out in "a spiritual trance," and doing the holy dance. [10]
After Tony Heilbut quoted the song in The Gospel Sound in 1971, [11] the phrase entered the academic dictionary as a way to describe one part of the African-American religious experience. Thus, Ray Allen wrote "it is during extended drive sections that they are most apt to shout, cry, holy dance, and completely ‘fall out’ into states of Spirit possession." [12]
Some whites, [13] like Robert Owens, inserted the word "holy" into their discussions of Mason, [14] but African-American scholars, like Calvin White [15] and Elton Weaver, [16] used his unqualified word. There were exceptions like C. J. Rhodes, who wrote Mason was "intentional in keeping the holy dance and shouting as central to the liturgy." [17] Others who used White’s term included Willa Ward [18] and Estrelda Alexander [19] who were trying to communicate across ethnic barriers.
At the time Coates’ Gospel Harmonettes made its recording, movement was entering churches as Liturgical Dance, but in a severely constrained way. Bill Hamon thought the stimulus was the Latter Rain movement in British Columbia in 1954. He made clear "this was completely different from the Pentecostal ‘dancing in the spirit,’ an uncontrolled, eyes shut, emotional frenzy." [20]
John Hawkins credited the Sacred Dance Guild [21] that was founded in 1956 by a Unitarian minister and a follower of Ruth St. Denis. [22] He maintained dance included "any ordered bodily movement to the accompaniment of music, ruling out ‘free’ or ecstatic manifestations." [23]
Many believe the catalyst was Vatican II. [24] After 1963, lay people began considering how to redo the liturgy, and some included dance. From there, like folk masses, the idea radiated to other mainstream denominations. Soon after, charismatic forms of worship developed that utilized speaking in tongues. [25]
All these forms subordinated movement to the word. The dances first were used to illustrate or interpret scripture. As such, they were not done by parishioners, but by a rehearsed corp like that formed by Clariece Paulk, mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018.
Liturgical dance not only was not a path to conversion, it wasn’t even used to express the joy mentioned by White and Mason. With time, Hawkins suggested this inhibition weakened as parishioners became more aware of the varieties of dance. Some, like Paulk, incorporated many forms to attract the attention of congregants, while others like Dances of Universal Peace used the circle dance as a way form of meditation. [26]
Hawkins suggested still others saw dance as a form of prayer. Like Born-Again Believers, they met privately to use movement to explore their own religious beliefs or to heal. They would not have performed in public, and certainly would not have posted videos to YouTube.
End Notes
1. Alma Bridwell White. The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy. Zarephath, New Jersey: The Good Citizen, 1925.
2. Wikipedia. "Alma Bridwell White."
3. In a book published before the rise of Seymour, she mentioned her experiences teaching African-American girls in Salt Lake City, and preaching to a racially-mixed group in Paris, Kentucky. (Mollie Alma White. Looking back from Beulah. Denver: The Pentecostal Union, 1902. On Salt Lake, 59; on Paris, 259.)
4. For more on William Seymour, see the post for 7 December 2017.
5. The marriage did not meet the expectations of either party. When Alma rewrote her autobiography in 1921, she spoke frankly about his shortcomings. (Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 2, 1921.) He simply said, when he moved to England in 1914, he was freed "from a complexity of affairs" that followed from the success of her missions. (Kent White. The Word of God Coming Again. Winton, Bournemouth, England: The Apostolic Faith Church, 1919. 22.)
6. Kent White. 17. He wrote: "I see how wonderfully the Lord ordered all things in my life, and brought me here from America to England that I might get my baptism with the Holy Ghost in this Church, July 7th, 1910."
7. Alma White. Demons and Tongues. Bound Brook, New Jersey: The Pentecostal Union, 1910. 79-80.
8. "Is It Right for the Saints of God to Dance?" 28-29 in Yearbook of the Church of God in Christ for the Year 1926, Memphis, Tennessee. Compiled by Lilian Brooke Coffey, Chicago, Illinois. 29. It appeared in the section on "Doctrinal Subjects of the Church of God in Christ." Reprinted by Estrelda Y. Alexander. Black Fire Reader. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013. 9-10.
9. For more on Saint Helena Island and the complete citation, see the post for 20 September 2018.
10. The Gospel Harmonettes. "Let’s Come In The House." Savoy 45-4158. 1961. Written by Dorothy Love Coates. (Discogs website posting for the 45 rpm recording)
11. Tony Heilbut. The Gospel Sound. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971. 17.
12. Ray Allen. Singing in the Spirit. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 123. Emphasis added.
13. Racial classifications were made by locating photographs of authors. I could find no information on Mary Menefee who wrote: "Mason wanted to see the denomination adopt the same vibrant and emotionally moving mannerisms that he had seen among former slaves, which were considered controversial— holy dances, ecstatic worship, and falling under the power of God." ("Charles Harrison Mason 1866–1961." Encyclopedia of Arkansas website. Last updated 27 October 2016. Emphasis added.)
14. Robert R. Owens. "Bishop Charles Harrison Mason: The Apostle of Reconciliation." 63-72 in With Signs Following: The Life and Ministry of Charles Harrison Mason. Edited by Raynard D. Smith. Danvers, Massachusetts: Christian Board of Publishers, 2015. 69. "Mason insisted on retaining the worship and prayer traditions of slave religion, which included the prayer circle and lively worship (such as shouting, jumping, and the ‘Holy Dance’), but, at the same time, he led the church in developing a new Pentencostal spirituality." (emphasis added)
15. Calvin White, Jr. The Rise to Respectability. Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 2012. Introduction. "Black Holiness believers, often composed of uneducated ex-slave preachers, stood in opposition, holding on to rituals such as shouting, dancing, and charismatic preaching, and the church served as their battleground. Followers of Holiness rejected the modernization of black religious practices and as the movement spread, Charles Harrison Mason and Charles Price Jones emerged as its two most significant leaders." (emphasis added)
16. Elton H. Weaver III. "Charles Harrison Mason (1866-1961)." Tennessee Encyclopedia website. "Mason encouraged blacks to embrace their cultural heritage and gave them space to express themselves in church. He allowed the working classes to shout, dance, testify about their daily struggles, speak in tongues, use musical instruments, and sing gospel music." (emphasis added)
17. C. J. Rhodes. "‘Full of Sound and Fury’: Why the Sanctified Church Needs Reform." His website. 7 January 2014. Emphasis added.
18. For Willa Ward’s use of "holy dancing," see the post for 7 October 2018.
19. Estrelda Y. Alexander. "The Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in African American Pentecostalism." 129-149 in Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith. Edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones. Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2015. 134. "The holy dance is distinctive from all other dancing." (emphasis added)
20. Bill Hamon. The Eternal Church. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Image, 2003 edition. 232.
21. John Hawkins. "Varieties of Religious Dance." Sacred Space 3:24-27:2002. 24.
22. "History." Sacred Dance Guild website. The founders were Robert Storer (the Unitarian), Mary Jane Wolbers (the one trained in the techniques of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis) and Margaret Taylor Doane. St. Denis was mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018.
23. Hawkins. 24.
24. Cecelia Goodnow. "Roots of Dance in Worship Go Back to ‘Charismatic’ Style of ’60s." Seattle Post-Intelligencer website. 5 April 2006.
25. Janet Lynn’s involvement with the tongues movement in the early 1970s was mentioned in the post for 16 October 2018.
26. Their movements were described in the post for 2 November 2018.
Alma White gave the term "Holy Dancing" a bad odor, but not because she brought ridicule to movement. Holy Jumper was less pejorative than Holy Roller. The problem arose in the 1920s when she published books like The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy [1] that supported the organization. [2]
Her ingrained bigotry had ebbed somewhat when she lived in the West, [3] but probably was reignited by the success of William Seymour. [4] As his doctrine of speaking in tongues was accepted by many Pentecostals, her own popularity waned. Worse, when her wayward husband [5] finally was sanctified, it was by speaking in tongues at a church in England in 1910. [6] The same year she attacked Seymour in Demons and Tongues:
"With due consideration for the colored people, and with a heart interest in their spiritual uplifting, we must say it was very fitting that the devil should choose a colored man to launch out the ‘Tongues’ movement in which the works of the flesh are so plainly manifest in these last days when the Old Red Dragon has well-nigh swallowed up every religious movement on the globe. There is no other race through which the Dragon could work more effectually than through the colored race." [7]
Charles Harrison Mason did not use the term "holy dancing" in 1926 when he defined acceptable and unacceptable forms of movement for members of the Church of God in Christ. After reviewing Old Testament references to dance, he explicated the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:25. "Dancing here denotes or expresses joy." More specifically, it was "the heavenly joy over the repentance of one sinner." [8]
This use of movement differed from the shouts of abandoned and runaway slaves observed by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1862. On Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, the ritual included a phase when individuals used movement to invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. Gestures changed when people were affected by Its presence. [9]
Mason and White agreed dance was not part of the sanctification experience. Instead, it came after as an expression of joy at being saved. She used it in revivals as an enticement to commitment, but the commitment still took the form of repentance, not dance.
Dorothy Love Coates used the term in a list of responses an individual might see in church in 1961. In the denouement section of "Let’s Come In The House," she sang about getting happy, speaking in an unknown tongue, crying out in "a spiritual trance," and doing the holy dance. [10]
After Tony Heilbut quoted the song in The Gospel Sound in 1971, [11] the phrase entered the academic dictionary as a way to describe one part of the African-American religious experience. Thus, Ray Allen wrote "it is during extended drive sections that they are most apt to shout, cry, holy dance, and completely ‘fall out’ into states of Spirit possession." [12]
Some whites, [13] like Robert Owens, inserted the word "holy" into their discussions of Mason, [14] but African-American scholars, like Calvin White [15] and Elton Weaver, [16] used his unqualified word. There were exceptions like C. J. Rhodes, who wrote Mason was "intentional in keeping the holy dance and shouting as central to the liturgy." [17] Others who used White’s term included Willa Ward [18] and Estrelda Alexander [19] who were trying to communicate across ethnic barriers.
At the time Coates’ Gospel Harmonettes made its recording, movement was entering churches as Liturgical Dance, but in a severely constrained way. Bill Hamon thought the stimulus was the Latter Rain movement in British Columbia in 1954. He made clear "this was completely different from the Pentecostal ‘dancing in the spirit,’ an uncontrolled, eyes shut, emotional frenzy." [20]
John Hawkins credited the Sacred Dance Guild [21] that was founded in 1956 by a Unitarian minister and a follower of Ruth St. Denis. [22] He maintained dance included "any ordered bodily movement to the accompaniment of music, ruling out ‘free’ or ecstatic manifestations." [23]
Many believe the catalyst was Vatican II. [24] After 1963, lay people began considering how to redo the liturgy, and some included dance. From there, like folk masses, the idea radiated to other mainstream denominations. Soon after, charismatic forms of worship developed that utilized speaking in tongues. [25]
All these forms subordinated movement to the word. The dances first were used to illustrate or interpret scripture. As such, they were not done by parishioners, but by a rehearsed corp like that formed by Clariece Paulk, mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018.
Liturgical dance not only was not a path to conversion, it wasn’t even used to express the joy mentioned by White and Mason. With time, Hawkins suggested this inhibition weakened as parishioners became more aware of the varieties of dance. Some, like Paulk, incorporated many forms to attract the attention of congregants, while others like Dances of Universal Peace used the circle dance as a way form of meditation. [26]
Hawkins suggested still others saw dance as a form of prayer. Like Born-Again Believers, they met privately to use movement to explore their own religious beliefs or to heal. They would not have performed in public, and certainly would not have posted videos to YouTube.
End Notes
1. Alma Bridwell White. The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy. Zarephath, New Jersey: The Good Citizen, 1925.
2. Wikipedia. "Alma Bridwell White."
3. In a book published before the rise of Seymour, she mentioned her experiences teaching African-American girls in Salt Lake City, and preaching to a racially-mixed group in Paris, Kentucky. (Mollie Alma White. Looking back from Beulah. Denver: The Pentecostal Union, 1902. On Salt Lake, 59; on Paris, 259.)
4. For more on William Seymour, see the post for 7 December 2017.
5. The marriage did not meet the expectations of either party. When Alma rewrote her autobiography in 1921, she spoke frankly about his shortcomings. (Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 2, 1921.) He simply said, when he moved to England in 1914, he was freed "from a complexity of affairs" that followed from the success of her missions. (Kent White. The Word of God Coming Again. Winton, Bournemouth, England: The Apostolic Faith Church, 1919. 22.)
6. Kent White. 17. He wrote: "I see how wonderfully the Lord ordered all things in my life, and brought me here from America to England that I might get my baptism with the Holy Ghost in this Church, July 7th, 1910."
7. Alma White. Demons and Tongues. Bound Brook, New Jersey: The Pentecostal Union, 1910. 79-80.
8. "Is It Right for the Saints of God to Dance?" 28-29 in Yearbook of the Church of God in Christ for the Year 1926, Memphis, Tennessee. Compiled by Lilian Brooke Coffey, Chicago, Illinois. 29. It appeared in the section on "Doctrinal Subjects of the Church of God in Christ." Reprinted by Estrelda Y. Alexander. Black Fire Reader. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013. 9-10.
9. For more on Saint Helena Island and the complete citation, see the post for 20 September 2018.
10. The Gospel Harmonettes. "Let’s Come In The House." Savoy 45-4158. 1961. Written by Dorothy Love Coates. (Discogs website posting for the 45 rpm recording)
11. Tony Heilbut. The Gospel Sound. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971. 17.
12. Ray Allen. Singing in the Spirit. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 123. Emphasis added.
13. Racial classifications were made by locating photographs of authors. I could find no information on Mary Menefee who wrote: "Mason wanted to see the denomination adopt the same vibrant and emotionally moving mannerisms that he had seen among former slaves, which were considered controversial— holy dances, ecstatic worship, and falling under the power of God." ("Charles Harrison Mason 1866–1961." Encyclopedia of Arkansas website. Last updated 27 October 2016. Emphasis added.)
14. Robert R. Owens. "Bishop Charles Harrison Mason: The Apostle of Reconciliation." 63-72 in With Signs Following: The Life and Ministry of Charles Harrison Mason. Edited by Raynard D. Smith. Danvers, Massachusetts: Christian Board of Publishers, 2015. 69. "Mason insisted on retaining the worship and prayer traditions of slave religion, which included the prayer circle and lively worship (such as shouting, jumping, and the ‘Holy Dance’), but, at the same time, he led the church in developing a new Pentencostal spirituality." (emphasis added)
15. Calvin White, Jr. The Rise to Respectability. Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 2012. Introduction. "Black Holiness believers, often composed of uneducated ex-slave preachers, stood in opposition, holding on to rituals such as shouting, dancing, and charismatic preaching, and the church served as their battleground. Followers of Holiness rejected the modernization of black religious practices and as the movement spread, Charles Harrison Mason and Charles Price Jones emerged as its two most significant leaders." (emphasis added)
16. Elton H. Weaver III. "Charles Harrison Mason (1866-1961)." Tennessee Encyclopedia website. "Mason encouraged blacks to embrace their cultural heritage and gave them space to express themselves in church. He allowed the working classes to shout, dance, testify about their daily struggles, speak in tongues, use musical instruments, and sing gospel music." (emphasis added)
17. C. J. Rhodes. "‘Full of Sound and Fury’: Why the Sanctified Church Needs Reform." His website. 7 January 2014. Emphasis added.
18. For Willa Ward’s use of "holy dancing," see the post for 7 October 2018.
19. Estrelda Y. Alexander. "The Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in African American Pentecostalism." 129-149 in Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith. Edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones. Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2015. 134. "The holy dance is distinctive from all other dancing." (emphasis added)
20. Bill Hamon. The Eternal Church. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Image, 2003 edition. 232.
21. John Hawkins. "Varieties of Religious Dance." Sacred Space 3:24-27:2002. 24.
22. "History." Sacred Dance Guild website. The founders were Robert Storer (the Unitarian), Mary Jane Wolbers (the one trained in the techniques of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis) and Margaret Taylor Doane. St. Denis was mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018.
23. Hawkins. 24.
24. Cecelia Goodnow. "Roots of Dance in Worship Go Back to ‘Charismatic’ Style of ’60s." Seattle Post-Intelligencer website. 5 April 2006.
25. Janet Lynn’s involvement with the tongues movement in the early 1970s was mentioned in the post for 16 October 2018.
26. Their movements were described in the post for 2 November 2018.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Marymount Prekinder - KUMBAYA
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
The holy dances of Alma White, mentioned in the post for 4 November 2011, differed from the carefully choreographed performances staged by Clariece Paulk, mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018. The movements were those of untrained adults doing what they thought dancers did: woman turned and men leapt.
Those were the natural actions of children in our society. The only thing that’s changed since 1904 is television has replaced vaudeville and minstrel shows. Children still imitate what they see and find exciting.
Four-year-old girls in the Marymount pre-kindergarten in Barranquilla, Colombia, came on stage in 2014 to shake their hips by raising one knee at a time like hula-dancers. They turned to the left and rolled their hands around each other as the stepped from foot to foot.
The boys began, before the girls entered, by banging on floor drums. After the girls had gone through their routine once, they stood behind them and did some of the same motions. When the girls left the stage, they supported themselves with their left arms on the floor and kicked one leg at a time in the air.
The choreography mixed popular with classical forms. The use of rolling hands was reminiscent of Tina Turner’s backup singers in videos of "Proud Mary". [1] Several of the boys tried steps borrowed from rock-videos rather than the prescribed moves. One did the hands-on-knees part of the Charleston, while another looked more like Elvis Presley when he tried the same pattern.
The costumes were taken from ballet stereotypes of Russians and Ukrainians with girls’ skirts over tutus and boys’ shirts with band collars opened in the center with top-down slits. The boys’ floor combination was a simplification of a Cossack squat dance, [2] sometimes imitated by break dancers.
In this child’s world where music, dance, and costume could be mixed without concern for internal logic, the choreography was set in Africa. Behind the row of floor drums was a screen showing animated cartoons of elephants, giraffes, and women carrying jugs on their heads.
The performance began with a boy in Cossack dress and hat singing or lip-synching a verse from "Kumbaya" with a hand-held microphone or prop.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: young boy
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: electric instruments
Rhythm Accompaniment: floor drums
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: kumbaya
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: one-verse song
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: medley, with the first part a recording of one verse of "Kumbaya." The second part was drums. The third part was music by electric instruments and a voice that couldn’t be heard distinctly.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Christmas show, 2014
Location: stage with large Christmas trees at each side and in the center; slides or a cartoon-style animation of Africa was projected unto the back wall.
Microphones: one held as prop.
Clothing: costumes were either brown prints with chartreuse details or black-and-white prints with orange decoration. The boys were dressed in Russian costumes with dark, loose pants and overshirts. The girls wore printed satin-like dresses over net, solid-color, tutu-style petticoats.
Notes on Movement
The children had learned their routine, and stayed together. The primary variations were those that arose from differences in physical abilities.
Audience Perceptions
The audience applauded at the end when the children walked off stage; they did not take bows.
Notes on Performers
Barranquilla developed on Colombia’s Caribbean coast after steamboats began using the Magdalena River to deliver immigrants and export coffee. The area originally had been granted by the Spanish to reward military supporters who, in turn, exploited the labor of the Comacho. Once the port developed, immigrants from Germany and the middle East, especially Syria, settled. [3]
Marymount Colleges were founded in the United States and Colombia by Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary to educate women. [4] The high school in Barranquilla was established in 1953 at the request of former students. It expanded to include lower grades in 1980, [5] and began accepting boys the next year. [6]
Bi-lingual education began with four-year-olds, [7] and "learning takes place through play and the innate curiosity of children. This process takes place in a very pleasant and entertaining environment, using thematic axes from which dramatization, art, music, science and mathematics activities are derived, which are strengthened by the language." [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Nathalia Ochoa on 13 December 2014.
End Notes
1. She used this choreography when she was still with Ike Turner. The clearest example was a video of them on Italian television in 1971 uploaded by Storchengerippe on 10 September 2011. When she began performing as a soloist, the movements changed.
2. The Cossack dance in Ukraine was called Hopak. In Russian, it was known as Kazachok.
3. Wikipedia. "Barranquilla." The natives now are called Kamash. The migration of people from the Middle East was discussed in the post for 25 December 2017.
4. Wikipedia. "Marymount Colleges."
5. "Historia." School website.
6. Wikipedia. "Marymount International School Barranquilla."
7. Council of International Schools. International Schools Directory. Edited by Derek Bingham. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: John Catt Educational Ltd., 2009/10 edition.
8. "Preescolar." School website. 21 July 2016. Translated by Google Translate.
The holy dances of Alma White, mentioned in the post for 4 November 2011, differed from the carefully choreographed performances staged by Clariece Paulk, mentioned in the post for 14 October 2018. The movements were those of untrained adults doing what they thought dancers did: woman turned and men leapt.
Those were the natural actions of children in our society. The only thing that’s changed since 1904 is television has replaced vaudeville and minstrel shows. Children still imitate what they see and find exciting.
Four-year-old girls in the Marymount pre-kindergarten in Barranquilla, Colombia, came on stage in 2014 to shake their hips by raising one knee at a time like hula-dancers. They turned to the left and rolled their hands around each other as the stepped from foot to foot.
The boys began, before the girls entered, by banging on floor drums. After the girls had gone through their routine once, they stood behind them and did some of the same motions. When the girls left the stage, they supported themselves with their left arms on the floor and kicked one leg at a time in the air.
The choreography mixed popular with classical forms. The use of rolling hands was reminiscent of Tina Turner’s backup singers in videos of "Proud Mary". [1] Several of the boys tried steps borrowed from rock-videos rather than the prescribed moves. One did the hands-on-knees part of the Charleston, while another looked more like Elvis Presley when he tried the same pattern.
The costumes were taken from ballet stereotypes of Russians and Ukrainians with girls’ skirts over tutus and boys’ shirts with band collars opened in the center with top-down slits. The boys’ floor combination was a simplification of a Cossack squat dance, [2] sometimes imitated by break dancers.
In this child’s world where music, dance, and costume could be mixed without concern for internal logic, the choreography was set in Africa. Behind the row of floor drums was a screen showing animated cartoons of elephants, giraffes, and women carrying jugs on their heads.
The performance began with a boy in Cossack dress and hat singing or lip-synching a verse from "Kumbaya" with a hand-held microphone or prop.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: young boy
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: electric instruments
Rhythm Accompaniment: floor drums
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: kumbaya
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: one-verse song
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: medley, with the first part a recording of one verse of "Kumbaya." The second part was drums. The third part was music by electric instruments and a voice that couldn’t be heard distinctly.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Christmas show, 2014
Location: stage with large Christmas trees at each side and in the center; slides or a cartoon-style animation of Africa was projected unto the back wall.
Microphones: one held as prop.
Clothing: costumes were either brown prints with chartreuse details or black-and-white prints with orange decoration. The boys were dressed in Russian costumes with dark, loose pants and overshirts. The girls wore printed satin-like dresses over net, solid-color, tutu-style petticoats.
Notes on Movement
The children had learned their routine, and stayed together. The primary variations were those that arose from differences in physical abilities.
Audience Perceptions
The audience applauded at the end when the children walked off stage; they did not take bows.
Notes on Performers
Barranquilla developed on Colombia’s Caribbean coast after steamboats began using the Magdalena River to deliver immigrants and export coffee. The area originally had been granted by the Spanish to reward military supporters who, in turn, exploited the labor of the Comacho. Once the port developed, immigrants from Germany and the middle East, especially Syria, settled. [3]
Marymount Colleges were founded in the United States and Colombia by Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary to educate women. [4] The high school in Barranquilla was established in 1953 at the request of former students. It expanded to include lower grades in 1980, [5] and began accepting boys the next year. [6]
Bi-lingual education began with four-year-olds, [7] and "learning takes place through play and the innate curiosity of children. This process takes place in a very pleasant and entertaining environment, using thematic axes from which dramatization, art, music, science and mathematics activities are derived, which are strengthened by the language." [8]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by Nathalia Ochoa on 13 December 2014.
End Notes
1. She used this choreography when she was still with Ike Turner. The clearest example was a video of them on Italian television in 1971 uploaded by Storchengerippe on 10 September 2011. When she began performing as a soloist, the movements changed.
2. The Cossack dance in Ukraine was called Hopak. In Russian, it was known as Kazachok.
3. Wikipedia. "Barranquilla." The natives now are called Kamash. The migration of people from the Middle East was discussed in the post for 25 December 2017.
4. Wikipedia. "Marymount Colleges."
5. "Historia." School website.
6. Wikipedia. "Marymount International School Barranquilla."
7. Council of International Schools. International Schools Directory. Edited by Derek Bingham. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: John Catt Educational Ltd., 2009/10 edition.
8. "Preescolar." School website. 21 July 2016. Translated by Google Translate.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Alma White
Topic: Movement - Liturgical Dance
Alma White tried to rescue movement for whites with the term "holy dancing." In 1912 she wrote:
"The holy dance formerly belonged to the Church, but Satan captured it, and has used it for centuries as one of most powerful agencies to destroy souls.
"When this truth flashed upon me, I determined that it should again have a place in the Church and be used to the glory of God." [1]
She was an unlikely proponent of rhythmic movement: she had been raised in a Holiness environment in rural Kentucky where she believed her family were outsiders. Even though their antecedents came from Virginia and migrated to Lewis County in the 1840s, she wrote:
"Adversity had helped to keep the family united, but there was a growing restlessness among the older children, owing to a lack of the right kind of society around us. The people of the community and country were not of our class, and they knew it as well as we did. My parents had moved to this mountainous region on account of the tannery and the timber, when the family was small, but now that some of the children had grown up." [2]
Mollie Alma Bridwell was thirteen when she first saw people dancing at a Fourth of July celebration. She was visiting her grandparents at the time. [3] The only social events she attended as a teen had "so-called innocent amusements, but no card playing or dancing." [4]
An aunt invited her to stay in Montana in 1881 where northerners and southerners mixed. When the eighteen-year-old rejected their invitations to socialize
"They admitted that it was more difficult for a Kentuckian to break caste than some others, but said that I would soon play a game of cards with them and dance if the opportunity was afforded.
"From that moment, I was determined to show them that they could not mold me according to their prediction, that I was different and would remain different from all other persons they had seen or known. [5]
She married Kent White, a Methodist seminarian, and became a Holiness evangelist in Colorado. It was the 1890s, and Holiness crusades were sweeping through areas affected by the Panic of 1893. The Southern Methodist Church had closed its doors to evangelists in 1894. [6] Local Holiness associations had divided loyalties, as did her husband.
In 1901 she attended the International Holiness Assembly in Chicago. White recalled, it was held in a Methodist church building, and "was spiritually dead and was of very little interest to me." [7] The Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) was holding a rival meeting that featured Seth C. Rees and M. W. Knapp. Both were advocating leaving established denominations and forming new ones. [8]
It was in this congenial atmosphere that she saw "eight or ten persons on the platform, leaping, jumping, dancing and clapping their hands and presenting a scene that was indescribable." [9] She accompanied her description with the reproduced drawing. [10]
She realized "we had been too much in the ‘old Church rut.’ After returning home I exhorted our young people to take their liberty, and as they did so the flood-gates of heaven were opened, showing God’s approval upon this course of procedure." [11]
She and her husband organized their own Pentecostal Union in December 1901, [12] and affiliated with the MCA. It’s organizers, Edwin Harvey and Duke Farson, had come together in the 1880s to evangelize German and Scandinavian immigrants in Chicago. [13] By the time White saw them, they had organized the Society of the Burning Bush to establish premillennial colonies for the saved. [14]
Susie Stanley said: "It is impossible to determine how many revivals Alma conducted independently and how many were held in cooperation with the Burning Bush between 1902 and 1905." [15] They were in London together in 1904 where
"The revivalists did the two-step, the cakewalk, the waltz, and twirled like dervishes. Harry and Kent ‘executed an impromptu pas de deux.’ Alone, Harvey performed ‘whirling jig figures.’ The young women, dressed in blue dresses and blue bonnets with white ribbons, danced in pairs or alone, executing perpendicular jumps." [16]
After a later performance, one journalist observed
"Once in an ecstasy of intense excitement Mrs. Kent White rose from the pianoforte, rushed to the further end of the platform, uttering a piercing cry like an Indian war-whoop, and returned to her seat in a series of pirouetting movements of surprising rapidity." [17]
End Notes
1. Alma White. The New Testament Church. Bound Brook, New Jersey: Pentecostal Union, 1912. 1:232-233.
2. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, 1919. 107. Her father ran a tannery next to the house.
3. White, 1919. 153.
4. White, 1919. 164.
5. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 2, 1921. 33. She wrote a multi-volume autobiography that treated her 1919 memoir as its first volume.
6. For more on the roots of the Holiness Movement and its growth in the 1890s, see the entry on William Seymour posted on 7 December 2017.
7. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 3, 1924. 279.
8. White, 1924. 279-280.
9. Mollie Alma White. Looking back from Beulah. Denver: The Pentecostal Union, 1902. 254.
10. White, 1924. 285. No credits were given for the art work.
11. White, 1924. 285-286.
12. White, 1924. 302.
13. William Kostlevy. Holy Jumpers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. No page numbers in on-line edition. Edwin L. Harvey and Marmaduke Mendenhall Farson.
14. Christopher Long. "Burning Bush Colony." Handbook of Texas Online. 12 June 2010. Last updated 5 November 2012.
15. Susie C. Stanley. Feminist Pillar of Fire: The Life of Alma White. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1993. 56.
16. Stanley. 56. Harry Harvey was the brother of the founder of Burning Bush. Perpendicular jumps differed from ballet leaps like jetés that moved horizontally. She was quoting "Pentecostal Dancers." [London] Daily Mail 2 December 1904 and an undated article in the Daily Mail.
17. "‘Red Hot’ Revival Services." South London Observor and Camberwall and Peckham Times 10 December 1904. Quoted by Stanley. 57.
Alma White tried to rescue movement for whites with the term "holy dancing." In 1912 she wrote:
"The holy dance formerly belonged to the Church, but Satan captured it, and has used it for centuries as one of most powerful agencies to destroy souls.
"When this truth flashed upon me, I determined that it should again have a place in the Church and be used to the glory of God." [1]
She was an unlikely proponent of rhythmic movement: she had been raised in a Holiness environment in rural Kentucky where she believed her family were outsiders. Even though their antecedents came from Virginia and migrated to Lewis County in the 1840s, she wrote:
"Adversity had helped to keep the family united, but there was a growing restlessness among the older children, owing to a lack of the right kind of society around us. The people of the community and country were not of our class, and they knew it as well as we did. My parents had moved to this mountainous region on account of the tannery and the timber, when the family was small, but now that some of the children had grown up." [2]
Mollie Alma Bridwell was thirteen when she first saw people dancing at a Fourth of July celebration. She was visiting her grandparents at the time. [3] The only social events she attended as a teen had "so-called innocent amusements, but no card playing or dancing." [4]
An aunt invited her to stay in Montana in 1881 where northerners and southerners mixed. When the eighteen-year-old rejected their invitations to socialize
"They admitted that it was more difficult for a Kentuckian to break caste than some others, but said that I would soon play a game of cards with them and dance if the opportunity was afforded.
"From that moment, I was determined to show them that they could not mold me according to their prediction, that I was different and would remain different from all other persons they had seen or known. [5]
She married Kent White, a Methodist seminarian, and became a Holiness evangelist in Colorado. It was the 1890s, and Holiness crusades were sweeping through areas affected by the Panic of 1893. The Southern Methodist Church had closed its doors to evangelists in 1894. [6] Local Holiness associations had divided loyalties, as did her husband.
In 1901 she attended the International Holiness Assembly in Chicago. White recalled, it was held in a Methodist church building, and "was spiritually dead and was of very little interest to me." [7] The Metropolitan Church Association (MCA) was holding a rival meeting that featured Seth C. Rees and M. W. Knapp. Both were advocating leaving established denominations and forming new ones. [8]
It was in this congenial atmosphere that she saw "eight or ten persons on the platform, leaping, jumping, dancing and clapping their hands and presenting a scene that was indescribable." [9] She accompanied her description with the reproduced drawing. [10]
She and her husband organized their own Pentecostal Union in December 1901, [12] and affiliated with the MCA. It’s organizers, Edwin Harvey and Duke Farson, had come together in the 1880s to evangelize German and Scandinavian immigrants in Chicago. [13] By the time White saw them, they had organized the Society of the Burning Bush to establish premillennial colonies for the saved. [14]
Susie Stanley said: "It is impossible to determine how many revivals Alma conducted independently and how many were held in cooperation with the Burning Bush between 1902 and 1905." [15] They were in London together in 1904 where
"The revivalists did the two-step, the cakewalk, the waltz, and twirled like dervishes. Harry and Kent ‘executed an impromptu pas de deux.’ Alone, Harvey performed ‘whirling jig figures.’ The young women, dressed in blue dresses and blue bonnets with white ribbons, danced in pairs or alone, executing perpendicular jumps." [16]
After a later performance, one journalist observed
"Once in an ecstasy of intense excitement Mrs. Kent White rose from the pianoforte, rushed to the further end of the platform, uttering a piercing cry like an Indian war-whoop, and returned to her seat in a series of pirouetting movements of surprising rapidity." [17]
End Notes
1. Alma White. The New Testament Church. Bound Brook, New Jersey: Pentecostal Union, 1912. 1:232-233.
2. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, 1919. 107. Her father ran a tannery next to the house.
3. White, 1919. 153.
4. White, 1919. 164.
5. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 2, 1921. 33. She wrote a multi-volume autobiography that treated her 1919 memoir as its first volume.
6. For more on the roots of the Holiness Movement and its growth in the 1890s, see the entry on William Seymour posted on 7 December 2017.
7. Alma White. The Story of My Life. Zarephath, New Jersey: Pillar of Fire, volume 3, 1924. 279.
8. White, 1924. 279-280.
9. Mollie Alma White. Looking back from Beulah. Denver: The Pentecostal Union, 1902. 254.
10. White, 1924. 285. No credits were given for the art work.
11. White, 1924. 285-286.
12. White, 1924. 302.
13. William Kostlevy. Holy Jumpers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. No page numbers in on-line edition. Edwin L. Harvey and Marmaduke Mendenhall Farson.
14. Christopher Long. "Burning Bush Colony." Handbook of Texas Online. 12 June 2010. Last updated 5 November 2012.
15. Susie C. Stanley. Feminist Pillar of Fire: The Life of Alma White. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1993. 56.
16. Stanley. 56. Harry Harvey was the brother of the founder of Burning Bush. Perpendicular jumps differed from ballet leaps like jetés that moved horizontally. She was quoting "Pentecostal Dancers." [London] Daily Mail 2 December 1904 and an undated article in the Daily Mail.
17. "‘Red Hot’ Revival Services." South London Observor and Camberwall and Peckham Times 10 December 1904. Quoted by Stanley. 57.
Friday, November 2, 2018
Dances of Universal Peace - Jesus Won’t You Come ‘Round Here
Topic: Movement - Dance
John Wesley’s recommendations for a "more excellent way," discussed in the post for 30 October 2018, [1] took on new significance when the quest for contact with the Holy Spirit moved beyond Phoebe Palmer’s sense of well being to speaking in tongues. [2]
He had begun by telling his readers the reason "the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost" mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 were no longer reported was the church had become conventionalized by Constantine. The only way to bring their return was to follow the better method of living alluded to in 1 Corinthians 12:31. [3]
While Holiness and Pentecostal groups differed in what was acceptable evidence for a spiritual gift, they both created lists that defined acceptable behavior. Everything condemned by Wesley became taboo. By the time Earl Paulk was growing up in the Spurling-Tomlinson Church of God, the list had been expanded to exclude participation in high school sports. [4]
Celibacy was not proposed by Wesley, but his rules made courtship difficult. Play parties emerged as an alternative form of the old round dances mentioned in the post for 4 October 2018. Their primary characteristics were the music was sung by the dancers, and the steps did not include the physical contact of the waist swing. [5]
Benjamin Botkin believed they arose in isolated areas where musicians were scarce, and that the concerns of Protestant evangelists were secondary. [6] He noted, some ministers accepted them, and others did not, [7] but they universally withered when the population of an area increased. [8] He also noted that, like the slaves mentioned in the post for 4 October 2018, the clergy accepted dances if they were taught in gym classes as exercises. [9]
Religious leaders like Lynn Rohrbough began suggesting play parties for youth group meetings in the 1930s, [10] but they failed to capture the interest of most. They were been kept alive by folk-dance revivalists.
Dean Ottinger adapted Lightnin’ Hopkins’ "Needed Time" for a dance that was intended to introduce Sufi philosophy, but used the movements of a singing game. The participants at a workshop sponsored by the Community United Church of Christ in Boulder, Colorado, in 2006 didn’t mix when they formed a circle. Men stood on one side, and women on the other, with couples interspersed.
The steps were simple. They held hands and took a wide step to the left with a pause, followed by another step to the left. After repeating that to the right, they took several steps into the center with their hands crossed over their chests. They stepped back and took up hands in a circle to repeat the combination.
The singing was equally simple. They repeated two verses of Hopkins’ song following directions called out by Ottinger. He stood in the center beating a drum head. Dick Levison also stood in the center where he strummed a guitar to set the pace. The pace never changed.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: dancers
Vocal Director: Dean Ottinger
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: Dick Levison, guitar; Dean Ottinger, drum head
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, come by here
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Jesus
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: repetitions of two verses called out by Ottinger
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note; a couple iterations were hummed.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: a steel-stringed guitar was strummed to create the basic rhythm
Notes on Performance
Occasion: workshop
Location: Community United Church of Christ, Boulder, Colorado
Microphones: none
Clothing: casual
Notes on Performers
Dances of Universal Peace was organized as a Sufi dance order in San Francisco by Samuel L. Lewis, a protégée of Ruth St. Denis. [11] His followers created a formal organization in 1982 that certified leaders and dance circles. [12]
The Community United Church of Christ maintained a sanctioned dance circle. [13] It was affiliated with the descendent denomination of the Puritan’s Congregational Church, but indicated it had become "a progressive, Christian fellowship of spiritual seekers who believe there are many paths to God." [14] Its pastor was ordained as "a liberal Southern Baptist pastor in 1979," but left the ministry to work with the National Education Association. Lee Berg returned to the ministry for the UCC in 2012. [15]
Ottinger became interested in Sufism when he was a student at the University of Kansas around 1976. He then embarked on more serious study, taking the name Allaudin Ottinger and obtaining the rank of a murshid, or spiritual teacher. He settled in his native Kansas City. [16]
Levison, the guitar player, took the name Habib.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by madzub on 23 January 2006.
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "Sermon XL." The Arminian Magazine 10:341-346:July 1787 and 10:398-406:August 1787. See the post for 30 October 2018 for details on its availability.
2. For more on Palmer and the men who introduced speaking in tongues, see the post for 7 December 2017.
3. Wesley, July. 341.
4. Paulk was discussed in the post for 14 October 2018. "According to his biography, Earl Jr. went out for football a number of times. He would make the team, only to quit when his father discovered what he had done. Finally, he was allowed to participate in the ‘low profile’ sport of track and field. His father, however, became very displeased when Earl Jr. received considerable public notoriety for his abilities. Earl Senior’s concern was that the publicity would reflect poorly upon the denomination." (Scott Thumma. "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Megachurches in Modern American Society." PhD dissertation. Emory University, 1996. Chapter 2, 15.)
5. B. A. Botkin. The American Play-Party Song. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1963 edition. 23.
6. Botkin. 19 and 26.
7. Botkin. 21.
8. Botkin. 19-20.
9. Botkin. 22.
10. Camp Songs. 58, 483-484, 522-523.
11. St. Denis was discussed in the post for 14 October 2018.
12. "Sufi Ruhaniat International." Dances of Universal Peace website. Neil Douglas-Klotz and Tasnim Fernandez organized the international network in 1982. (Wikipedia. "Dances of Universal Peace.")
13. "All Ongoing Dance Circles."
14. "About Community United Church of Christ." Its website
15. "Interim Pastor." Church website
16. "Murshid Allaudin Ottinger." Ruhaniat website.
John Wesley’s recommendations for a "more excellent way," discussed in the post for 30 October 2018, [1] took on new significance when the quest for contact with the Holy Spirit moved beyond Phoebe Palmer’s sense of well being to speaking in tongues. [2]
He had begun by telling his readers the reason "the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost" mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 were no longer reported was the church had become conventionalized by Constantine. The only way to bring their return was to follow the better method of living alluded to in 1 Corinthians 12:31. [3]
While Holiness and Pentecostal groups differed in what was acceptable evidence for a spiritual gift, they both created lists that defined acceptable behavior. Everything condemned by Wesley became taboo. By the time Earl Paulk was growing up in the Spurling-Tomlinson Church of God, the list had been expanded to exclude participation in high school sports. [4]
Celibacy was not proposed by Wesley, but his rules made courtship difficult. Play parties emerged as an alternative form of the old round dances mentioned in the post for 4 October 2018. Their primary characteristics were the music was sung by the dancers, and the steps did not include the physical contact of the waist swing. [5]
Benjamin Botkin believed they arose in isolated areas where musicians were scarce, and that the concerns of Protestant evangelists were secondary. [6] He noted, some ministers accepted them, and others did not, [7] but they universally withered when the population of an area increased. [8] He also noted that, like the slaves mentioned in the post for 4 October 2018, the clergy accepted dances if they were taught in gym classes as exercises. [9]
Religious leaders like Lynn Rohrbough began suggesting play parties for youth group meetings in the 1930s, [10] but they failed to capture the interest of most. They were been kept alive by folk-dance revivalists.
Dean Ottinger adapted Lightnin’ Hopkins’ "Needed Time" for a dance that was intended to introduce Sufi philosophy, but used the movements of a singing game. The participants at a workshop sponsored by the Community United Church of Christ in Boulder, Colorado, in 2006 didn’t mix when they formed a circle. Men stood on one side, and women on the other, with couples interspersed.
The steps were simple. They held hands and took a wide step to the left with a pause, followed by another step to the left. After repeating that to the right, they took several steps into the center with their hands crossed over their chests. They stepped back and took up hands in a circle to repeat the combination.
The singing was equally simple. They repeated two verses of Hopkins’ song following directions called out by Ottinger. He stood in the center beating a drum head. Dick Levison also stood in the center where he strummed a guitar to set the pace. The pace never changed.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: dancers
Vocal Director: Dean Ottinger
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: Dick Levison, guitar; Dean Ottinger, drum head
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, come by here
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Jesus
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: repetitions of two verses called out by Ottinger
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note; a couple iterations were hummed.
Vocal-Rhythm Dynamics: a steel-stringed guitar was strummed to create the basic rhythm
Notes on Performance
Occasion: workshop
Location: Community United Church of Christ, Boulder, Colorado
Microphones: none
Clothing: casual
Notes on Performers
Dances of Universal Peace was organized as a Sufi dance order in San Francisco by Samuel L. Lewis, a protégée of Ruth St. Denis. [11] His followers created a formal organization in 1982 that certified leaders and dance circles. [12]
The Community United Church of Christ maintained a sanctioned dance circle. [13] It was affiliated with the descendent denomination of the Puritan’s Congregational Church, but indicated it had become "a progressive, Christian fellowship of spiritual seekers who believe there are many paths to God." [14] Its pastor was ordained as "a liberal Southern Baptist pastor in 1979," but left the ministry to work with the National Education Association. Lee Berg returned to the ministry for the UCC in 2012. [15]
Ottinger became interested in Sufism when he was a student at the University of Kansas around 1976. He then embarked on more serious study, taking the name Allaudin Ottinger and obtaining the rank of a murshid, or spiritual teacher. He settled in his native Kansas City. [16]
Levison, the guitar player, took the name Habib.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by madzub on 23 January 2006.
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "Sermon XL." The Arminian Magazine 10:341-346:July 1787 and 10:398-406:August 1787. See the post for 30 October 2018 for details on its availability.
2. For more on Palmer and the men who introduced speaking in tongues, see the post for 7 December 2017.
3. Wesley, July. 341.
4. Paulk was discussed in the post for 14 October 2018. "According to his biography, Earl Jr. went out for football a number of times. He would make the team, only to quit when his father discovered what he had done. Finally, he was allowed to participate in the ‘low profile’ sport of track and field. His father, however, became very displeased when Earl Jr. received considerable public notoriety for his abilities. Earl Senior’s concern was that the publicity would reflect poorly upon the denomination." (Scott Thumma. "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Megachurches in Modern American Society." PhD dissertation. Emory University, 1996. Chapter 2, 15.)
5. B. A. Botkin. The American Play-Party Song. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1963 edition. 23.
6. Botkin. 19 and 26.
7. Botkin. 21.
8. Botkin. 19-20.
9. Botkin. 22.
10. Camp Songs. 58, 483-484, 522-523.
11. St. Denis was discussed in the post for 14 October 2018.
12. "Sufi Ruhaniat International." Dances of Universal Peace website. Neil Douglas-Klotz and Tasnim Fernandez organized the international network in 1982. (Wikipedia. "Dances of Universal Peace.")
13. "All Ongoing Dance Circles."
14. "About Community United Church of Christ." Its website
15. "Interim Pastor." Church website
16. "Murshid Allaudin Ottinger." Ruhaniat website.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Whiskey Headed Buddies - Needed Time
Topic: Movement - Dance
Methodists’ aversion to social dancing goes back to an article John Wesley wrote for lay readers of his Arminian Magazine in July and August of 1787 about "a more excellent way" of living. [1]
At the time he was eighty-four-years old and concerned with the structure of the church. He had begun as a reformist within the Anglican church, and still considered that to be his role. However, the successful revolution fought by the North American colonies meant the English church had ceased to exist there, and local leaders in the United States had begun ordaining themselves. At the annual meeting held in Manchester in August of that year the primary issue was the desire by English pastors for the same sort of independence. [2]
Despite his conservative loyalty to the church, Wesley remained an innovator. As mentioned in the post for 27 September 2018, he had introduced small weekly classes led by exhorters when the Methodist society in Bristol, England, became too large to be taught by one individual. In 1787, the movement had grown to 4,000 in England and 6,859 in America. [3] He resorted to the newly emerging mass media in 1778 when he began his own magazine for his followers. [4]
In many ways his sermon on "a more excellent way" was a reformulation of his 1729 attempt to create a method of appropriate behavior for the Holy Club at Oxford. [5] He began by suggesting "two orders of Christians" existed within the Anglican church. "One lived an innocent life, conforming in all things, not sinful, to the customs and fashions of the world." The other were more zealous in their intent "to attain the whole mind that was in Christ." [6]
Then, as in 1729, he itemized the ways they differed from how many hours they slept to how they conducted their business and ate their meals. However, the instructions he drew up for his first society in 1744 did not mention dancing. [7]
His reason for including the section on proper diversions in 1787 probably was stimulated by the behavior of the royal family. George III’s brother Henry had taken up residence in a seaside resort that had become popular for its baths. George’s oldest son visited Henry in 1782, and rented his own home in 1783. Both had contracted scandalous marriages, and were considered "dissipated." [8]
Wesley’s list of diversions matched the activities in Brighton: hunting, shooting, fishing, races, masquerades, plays, assemblies, balls, cards, dancing, and music. [9] Samuel Johnson had said in the 1770s: "you hunt in the morning and crowd to the rooms at night and call it diversion when your heart knows it is perishing from poverty of pleasures and your wits get blunted for want of some other mind to sharpen them on." [10]
Wesley’s conceded "balls or assemblies" were "more reputable than masquerades but must be allowed by all impartial persons to have exactly the same tendency. So undoubtedly have all public dancings. And the same tendency they must have, unless the same caution obtained among modern Christians which was observed among the ancient Heathens. With them men and women never danced together, but always in separate rooms. This was always observed in ancient Greece, and for several ages at Rome, where a woman dancing in company with men would have at once been set down for a prostitute." [11]
His instructions were taken up in this country after Phoebe Palmer introduced the concept of living a more holy life. She had never had a genuine conversion experience, and believed this would, as Wesley promised, bring her closer to the mind of Christ. [12] By then waltzes had been introduced [13] and dancing between men and women become more intimate because the man put his arm around his partner’s waist and she touched his shoulder.
Couples dancing like that done in Bristol in 2016 became taboo. At that Christmas party, a man and woman were seen standing several inches apart taking steps that traveled in varying directions. His right arm was around her waist, and hers was lain along that arm. Another man, wearing a Santa hat, had one hand extended to his partner in a pose popularized by jitterbug.
Wesley and Palmer would have been more scandalized if they knew the music was a religious song recorded by a blues musician. It was not clear if the Whiskey Headed Buddies even knew the origins of "Needed Time": they learned it from Eric Bibb. [14] They replaced the reference to "Jesus," with "please, if you don’t stay long."
For the middle-aged gathering, it was simply a pleasant tune. For Wesley and Palmer it would have been an example of an unthinking way of life that followed the conventions of the time. It would not have mattered if the woman was the man’s wife or a friend.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Keith Hodges
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: Keith Hodges, acoustic guitar; Dave Hares, electric guitar; John Jones, bass guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: Sean Hanneberry
Credits
"one of our favourite songs by Eric Bibb" [15]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, bended knee, stay long
Vocabulary
Pronoun: you
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: "please" for "Jesus"
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCAC
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: sung verses alternated with instrumental sections at the beginning, after the third verse, and at the end
Singing Style: one syllable to one note with no ornamentations
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the band played chords during the vocal parts, and melody during the interludes with no displays of virtuosity to disturb the dancers.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Christmas party, 11 December 2015
Location: stage, Whitchurch Community Centre, Bristol, England. The stage backdrop was a mural of rural life with Holstein cows in a fenced field.
Microphones: the vocalist had a floor mike; the electric instruments had amplifiers
Clothing: casual dark shirts and slacks; the drummer wore a tee-shirt featuring someone’s head. The male dancers wore white shirts and ties; the woman wore a sweater.
Notes on Movement
The band remained stationary. The electric bass player sometimes shifted his weight from foot to foot. The electric guitar player moved a little to the music.
Audience Perceptions
The party-goers applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Whiskey Headed Buddies was formed in 2009. [16] They performed together, and in combinations with others. [17]
The lead singer, Keith Hodges, was "a regular solo performer around the folk clubs of Bristol and Dorset" and played bass guitar with a Ceilidh band. [18] He inherited his father’s nursery business, where his own son, Phil, took over in 1997. [19]
David Hares had his own recording studio, [20] and worked with Christ Scott in 1990 as an acoustic blues duet. [21] In addition to electric guitar, he played mandolin and keyboard. He retired from the same volunteer fireman’s company where his father had worked, in 2011. Hares earned his steady income as an undertaker. [22]
John Jones played flute and bohdran for "theatrical productions," as well as electric bass for the Buddies. [23] Drummer Sean Henneberry was associated with the University of the West of England, Bristol, [24] and produced solo recordings in his home studio. [25]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by David Hares on 3 January 2016
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "Sermon XL." The Arminian Magazine 10:341-346:July 1787 and 10:398-406:August 1787. Thomas Jackson called it "The More Excellent Way" and labeled it sermon 89 in The Sermons of John Wesley. Nampa, Idaho: Northwest Nazarene University, 1872. Copies are available from many sources on-line.
2. L. Tyerman. The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. New York: Harper and Brothers, volume 3, 1872. 496-498.
3. Tyerman. 498.
4. Samuel J. Rogal. "John Wesley’s Arminian Magaine." Andrews University Seminary Studies 22:231-247:1984. 232.
5. Wikipedia. "Charles Wesley."
6. Wesley, July. 343.
7. William Henry Meredith. The Real John Wesley. Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1903. 236-237.
8. Ronald Sutherland Gower described Henry, Duke of Cumberland this way in a journal published by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill. ("Anne Lutterell, Duchess of Cumberland." The Anglo-Saxon Review 10:63-66:1901. 64.)
9. Wesley, August. 401-402.
10. Samuel Johnson. Quoted by Adam Trimingham. "Eighteenth Century Celebs Making Brighton Their Home." The [Brighton, England] Argus. 24 October 2014. Pat Rogers mentioned he was in Brighton in 1773 and 1776. ("Johnson, Samuel." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on-line. 23 September 2004; last updated 21 May 2009.
11. Wesley, August. 402-403.
12. Phoebe Palmer was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
13. The waltz was introduced in European classical music around 1800, according to Willi Apel. "Waltz." 922 in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Willi Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition.
14. Bibb’s version of "Needed Time" was discussed in the post for 18 February 2018.
15. YouTube notes.
16. "About Whiskey Headed Buddies." Facebook.
17. "Whiskey Headed Buddies. Weebly website.
18. Weebly.
19. "Almondsbury Garden Centre." Corby Fellas website.
20. Weebly.
21. Facebook, Buddies.
22. "Farewell for Vacuuming Fireman." The Weston [Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England] Mercury. 25 July 2011.
23. Weebly.
24. "About Sean Henneberry." Facebook.
25. Weebly.
Methodists’ aversion to social dancing goes back to an article John Wesley wrote for lay readers of his Arminian Magazine in July and August of 1787 about "a more excellent way" of living. [1]
At the time he was eighty-four-years old and concerned with the structure of the church. He had begun as a reformist within the Anglican church, and still considered that to be his role. However, the successful revolution fought by the North American colonies meant the English church had ceased to exist there, and local leaders in the United States had begun ordaining themselves. At the annual meeting held in Manchester in August of that year the primary issue was the desire by English pastors for the same sort of independence. [2]
Despite his conservative loyalty to the church, Wesley remained an innovator. As mentioned in the post for 27 September 2018, he had introduced small weekly classes led by exhorters when the Methodist society in Bristol, England, became too large to be taught by one individual. In 1787, the movement had grown to 4,000 in England and 6,859 in America. [3] He resorted to the newly emerging mass media in 1778 when he began his own magazine for his followers. [4]
In many ways his sermon on "a more excellent way" was a reformulation of his 1729 attempt to create a method of appropriate behavior for the Holy Club at Oxford. [5] He began by suggesting "two orders of Christians" existed within the Anglican church. "One lived an innocent life, conforming in all things, not sinful, to the customs and fashions of the world." The other were more zealous in their intent "to attain the whole mind that was in Christ." [6]
Then, as in 1729, he itemized the ways they differed from how many hours they slept to how they conducted their business and ate their meals. However, the instructions he drew up for his first society in 1744 did not mention dancing. [7]
His reason for including the section on proper diversions in 1787 probably was stimulated by the behavior of the royal family. George III’s brother Henry had taken up residence in a seaside resort that had become popular for its baths. George’s oldest son visited Henry in 1782, and rented his own home in 1783. Both had contracted scandalous marriages, and were considered "dissipated." [8]
Wesley’s list of diversions matched the activities in Brighton: hunting, shooting, fishing, races, masquerades, plays, assemblies, balls, cards, dancing, and music. [9] Samuel Johnson had said in the 1770s: "you hunt in the morning and crowd to the rooms at night and call it diversion when your heart knows it is perishing from poverty of pleasures and your wits get blunted for want of some other mind to sharpen them on." [10]
Wesley’s conceded "balls or assemblies" were "more reputable than masquerades but must be allowed by all impartial persons to have exactly the same tendency. So undoubtedly have all public dancings. And the same tendency they must have, unless the same caution obtained among modern Christians which was observed among the ancient Heathens. With them men and women never danced together, but always in separate rooms. This was always observed in ancient Greece, and for several ages at Rome, where a woman dancing in company with men would have at once been set down for a prostitute." [11]
His instructions were taken up in this country after Phoebe Palmer introduced the concept of living a more holy life. She had never had a genuine conversion experience, and believed this would, as Wesley promised, bring her closer to the mind of Christ. [12] By then waltzes had been introduced [13] and dancing between men and women become more intimate because the man put his arm around his partner’s waist and she touched his shoulder.
Couples dancing like that done in Bristol in 2016 became taboo. At that Christmas party, a man and woman were seen standing several inches apart taking steps that traveled in varying directions. His right arm was around her waist, and hers was lain along that arm. Another man, wearing a Santa hat, had one hand extended to his partner in a pose popularized by jitterbug.
Wesley and Palmer would have been more scandalized if they knew the music was a religious song recorded by a blues musician. It was not clear if the Whiskey Headed Buddies even knew the origins of "Needed Time": they learned it from Eric Bibb. [14] They replaced the reference to "Jesus," with "please, if you don’t stay long."
For the middle-aged gathering, it was simply a pleasant tune. For Wesley and Palmer it would have been an example of an unthinking way of life that followed the conventions of the time. It would not have mattered if the woman was the man’s wife or a friend.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Keith Hodges
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: Keith Hodges, acoustic guitar; Dave Hares, electric guitar; John Jones, bass guitar
Rhythm Accompaniment: Sean Hanneberry
Credits
"one of our favourite songs by Eric Bibb" [15]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, bended knee, stay long
Vocabulary
Pronoun: you
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: "please" for "Jesus"
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: ABCAC
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: sung verses alternated with instrumental sections at the beginning, after the third verse, and at the end
Singing Style: one syllable to one note with no ornamentations
Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the band played chords during the vocal parts, and melody during the interludes with no displays of virtuosity to disturb the dancers.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Christmas party, 11 December 2015
Location: stage, Whitchurch Community Centre, Bristol, England. The stage backdrop was a mural of rural life with Holstein cows in a fenced field.
Microphones: the vocalist had a floor mike; the electric instruments had amplifiers
Clothing: casual dark shirts and slacks; the drummer wore a tee-shirt featuring someone’s head. The male dancers wore white shirts and ties; the woman wore a sweater.
Notes on Movement
The band remained stationary. The electric bass player sometimes shifted his weight from foot to foot. The electric guitar player moved a little to the music.
Audience Perceptions
The party-goers applauded at the end.
Notes on Performers
Whiskey Headed Buddies was formed in 2009. [16] They performed together, and in combinations with others. [17]
The lead singer, Keith Hodges, was "a regular solo performer around the folk clubs of Bristol and Dorset" and played bass guitar with a Ceilidh band. [18] He inherited his father’s nursery business, where his own son, Phil, took over in 1997. [19]
David Hares had his own recording studio, [20] and worked with Christ Scott in 1990 as an acoustic blues duet. [21] In addition to electric guitar, he played mandolin and keyboard. He retired from the same volunteer fireman’s company where his father had worked, in 2011. Hares earned his steady income as an undertaker. [22]
John Jones played flute and bohdran for "theatrical productions," as well as electric bass for the Buddies. [23] Drummer Sean Henneberry was associated with the University of the West of England, Bristol, [24] and produced solo recordings in his home studio. [25]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by David Hares on 3 January 2016
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "Sermon XL." The Arminian Magazine 10:341-346:July 1787 and 10:398-406:August 1787. Thomas Jackson called it "The More Excellent Way" and labeled it sermon 89 in The Sermons of John Wesley. Nampa, Idaho: Northwest Nazarene University, 1872. Copies are available from many sources on-line.
2. L. Tyerman. The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. New York: Harper and Brothers, volume 3, 1872. 496-498.
3. Tyerman. 498.
4. Samuel J. Rogal. "John Wesley’s Arminian Magaine." Andrews University Seminary Studies 22:231-247:1984. 232.
5. Wikipedia. "Charles Wesley."
6. Wesley, July. 343.
7. William Henry Meredith. The Real John Wesley. Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1903. 236-237.
8. Ronald Sutherland Gower described Henry, Duke of Cumberland this way in a journal published by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill. ("Anne Lutterell, Duchess of Cumberland." The Anglo-Saxon Review 10:63-66:1901. 64.)
9. Wesley, August. 401-402.
10. Samuel Johnson. Quoted by Adam Trimingham. "Eighteenth Century Celebs Making Brighton Their Home." The [Brighton, England] Argus. 24 October 2014. Pat Rogers mentioned he was in Brighton in 1773 and 1776. ("Johnson, Samuel." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on-line. 23 September 2004; last updated 21 May 2009.
11. Wesley, August. 402-403.
12. Phoebe Palmer was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
13. The waltz was introduced in European classical music around 1800, according to Willi Apel. "Waltz." 922 in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Willi Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition.
14. Bibb’s version of "Needed Time" was discussed in the post for 18 February 2018.
15. YouTube notes.
16. "About Whiskey Headed Buddies." Facebook.
17. "Whiskey Headed Buddies. Weebly website.
18. Weebly.
19. "Almondsbury Garden Centre." Corby Fellas website.
20. Weebly.
21. Facebook, Buddies.
22. "Farewell for Vacuuming Fireman." The Weston [Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England] Mercury. 25 July 2011.
23. Weebly.
24. "About Sean Henneberry." Facebook.
25. Weebly.
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