Bliss Wiant - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough said that, within a year of the first publication of “Kum Ba Yah” in Cooperative Recreation’s Service’s Song Sampler, it had appeared “in a dozen agency books.”  The one he specifically mentioned in a 1959 letter was Hymns of Universal Praise. [1]  It was compiled in February and March of 1956. [2]

Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young intended the hymnal to include “representative hymns of the church universal.” [3]  It included three from India, three from China, one from Japan, and one from Nigeria.  The last had been recorded at the Student Volunteer Movement meeting in December of 1955. [4]

Wiant surely would have attended the SVM meeting discussed in the post for 31 July 2022.  He had been a missionary in China from 1923 [5] until 1952 when  Mao Zedong dismantled the Yenching University [6] where he was working.  The university had been established as a joint enterprise by western Protestant churches. [7]

In the 1930s, he was music editor for Hymns of Universal Praise, [8] an ecumenical collection of songs that combined Chinese musical motifs with Christian theology. [9]  Andrew Leung said the anthology “established the foundation of Chinese hymnody and is now set as a model of Chinese hymnology.” [10]

The CRS Hymns of Universal Praise was unashamedly a hymnal: [11] three were by Charles Wesley, [12] three by Isaac Watt [13] and one was by Martin Luther. [14]  In addition, one melody was by Wesley’s son Samuel. [15]  It was organized by topic, so the spirituals and international texts were scattered through the songster.  Thirty-one of the sixty-seven selections attached “amen” endings. [16]

Fifty-two selections relied upon four-part chords that mirrored the melody, with no tempo or dynamics markings.  Wiant converted “Kumbaya” to this form.  The tune is doubled a third below on the treble clef, and two notes appear in the bass clef.  There are two exceptions to the parallelism.  Only one note is heard in the upper part of the opening phrase, which emphasizes the expansion to the triad on the second note.  The two notes used on the final “Lord” are sung only by the upper part.  The other parts sustained the first note, to again emphasize the melodic variation.

Wiant made one other change to “Kumbaya”: he dropped the “someone’s crying” verse, and reduced it to a three-verse song.  The post for 24 February 2019 reports that liturgists, who include the song in their services, often do not specify all the verses.  The “crying” verse was the least popular stanza among Methodists.

In 1963, Wiant moved to Hong Kong where he worked on the revision of Hymns of Universal Praise for the exiled Chinese living there, [17] and created an English translation for use in this country. [18]  Two years later he retired to Delaware, Ohio. [19]  CRS published a revised edition of its Hymns of Universal Praise in 1965. [20]  This one contained forty-five of the original songs.  It dropped some by Wesley and Watt, as well as those from India and Nigeria.  “Kum Ba Yah” had appeared on the same page as one of the omitted Wesley verses, and also disappeared.  The Chinese songs were grouped together.

Title
Kum Ba Yah

Performers
Vocal Group: four parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano

Credits
Harm. by Bliss Wiant
© 1956 Coop. Recreation Service, Inc., Delaware, O. [21]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comment
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 3-verse song

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for final “Lord”

Harmonic Structure: parallel thirds in trebel clef, parallel fifths in base, diverging harmony at beginnings of phrases

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: four part chords

Notes on Performance
Cover: pattée cross superimposed on a globe with the phrase “All within the four seas are brothers”

Color Scheme: dark brown on tan cover; inside blue-gray ink on off-white paper
Plate: made by Jane Keen

Notes on Audience
Young recalled the songbook “was prepared for general use in events of the North East Conference of the Methodist Church, and may have been used at its Annual Conference, June 1956.” [22]

Notes on Performers
Wiant was raised in central Ohio, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1920.  After completing work at Boston University’s seminary, he went to China as a missionary. [23]  He spent World War II in the United States, where he taught at Scarritt College. [24]  During this time, Wiant produced the first edition of The Pagoda for CRS.  The twenty-five Chinese songs were translated and arranged with four-part chords by Wiant. [25]

When he left China in 1952, Wiant returned to Delaware, Ohio, where he was pastor of the Methodist church near Ohio Wesleyan.  Two years later he transferred to Youngstown. [26]  As mentioned in the post for 9 February 2020, he moved to Nashville in 1957 as the director of the denomination’s new Ministry of Music.  He died in Delaware in 1975. [27]

Young’s life and career are discussed in the posts for 14 February 2019, 9 August 2020, and 27 December 2020.  One of his most significant tasks was overseeing the 1988 edition of the church’s hymnal.  While Wiant’s later CRS Hymns of Universal Praise retreated from a strong bias toward traditional and international hymns, Young returned to its inclusive vision.  Sam Hodges notes he replaced some of the less popular hymns with “spirituals, contemporary gospel, sacred jazz (by Duke Ellington), and Hispanic hymns.” [28]  Young elevated “Kumbaya” to the canon with his arrangement of the melody he called “Desmond.” [29]

Availability
Book: “Kum Ba Yah.”  31 in Hymns of Universal Praise.  Edited for North East Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church by Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.

End Notes
1.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 8 June 1959.  “Our first use of Kum Ba Ya was in the Jan. 1956 Sampler; during the year it came out in a dozen agency books.  One of the earliest was Hymns of Universal Praise, where it seems to fit.”

2.  Carlton Young.  Email, 7 December 2016.
3.  Bliss Wiant and Carleton Young.  Note on inside cover.

4.  “Glory to the Trinity.”  6 in Hymns.  From a recording of Emanuel Fashade and transcribed by Bliss Wiant.

5.  Stacey Bieler.  “Bliss Mitchell Wiant.”  Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity website.

6.  “Yenching University.”  Wikipedia website.
7.  Bieler.

8.  Liu Tingfang and Bliss Wiant.  Hymns of Universal Praise (P’u Ti’en Sung Tsan).  Shanghai, China: Christian Literate Society, 1936.

9.  Calida Chu.  “The Evolution of Hymns of Universal Praise: A Reflection on the Contextualisation of Chinese Hymnology in the Last Century.”  University of Glasgow, Conference on Understanding and Misunderstanding between the Far East and the West, 2017.

10.  Andrew Napp-Kei Leung.  The Emergence of a National Hymnody: The Making of Hymns of Universal Praise (1936).  Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 2015.  127.  Quoted by Chu.  10.

11.  Wiant disdained Victorian gospel hymns, which, he claimed, were sentimental and good for nothing.  Its message is that everything is blessed and peaceful.  That’s not the message of Christ.  The message of Christ is ‘Are you able to endure all things as I endure them - even crucifixion?’”  Time reported his preference was for “such Reformation hymns as A Mighty Fortress is Our God and O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” [30]

12.  “A Charge To Keep I Have” (p31), “O for a Thousand Tongues To Sing” (p22), and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (p40).

13.  “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” (p44) “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” (p64) and “Jesus Shall Reign where’er the Sun” (p59).

14  “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (pp12–13).
15.  “The Church’s One Foundation” (p41).

16.  The post for 27 November 2017 traces the history of the use and disuse of “amen” endings.  Modernists typically discourage them.

17.  Chu.

18.  Bliss Wiant.  Selected Chinese Indigenous Hymns from Hymns of Universal Praise.  4 July 1965.  United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Third Series.  July-December 1965.  2291.

19.  Bieler.

20.  Bliss Wiant.  Hymns of Universal Praise.  Delaware, Ohio: Informal Music Service, World Around Songs.  The copyrighted songs are dated 1965.  It has a light blue cover.

21.  This is the only known copyright by CRS for “Kum Ba Yah.”  If this copyright language had appeared in every other songbook, CRS would have a valid right to the song.  However, as shown in the version in Guiana Sings for 7 August 2022, Rohrbough did not do that.  Under the copyright law then in governing music publications, the song entered the public domain as soon as it was published without that notice, and this copyright was reduced to this specific arrangement.  I suspect this copyright probably was not renewed and the arrangement also lost copyright protection.

22.  Young, email.
23.  Bieler.
24.  Scarritt College is mentioned in the post for 16 May 2021.

25.  I have a copy of fifth edition from 1967, which probably means fifth printing.  The Pagoda, arranged by Bliss Wiant.  Cooperative Recreation Service Inc, © 1946, 1967.

26.  Bieler.
27.  Bieler.

28.  Sam Hodges.  “Mr. Music of United Methodism.”  The United Methodist Church Michigan Conference website, 22 September 2020.

29.  For more on the revised Methodist hymnal, see the post for 14 February 2019.
30.  Bliss Wiant.  Interview.  Time, 31 August 1959.  Quoted by Bieler.

Guiana Sings - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough planned to send his Song Sampler “to music people of 200 organizations in every state and to correspondents in 60 overseas countries. [1]  The first consequence may have been a letter from Claire Lovejoy Lennon that disputed “Kumbaya” was from Angola.  As mentioned in the post for 18 October 2020, she was the first to tell him it was an African-American song.  She learned it before World War I in Georgia. [2]

The first surviving consequence of the 1955 Student Volunteer Movement convention, which was mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022, is a 1959 songbook associated with Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  I have no idea if Rohrbough remembered him from the convention before they began work on Guiana Sings.  I rather suspect that Talbot reminded him, and that is the reason Rohrbough told Shawnee Press that Talbot was the meeting’s song leader. [3]

The songbook was a more ambitious project for Rohrbough, perhaps stimulated by the activities of Vesta Lowe and others in British Guiana.  Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) also issued a recording with an extract of Guianese songs. [4]  Some of the pages in the songbook, like the one above, have line drawings.

British Guiana, now Guyana, is located on the northern coast of South America.  It began as a Dutch colony that attracted English and Scots planters. [5]  Control of the area changed several times during the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but finally was taken by the British in 1814. [6]

Sugar plantations dominated the lowlands from the beginning.  Since they were entering the business after methods had been perfected on Barbados and other Caribbean islands, owners were able to import the most modern equipment and be more competitive. [7]

Slave labor was used until Britain outlawed the practice in 1834.  During the next five years, before emancipation was complete, owners overworked their crews, since they no longer had an incentive to treat them well.  With abolition, African workers left and plantations returned to using indentured servants. [8]  After experiments with men from different areas, owners important help from India. [9]  Many stayed after their five-year terms and moved closer to the coast where they grew rice.  Today, descendants of African slaves make up 40% of the population of Guyana, and offspring of Indian servants represent 50%. [10]

The next major change occurred when sugar beets contributed 65% of the world’s sugar supply in 1900, up from 40% in 1875. [11]  Planters in British Guiana responded to lower prices by cutting wages and introducing more machinery.  The economic dislocations led to riots in 1905, [12] which, Vibert Cambridge said, accelerated the migration from the countryside into Georgetown.  This, in turn, led to changes in musical styles. [13]

The genesis of the song project probably was India’s independence from the British Empire in 1947.  Cambridge recalled the British governor began preparing the colony for its own liberation.  The local African and Indian elites believed it only would succeed if it were “constructed upon a foundation of cultural confidence. [14]

A new constitution in 1953 led to Cheddi Jagan’s election.  Britain considered him to be pro-communist and declared martial law. [15]

It was during this period when Guiana was occupied by British troops that the program director of the colony’s radio station, Rafik Khan, recorded some of the songs that appear on the record with introductions to some.  Although the liner notes give no information, the tapes may have been meant for a program on Radio Demerara. [16]

The songs were re-recorded in 1959 under Talbot’s direction, but Khan’s comments were retained.  Abbreviated versions appear with some of the songs in the CRS book.

Guiana Sings preserves the traditions derived from Africa.  The first group are work songs, primarily related to crewing boats or boat races.  These began developing in the late nineteenth century when Afro-Guyanese men worked in gold fields upriver from Georgetown and on timber grants in the interior. [17]

Many texts in the second half of Guiana Sings are gwe-gwe, also spelled “kwe-kwe,” [18] “Kweh-Kweh” [19] and “queh-queh.” [20]  Gwe-Gwe is a wedding ritual that developed from African roots in the colony.  “There is no known equivalent in African society and it is a practice that evolved in Guyana.” [21]

After the Guianese songs, Guiana Sings has religious songs, American Negro spirituals, and international songs.  The first ones are from Indonesia [22] and India. [23]  The rest come from a number of countries, not just the German-Czech tradition that dominated earlier CRS books.  “Kum Ba Yah” appears in the section of spirituals, and shares a page with “Jacob’s Ladder.”  The other two from the Song Sampler are the German “Echo Yodel” and the Palestinian “Shalom Chaverim.”

Title
Kum Ba Yah, with no mention of “come by here.”

Credits
The headnote has been changed to “Spiritual.”

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: the pronunciation note has been removed as John Blocher, Jr., requested. [24]

Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022

Pronoun: Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats

Guitar Chords:  C F G7; the second line chords are different from the tablature distributed at the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, shown in the post for 24 July 2022.

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Occasion: “this little book is dedicated to the 4-H Clubs of British Guiana”

Cover: parallel diagonal lines create diamond patterns, with some breaks to create large spaces; some of the larger spaces are filled with drawings; rows without large diamonds are filled with horizontal lines

Color Scheme: both cover and inside pages use green ink on light green paper; the Guianese songs are printed on heavier stock at the beginning and end of the songbook

Plate: made with music typewriter

Audience Perceptions
Cambridge remembered that

“about 15 years ago, one of my colleagues at Ohio University gave me the LP Guiana Sings that was used by his mother when she taught school in rural Ohio.  This is one of the most treasured items in my Guyana collection.  On that album we have recorded for posterity the voice of Rev. Fred Talbot.  The LP also features the voice of a young Rafiq Khan, then Programme Director of the British Guiana United Broadcasting Company, providing descriptions of the 13 folk songs on the LP.” [25]

Notes on Performers
The inside cover of Guiana Sings has a photograph of Vesta Lowe and a note she was a “collector of Guiana Folk Songs” and had been a “Rural Youth Instructor (4-H) in Agriculture Department, since 1956.”

Vesta Hyacinth Winifred Lowe [26]  was born in 1909  and lived in Manchester, [27] a rail stop on the Corentyne Coast Road from New Amsterdam to the Surinam border. [28]  She was one of the first graduates of the Teachers’ Training Center, [29] which was found in 1928. [30]  The young woman was working as a student-teacher in 1931 when she was sent to Tuskegee Institute by the Negro Progress Convention. [31]

Her parents were members of church choirs, and she was part of Tuskegee’s first choir. [32]  Previously, the school had sponsored male quartets that had recorded for Victor from 1914 to 1916 and again from 1926 to 1927. [33]  When she returned to Guiana, Lowe formed her first choir in 1939, which she named for Tuskegee’s choir director, William Dawson. [34]

She also began collecting songs, some of which her choirs sang.  In 1947, she presented a program “of Guyanese Folk Songs, in which the Qweh-Qweh Dancing [was] accompanied by African Tom-Toms.” [35]  Like Lydia Parish, she had found the best way to preserve traditions was to present them in publically acceptable venues. [36]

The Negro Progress Convention had sent her to Tuskegee to study Home Economics in hopes she could improve the lot of members.  However, the British colony was so poor, “she was never able to obtain a tenured position in the British Guiana civil service.” [37]  She worked on a number of projects, especially through 4-H, [38] until it was disbanded by the government in the early 1960s. [39]

Guiana Sings gives special thanks to two people besides Talbot on the inside cover.  Stanley Sutton was a county agent from Maryland.  He and his wife, the former Helen Shriley, spent the years from 1955 to 1957 in Guiana. [40]  He may be the one who hired Lowe, and also may have provided the money needed to pay CRS.

Charlotte Vandiver Churaman, then the Assistant Superintendent for Rural Youth Work, was from Burlington, West Virginia.  She met her husband, Oscar Churaman, when he was an agricultural student in the United States. [41]  His grandfather had been a cane cutter who migrated from Maharashtra, India. [42]  The couple lived in Guyana from 1949 to 1962.  She later was a professor in the Home Ecology Department of the University of Maryland. [43]  She may have done the detail work necessary to putting together the recording and songbooks.  Talbot did not, because his name is misspelled. [44]

Talbot is discussed in the post for 14 August 2022.

Availability
Book.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  23 in Guiana Sings.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service; individual songs copyrighted in 1959.

Graphics
“Where Me Go.”  Guiana Folk Song.  58 in Guiana Sings.  It includes a drawing of the sugar plant when it most resembles grass.

End Notes
1.  Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.  B.

2.  Claire Lovejoy Lennon’s photograph appears on the Photo K tab, and references to her can be found in the index at the right.

3.  The post for 31 July 2022 quotes Rohrbough’s reference to Talbot.

4.  Guiana Sings.  7.5" recording at 33 1/3 rpm issued by World Around Songs, Informal Music Service of Delaware, Ohio.  Choral group led by Fran Thomas, with guitar by Prentiss Choate.  Talbot is one of the 12 singers, and may be the uncredited soloist.  The liner notes only say he was a “one time soloist of the Vesta Lowe Choir.”  Cambridge hints he was the singer.

5.  “Demerara.”  Wikipedia website.
6.  “British Guiana.”  Wikipedia website.
7.  Library of Congress.  “Guiana: History of the Economy.”  Country Studies website.
8.  Library of Congress.

9.  “History of Guyana.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website; revised by Heather Campbell and Jack K. Menke on 12 November 2009.

According to Wikipedia:

“Most Indo-Guyanese are descended from indentured laborers who migrated from North India, especially the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt in the present day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.  A significant minority of Indo-Guyanese are also descended from indentured migrants who came from the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.  However, among the immigrants there were also labourers from other parts of South Asia, such as Afghanistan, Nepal and northwestern India.” [45]

10.  Library of Congress.

11.  Charles S. Griffin.  “The Sugar Industry and Legislation in Europe.”  The Quarterly Journal of Economics 17(1):1–43:November 1902.  5.

12.  Mellissa Ifill.  “The 1905 Protests in British Guiana.”  Stabroek News website, 13 August 2009.

13.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.  34.

14.  Cambridge, Guyana.  120.
15.  Britannica.
16.  Liner notes.
17.  Cambridge, Guyana.  35.
18.  Cambridge, Guyana.  12–13.

19.  Gillian Richards-Greaves.  Rediasporization: African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020.

20.  Al Creighton.  “Kwe Kwe traditons in Guyana.”  Guyanese Association of Barbados website, 9 August 2009.

21.  Creighton.

22.  “Sarimandé.”  Indonesian Folk Song sung by Noramaj Sumakano of Java; English by Katherine Ferris Rohrbough; copyrighted in 1956 by Cooperative Recreation Service.  25 in Guiana Sings.

23.  “Chol Chol (On! On!).”  Old Bengali Song; translated by Amrit Varuah; English verse by Augustus D. Zanzig.  27 in Guiana Sings.

24.  This is discussed in the post for 15 July 2022.

25.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  “Vesta Lowe (1907 -1992).”  Stabroek News, 14 September 2003.  Ohio University was the site of the Student Volunteer Movement meeting mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022.  By one of those coincidences that dot history, Cambridge earned his PhD there in 1989 and has remained on the faculty.

26.  “Tenth Annual Assembly of Negro Progress Convention 1931.”  Reprinted on Guy Gen Bio Society website, 28 July 2006.

27.  Cambridge, Lowe.

28.  “Contract for Construction and Working of Steam Tramway in British Guiana.”  The Railway News 62:472:29 September 1894.

29.  Cambridge, Lowe.
30.  “Cyril Potter College of Education.”  Wikipedia website.

31.  Negro Progress Convention.  The NPC was an improvement organization in the tradition of Marcus Garvey. [46]

32.  Cambridge, Lowe.

33  According to the University of California, Santa Barbara, two of the six spirituals in Guiana Sings were recorded by Tuskegee vocal groups. [47]  Tuskegee Institute Singers, a double male quartet, recorded “Steal Away” in 1914 [48] and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in 1915. [49]  The Tuskegee Sextet had recorded both spirituals in 1914. [50]  The male Tuskegee Institute Quartet recorded “Steal Away” in 1927. [51]

34.  Cambridge, Lowe.  The group was the Dawson Music Lovers’ Club.
35.  Cambridge, Lowe.

36.  Parrish is discussed in the post for 2 October 2018.  She wanted to do more than collect spirituals from Saint Simons Island in Georgia; she wanted to overcome the shame people felt about the past so they could value their heritage.  To this end, she organized singing societies that performed before appreciative white audiences.  Her hope was the praise would overcome the debasement that came from living in a racially stratified society. [52]  This is not meant to imply Parrish influenced Lowe.  Instead, it suggests that similar ideas emerge from similar conditions.

37.  Cambridge, Guyana.  110.
38.  Cambridge, Lowe.

39.  “A champion of community development…Waveney Dorsett is a ‘Special Person’.”  Kaieteur News Online website, 14 February 2016.

40.  “Stanley Sutton, Was County Agent.”  The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, 7 March 1984.  51.  Posted to internet by pekastal on 18 Mar 2019.  The United States had bases on the territory in World War II; [53] in 1955 it opened an office of the US Information Service. [54]

41.  “Charlotte Vandiver Churaman.”  Greenbelt News Review, Greenbelt, Maryland, 57(22):4:21 April 1994.

42.  “Oscar Churaman.”  Gini website, 15 December 2014.
“James Churaman.”  Gini website, 31 December 2014.  Oscar’s father.
“James Churaman, Singh (Sr).” Gini website, 10 January 2015.  Oscar’s grandfather.

43.  Greenbelt News Review.
44.  “Special Thanks To [. . .] Mr. Fred Talbutt.”

45.  “Demographics of Guyana.”  Wikipedia website.  Its sources are:

Helen Myers. Music of Hindu Trinidad.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.  30.

“Indian Diaspora.”  Indian Diaspora website.

46.  Nigel Westmaas.  “The Negro Progress Convention of Guyana (1922 – circa 1938).”  Stabroek News website, 22 August 2021.

47.  “Discography of American Historical Recordings.”  University of California, Santa Barbara Library website.

48.  Tuskegee Institute Singers.  “Steal Away.”  Victor B-15172.  31 August 1914.

49.  Tuskegee Institute Singers.  “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”  Victor B-16512.  20 September 1915.

50.  Tuskegee Sextet.  “Steal Away.”  Victor, not released.  23 June 1914.

Tuskegee Sextet.  “Swing Low.”  Victor, not released. documented, 23 June 1914.

51.  Tuskegee Institute Quartet.  “Steal Away.”  Victor BVE-15172.  29 January 1927.

52.  Lydia Parrish.  Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands.  New York: Creative Age Press, 1942.  Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992.  xxvi, 12, 17.

53.  Cambridge, Guyana.  95.
54.  Cambridge, Guyana.  136.

Student Volunteer Movement - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Student Volunteer Movement was the third organization that introduced “Kumbaya” before Lynn Rohrbough released his Song Sampler in January 1956.  It held a convention in Athens, Ohio, over the 1955–1956 holiday break.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot remembered “the song was sung alternatively by the gathering.” [1]

SVM was an offshoot of the activities of  William Taylor.  As the Missionary Bishop of Africa for the Methodist Episcopal Church North from 1884 to 1896, he organized the denomination’s first missions to Liberia, the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique. [2]  In 1886, the Chicago-based evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, organized a conference to support Taylor’s activities.  This led to the organization of SVM in 1888.  Their goal was to “evangelize the world in one generation.” [3]

Harlan Hatcher, president of the University of Michigan, noted “such quadrennial conferences have been held for more than fifty years, but this was the first one in which over half the students who attended were from countries throughout the world where the Younger Churches had been established during the past century.” [4]

Three thousand attended. [5]  Rosa Page Welch remembered “an African student led the conference in singing” the song. [6]

Rohrbough also attended.  He recalled:

“Rosa Page Welsh led the singing at the Athens SVM Convention; the Negro was F.Talbot; from B.Guiana; a Theo. student from Yale; we have tapes of all singing; and the Africans were from Kenya,Ghana.” [7]

Talbot did not specifically say he led the singing.  He was not from Africa, but from British Guinea, [8] then a colony of the United Kingdom on the northern coast of South America.  However, Welch, who was an African American from Port Gibson, Mississippi, [9] may have made an assumption based on context and skin color.

The identity of the singer is less important than how the individual learned “Kumbaya.”  It is possible the song leader had attended the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, or even been the one who introduced the song there.  It is less likely he learned it from Melvin Blake.

The most likely possibility is that Rohrbough, himself, was responsible.  His Song Sampler is dated January 1956.  No doubt he had proofs, and may even have had copies that were ready for mailing.  It also is likely he had some kind of vendor’s booth at the convention, where he may have distributed copies of the Sampler or the song to promote his business.  It is not likely he distributed the songbook itself to the entire crowd of 3,000.

Someone had given him $1,000 to distribute issues of the Sampler for one year. [10]  It included an article by Janet Tobitt on “You Can Lead in Singing,” and profiled her as a world traveler.  It claimed the selection of songs were ones “which have been popular at Paris Y Centennial, the Purdue Convocation, and Sing Sessions in Pennsylvania and Indiana.” [11]

The collection was a poor fit for a group with half its members committed to missionary work.  Eight of the twenty-one titles were religious in a broad sense, but few were actual hymns that could be used in formal sessions.

The other half of the attendees were international students from countries where Protestant church missionaries were active.  The U. S. State Department had begun promoting “educational exchanges with other nations” as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.  In 1940, the University of Michigan’s contacts were mainly in Latin America, with some exchanges with Turkey. [12]

After the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, the federal government began providing financial support for international students.  In 1957, Asher Lubotszky said a quarter of the foreign students at Indiana University had such support.  He indicated that the state-sponsored school had 500 students in 1957, up from less then 50 in the early 1940s. [13]

Protestant churches’ missionary efforts primarily had been directed toward countries with religions that were not based on the Bible.  The most populous such areas were in Asia, followed by Africa.  These were the nations targeted by the State Department.  At IU, Lubotzky said in the 1950s that “Europe and South America, which traditionally were important suppliers of international students, reduced in size” while the numbers from Asia increased more than those from the Middle East, and Africa. [14]

When people first look through songbooks, they look for ones that might be interesting.  Headnotes and titles are the first clues.  It is only later that individuals may look at each song carefully.

Only two of the songs in the Sampler were from Africa and two from the Middle East, while none came from Asia or Latin America.  One African song was a love song from white South Africa [15] and one from Turkey was a round in Turkish. [16]  That left the religious “Kum Ba Yah” and the round “Shalom Chaverim.” [17]

Title
“Come By Here” with “Kum Ba Yah” as the subtitle.  This is a continuation of the change introduced at the Buckeye Workshop in 1955 to make the song’s meaning more obvious and more familiar to individuals who were uncomfortable with nonsense or foreign words. [18]

Credits
Africa (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: note that pronounced “Koom-bah-yah”
Verses: Kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no flats or sharps

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: vocal line only
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Occasion: songbook created to publicize Cooperative Recreation Service
Cover: treble clef sign in circle at top left; otherwise just table of contents

Color Scheme: cover has brown ink on yellow paper; inside pages use brown ink on cream paper

Plate: made by Jane Keen

Notes on Performers
Rosa Page was born in 1900.  Her great-grandmother had been a slave who married a Creek. [19]  Her grandparents went to church meetings every night that rotated between the Baptist, Methodist, and Christian churches. [20]  Her father directed the local band in Gibson [21] until he joined the church. [22]

A neighbor, who was in a Methodist choir, was the first to teach her how to sing. [23]  Her training was erratic; it included a visit to a minstrel show where Bessie Smith was performing. [24]  A local minister’s daughter got her into a Christian Church college, [25] where she received more training.

After the war, Page moved to Chicago where she married E. C. Welch in 1927. [26]  There she had more training, and was offered a chance to sing at a Nebraska Student Conference of the church. [27]  This began a career as a song leader for large conventions.  She had 101 engagements in 1945. [28]  The first one for SVM may have been in 1952 in Lawrence, Kansas. [29]

In 1953 she went on a world tour [30] that took her to Asia, then the Belgium Congo [31] and Liberia. [32]  Eight years after the Athens meeting, she spent time as a missionary in Nigeria for the Church of the Brethren. [33]  Rather than letting her evangelize, local male missionaries expected to perform to raise money for them. [34]  Although her biography about this period is called “Kum Ba Yah,” it does not mention the song.                

Talbot is discussed in posts for 7 August 2022 and 14 August 2022.

Availability
Book.  “Come By Here/Kum Ba Yah.”  15 in Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.

End Notes
1.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  Letter, 18 October 2016.
2.  Taylor is discussed in the post for 7 March 2021.

3.  “Student Volunteer Movement.”  Wikipedia website.  Moody is discussed in the posts for 17 January 2021 and 24 January 2021.

4.  Harlan Hatcher.  The President’s Report for 1955-1956.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1957.  74.

5.  Hatcher.

6.  Rosa Page Welch.  Paraphrased by Shawnee Press.  Letter to Lynn Rohrbough, 14 May 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

7.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 4 June 1959.  Uncorrected typed carbon.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

8.  “Frederick H. Talbot, 57 M.Div.”  Yale Divinity School Alumni Awards website.
9.  Oma Lou Myers.  Rosa’s Song.  Saint Louis, Missouri: CBP Press, 1984.  11.
10.  Song Sampler.  B.
11.  Song Sampler.  A.

12.  “75 Years of the International Center at the University of Michigan.”  University of Michigan website.

13.  Asher Lubotzky.  “Diplomacy, Diversity, and Dollars: How the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement Shaped International Student Policy at Indiana University, 1950-1970.”  Indiana University website, 20 August 2018.

14.  Lubotzky.

15.  “Sarie Marais.  South African Folk song from Jan Perewiet; English by Katharine Ferris Rohrbough.  Van Gorcum and Comp. N.V. 1948.  Aan den Brink, Assen, Nederlands.  10 in Song Sampler.

16.  “Rally Song.”  Turkish round from Janet Tobitt.  Yours for a Song.  15 in Song Sampler.

17.  “Shalom Chaverim.”  Palestinian round; English by Augustus D. Zanzig.  16 in Song Sampler.

18.  The Buckeye Workshop version is discussed in the post for 24 July 2022.
19.  Myers.  21.
20.  Myers.  17–18.
21.  Myers.  20.
22.  Myers.  23.
23.  Myers.  18–19.
24.  Myers.  22.

25.  Myers.  27.  The Christian Church is the name of a merged group of denominations founded after the Cane Ridge Revival.  They are discussed in the post for 8 November 2020.

26.  Myers.  33.
27.  Myers.  38.
28.  Myers.  75.
29.  Myers.  91.
30.  Myers.  94.
31.  Myers.  116.
32.  Myers.  124.
33.  Myers.  144.
34.  Myers.  148, 150.

Indianola - Cumbaya

 Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
“Kumbaya” spread as a folk song before Joan Baez released her commercial recording in September 1962. [1]  In its most pure form, folk songs move from individual to individual.  In the process of oral transmission from place to place and over time changes are introduced into texts and tunes. [2]

Very often the primary versions are derived from print, but the same kinds of changes occur once people do not have access to the original sources.  The amount of variation depends upon the nature of the song and on institutional mores.  Some songs have structural traits that inhibit modifications, while some layers of society are more concerned with “correctness” than others.

“Kumbaya” first was published in a songbook produced for Camp Indianola on 15 March 1955 by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS).  A number of CRS customers, especially churches, ordered enough copies of songbooks to distribute them to every camper as souvenirs.  These, more than likely, were used in formal settings like vespers, rather than during sings after meals.  Correctness was expected in the one setting, but not in the other.

Some customers of Lynn Rohrbough’s business, like the Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, and YWCA, used songbooks to raise money.  The organizations sold copies that were purchased by leaders, who might, in turn, teach songs from them.  Girls were expected to remember them.

Indianola was organized by the Indianola Methodist Church, located near the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus.  By the 1950s, the rural site was used as a family camp. [3]  One of the editors of Indianola Sings, John Blocher, Jr., remembered they used “the books after they became available, although it was soon learned by heart.” [4]  They did not order a second printing. [5]

Historically, folklorists have inferred the existence of oral transmission when they have had enough variants to make comparisons.  This was the method used by Francis James Child in the first folk-song collection important in the United States.  He drew upon collections made in England. [6]

Indianola probably had a core group of members, like the Blochers, who returned year after year, and others who came for a week or two.  It probably was not the only camp some children attended.  Both the Camp Fire Girls and Girls Scouts in Columbus had residential summer camps that had some prestige.

Judging from some personal songbooks made by individuals who were associated with Ken-Jockety, the song moved from Indianola to the Girl Scout camp through oral transmission in the 1950s and stayed in tradition there into the 1970s.  Ann transcribed  it as “Cumbayah” in a collection she kept in a looseleaf binder she could use with her guitar.  Each song was typed on a separate page.  Joyce used “Cum baya.”  She wrote her songs down on index cards she could use when she leading a song.

The reason the transcriptions identify Indianola as the source, rather than CRS, is that Blocher said he never heard the first syllable pronounced as if it rhymed with “loom or doom.”  They sang it as though it rhymed with “comb” [7] or the beginning of the Latin “cum sancto spiritu.” [8]

As mentioned in the post for 29 May 2022, someone added the notes about the word’s pronunciation as “koom-bah-yah” after he submitted his manuscript. [9]  He asked CRS to remove the footnote. [10]  In February 1959, Rohrbough wrote, “we have since found the word should be pronounced ‘cum’ instead of ‘koom’ and have corrected our plates.” [11]  He did not revise the pronunciation note, but removed it entirely. [12]

The spelling of “Kumbaya” came from the lines in the text, not the title “Kum Ba Yah.”  Even people who learned the song orally, wrote it down with the hard “k” consonant, not the softer “c.”  I’ve seen it spelled it “kum bai ya” [13] and “kum bye yah,” [14] but the “cum” pronunciation seems to have been limited to the sphere of influence of the Columbus Girl Scout council. [15]

In 2016, a woman at Baldwin Wallace University was interviewing Rohrbough for an oral history project.  He wrote me:

“As an experiment, before telling her the story, I had [Helen], BW staff, sing the version of Kum Ba Yah she learned.  Without my prompting, she sang it in 3/4 time, Kum = ‘comb’.” [16]

I later contacted Helen, who confirmed the meeting.  She wrote me she didn’t remember exactly when she learned “Kumbaya.”  She thought it was “around the middle ’50s I would have been in Girl Scouts and I think it would have been at a GS day camp that I learned ‘Kumbaya’.” [17]  She then was living in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania, a suburb north of Pittsburgh. [18]  She added, “I don’t recall that we had a songbook but I’m guessing that one of our leaders knew the song and taught it to us.” [19]

The only other song sheets I’ve seen with “Cum by ya” were collected Larry, who was the 4-H agent in Wyandot County, Ohio, in 1974.  He kept every handout he was ever given, but did not note the sources.  One with “Cum by ya” included fourteen texts that were a mix of 4-H songs, fun songs like the “prune song,” and slower ones like “I love the mountains.”  The other had six spirituals or church camp songs like “Do Lord.”

Notes on Lyrics
Pronunciation: “Cum” for first syllable

Verses: None of the versions from Ann, Joyce, or Larry are exactly like that published by Rohrbough. Ann and Larry used the verse order introduced in 1968 by Tommy Leonetti. [20]  Joyce wrote the verses as “crying,” “singing,” “praying,” and “sleeping,” but said the verses had an obvious progression from “crying” to “praying” to “singing.”

Basic Form: As near as one can tell from written texts, none repeated “cumbaya” as a burden between verses, although Ann began and ended with “cumbaya” and sang “come by here” as the next-to-last verse.  Blocher said they sang “it only as a four-verse song.” [21]

Notes on Music
Guitar Chords: Ann indicated the chords she used were G C D7 D

Notes on Performers
The editors of Indianola Sings were John Blocher, Jr., and Kathryn Thompson Good.  Their photographs appear on the Photos K tab, and she is profiled in the post for 10 October 2022.  He will discussed in a future post.

Ken-Jockey still exists as one of the camps managed by Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland Council.  In the 1970s, it was part of the Seal of Ohio Council headquartered in Columbus.

Ann attended one Michigan Girl Scout camp (Camp o’ the Hills) from 1963 until 1970 when her family moved.  In 1976, she was the business manager and assistant director at Ken-Jockety.  She since has worked as a copy editor, and written books on science.  One place she lived is near the coast in McIntosh County, Georgia, where early versions of “Come by Here” were collected by Robert Winslow Gordon. [22]

Joyce’s background was more varied.  As a child in Michigan, she had attended a Girl Scout camp (Fort Hill), a YWCA one (Talahi), and a Congregational church one (Pilgrim Haven).  In 1957 and 1959, she was the song leader at Kitanniwa, the Camp Fire Girls’ camp I attended.   She married and moved to Ohio where she had been to Ken-Jockety in the 1970s before I interviewed her in 1974.  She can play piano and sing harmony.  Recently, she has served as discussion leader for the Miriam Circle Bible Study group in her local Evangelical Lutheran church.

Availability
Songbook.  “Come By Here”/“Kum Ba Yah.”  Indianola Sings, edited by Kathryn Thompson Good and John Blocher, Jr. for Camp Indianola, sponsored by the Indianola Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 18 March 1955.  38.  It is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022.

End Notes
I collected information on camp songs in the 1970s.  That was so many years ago, I am not using people’s last names because their attitudes toward publicity may have changed since then.  Some have died, changed their names, or otherwise become impossible to contact for permission to use their names on the internet.

1.  Joan Baez’s version is discussed in the post for 9 October 2017.

2.  My source for this concept is Louise Pound.  “Introduction.”  xii–xxxvi in American Ballads and Songs.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922.  xii–xvi.  She is mentioned briefly in the posts for 12 May 2019 and 27 February 2022.

3.  The post for 10 October 2021 traces the history of the camp.
4.  John Blocher, Jr.  Letter, 2 July 2016.

5.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 26 July 2017.  “I remember only one order of song books, containing the score I scanned with a copy for you.  If another (revised) printing had been made when I was in the loop, I think I would have kept a copy.  The one printing may have been enough to supply the need over the few years of activity involved.”

6.  Francis James Child.  The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, ten volumes, 1882–1898.  The importance of this collection is described in the post for 6 February 2019.  It is mentioned briefly in the post for 22 December 2019.

7.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 16 June 2016.
8.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 21 June 2016.
9.  The origins of the pronunciation will be discussed in a future post.
10.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 25 June 2016.
11.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 16 February 1959.
12.  Details will appear in a future post.

13.  Songbook from Melacoma, Camp Fire Girls camp sponsored by Cascade Council, Vancouver, Washington.  Summer 1974.

14.  Songbook from Adahi, Camp Fire Girls camp sponsored by the Reading, Pennsylvania, council.  Received, summer 1974.

15.  “Cum” also appears in England.  Those versions will be discussed in a later post.
16.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 21 June 2016.
17.  Helen.  Email, 28 October 2020, 1:24 pm.
18.  Helen.  Email, 28 October 2020, 4:39 pm.
19.  Helen.  Email, 28 October 2020, 1:24 pm.
20.  Tommy Leonetti’s version is discussed in the post for 12 April 2020.
21.  John Blocher, Jr.  Letter, 2 July 2016.

22.  The version by Henry Wylly is discussed in the post for 2 June 2019.  The one by Floyd Thorpe is discussed in the post for 16 June 2019.