Camp Glen - Kumbaya

Topic: Lullaby - Context
Summer youth camps used to perpetuate lullaby singing by providing older campers with habits of singing and a repertoire of songs that could be adapted for bedtime. The typical camp repertoire then was divided into three categories: fun songs, pretty songs, and ceremonial ones like graces. [1] Most campers did not appreciate the slow-paced pretty songs until after their voices changed and their ears were better able to detect harmony. [2]

After the commercial folk-music revival introduced guitars, groups of older campers would get together to sing and play. Many of the songs they selected were ones that had been recorded with harmony by groups like Peter, Paul and Mary or Simon and Garfunkel. [3] When I was attending Kitanniwa in the 1950s, most of the pretty song singing was done by counselors on the last night of the session.

Last night rituals existed in many camps: sometimes they were jocular, and sometimes sentimental. In ones sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls, the evening program began with a processional and council fire. Sometimes, they would be followed by a wishing boat ceremony at the lake edge. Then, after the usual close-of-day activities, came the serenade. [4]

A woman who worked at Kitanniwa in the early 1960s, told me:

"We sang ‘Kumbaya’ at Kitanniwa as one of the songs in the last night of the camping session counselor serenade of the cabins. (You are going to get more information here than you asked for.) As you may recall as a camper, after taps on the last night of camp the counselors went through the cabin area serenading the campers. We started, standing on the path by the bluebird lodge--I think it was called--and sang ‘Little Owlet’ and ‘Kumbaya’. We generally sang three verses to ‘Kumbaya’--someone’s singing, laughing?, sleeping. We never sang someone’s crying. We then moved on up to the area in front of the wash house and sang a couple of songs for the younger Campfire Girls–‘A Canoe May Be Drifting at Sunset’, as I recall, and one or two more that could vary. We then went up the path by cabins L, M, N and sang ‘God Gave The Wisemen Their Wisdom’ and ‘Long Long Trail’ that segued into ‘With Someone Like You’. I think we then finished up by singing ‘Remember’ standing in front of the wash house. When the Senior Unit was occupied, we would then go down on the waterfront and sing ‘Across the Stillness of the Lake’ and ‘Remember’--although I am not sure we sang across the lake to the Senior Unit on every occasion when campers were there. There were always a couple of the counselors who could harmonize." [5]

The ones I remembered hearing were "Remember," because it was a favorite of another camper, and "Little Owlet," because it was one song we did not sing ourselves and had a descant. The latter was a Mexican song introduced into the camp repertoire by a 1922 YWCA songbook. [6]

When I worked as a counselor at the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, CFG camp in 1963 we had a similar repertoire. However, the only songs I remember from Hiwela serenades were the ones I had not sung before: "Louisiana Lullaby" and "Lullaby Round." The first, which I have not found in print, began "dreamland opens here." The other simply repeated the word "lullaby."

The commercial folk-music revival did not change the serenade tradition, although pre-World War I songs like "Long, Long Trail" disappeared. At the Finley, Ohio, CFG in 1974, the counselors sang 21 songs, including "Remember" and "Kumbaya." The ones the Glen staff sang more than once were "May All of Your Dreams Be like Daisies in the Field," "Walk, Shepherdess Walk," "Barges," "I Am a Rover," "Mmm I Want To Linger," and "To Ope Their Trunks." [7]

None were specifically lullabies, but many were songs a mother could sing, or, if the words were forgotten or archaic, could hum.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: counselors

Vocal Director: at Hiwela and Glen the leaders would huddle and decided the songs before each stop.

Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Notes on Lyrics
Basic Form
Glen: four-verse song that began with kumbaya

Kitanniwa: the counselor did not remember if they sang "Kumbaya" as a four-verse song, or if they sang "kumbaya" after every verse

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5

Singing Style: usually timbraic harmony; Glen used parallel thirds.

Notes on Performance
Occasion: serenade on last night of camp session

Location: outdoors outside the cabins used for sleeping

Microphones: none

Clothing: counselors usually were still in the clothes they wore for the council fire, but some might have added slacks or sweatshirts if it was cold or mosquitoes were bad.

Notes on Movement
Counselors sometimes sang while they walked, but usually stopped so campers could hear them.

Notes on Audience
Bluebirds were the youngest girls in camp, usually seven- to nine-years-old. Homesickness was always a problem with that group. The counselors at Kitanniwa in the 1960s probably did not sing the crying verse as a kind of white magic; if they did not use the word, then maybe the girls would remain calm. The staff in 1974 also did not sing that verse. I do not know if that was because they had internalized this taboo or not. [8]

Availability
I have not replayed my tapes from Camp Glen, for the reasons mentioned in the post for 25 October 2017.

End Notes
1. Camp Songs, Folk Songs described the categories and labels used in camps. 85-86.
2. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 88-89.

3. Camp Songs, Folk Songs discussed the most important commercial folk-revival artists in 1976. 549-550.

4. Camp Songs, Folk Songs explored the origins of serenades in early college singing traditions. 342.

5. Email. 3 March 2016. Most of these songs were discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

6. "The Owlet." Translated by Muna Lee; arranged by Elena Landázuri. 86+. Florence Hudson Botsford. Botsford Collection of Folk Songs. New York: G. Schirmer, 1922, 2 volumes. Republished in three volumes in 1930. The 1930 version was included in Music Makers with very minor changed by Augustus D. Zanzig. 24. My copy of Music Makers was purchased in the 1955-1956 school year. It carried no publication information other than it was "prepared for Camp Fire Girls, Inc." and was produced by Cooperative Recreation Service.

7. "To Ope" was the first camp song I found in a singing school book like the ones mentioned in the post for 21 December 2017. It appeared in George F. Root. First Years in Song-Land. Cincinnati: John Church, 1879. Most of the rest of the Glen songs were anonymous. The exception was "Walk Shepherdess," which Eleanor Farjeon wrote for Nursery Rhymes of London Town. It was published with music in London: Oxford University Press, 1919.

8. The 1974 Kitanniwa version of "Kumbaya" was discussed in the post for 29 November 2017.

Temple Hills - Kumbaya

Topic: Theology
Evangelicals were not unique in their use of "Kumbaya" in the 1970s. Summer camps in general began singing it. Of all the songs I listed on my camp song questionnaire in 1976, [1] it was by far the best known. [2] Region, gender or camp philosophy did not matter, as they did with many other songs of the list. As the table at the bottom shows, at least 80% of the people who answered, indicated they had sung "Kumbaya" in camp.

When the song moved from informal gatherings to camp programs, the verse order had to be standardized. The 4-H agent at the Wyandot County day camp sometimes used stories when he introduced songs. In 1974, he told me:

"The thing I’ve been told, and we passed it on, sounds good, is that it was an old African song and that it was first developed during a storm - or earthquake - earthquake, I guess it was - what was passed on to me. I can’t say what it was really. That’s really what I think I heard first. That is, I think, it was an earthquake, the he . . . one person, was walking through a village and this is what he saw." [3]

He added, "you never know how many of those stories are true." He thought this one probably was.

I heard the same story when I visited Kitanniwa in 1974 from a counselor who had attended the United Church of Christ’s Temple Hills near Bellville in north central Ohio. Only this time, instead of a simple mnemonic, [4] it had theological overtones. She told me:

"First off, this song, the way I learned it, is supposed to be telling a story. Somebody coming into the life of Christ, or having Christ come into his life, whatever. And we learned kumbaya as the first verse, someone’s praying, someone’s singing, laughing, and so it’s supposed to be a jubilant type ending. It starts with the sad verses first and then goes on to praying as "Lord, please come to me," and then going into laughing and the singing." [5]

An Ohio State University undergraduate reported the same motif from Storer, the Toledo coed YMCA camp in 1970. She wrote, the song "told about a Christian who is crying, prays to the Lord, sings to the Lord’s glory, and then laughs with joy." [5]

I wondered if this transformation of "Kumbaya" into a ballad of redemption was occurring outside German-influenced northern Ohio. To elicit information, I asked respondents to my questionnaire if the knew the meaning of the song. At the time, I did not realize the significance of the those words to Protestants who had been told they must know what they were saying. Men seemed to feel this need more: almost 40% who knew the song said they knew its meaning, compared to almost 30% of the women.

Most either just said yes, indicated it meant "come by here," or that it came from Africa. A few mentioned the Carribean, native Americans, Brazil, or Korea. One person who mentioned it was African, said Skylark Ranch believed it was a mining song. Their verses were: laughing, working, singing, crying, and praying.

Only two described the salvation tale: one was the director of the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Camp Fire camp, and the other was a counselor at the Long Beach, California, CFG camp. One Girl Scout heard it was about a child who was ill, whose mother cried, prayed the child would get well, then sang. She was then at Birdsall Edey located between Erie and Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.

The problem seemed to be the generic nature of the pronoun "someone." It evoked birthright church membership, or something even more general. One woman, who learned "Kumbaya" at a Congregational church Bible camp in central California around 1967, remembered "the word ‘someone’ made me think of warmly reaching out, feeling empathy. I had a sense that that was what church was supposed to be about." [7]

For Evangelicals, salvation was not universal. It came only to those who sought it. Someone had to be a specific convert. Etiological legends were needed to gloss the text. [8]

Notes on Performers
The Wyandot County 4-H Day Camp in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, was discussed in the post for 25 October 2017.

Kitanniwa was sponsored by the Battle Creek, Michigan, Camp Fire Girls. It was mentioned in the post for 29 November 2017.

Temple Hills was organized by the Ohio Conference, United Church of Christ. It had been established by the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Bellville was in Richland County in north central Ohio.

Storer was a co-ed camp sponsored by the Toledo, Ohio, YMCA located in Jackson County, Michigan. The student also had attended Girl Scout camps, but did not name them.

Skylark Ranch was sponsored by the Santa Clara Girl Scout Council of San Jose, California. The 20-year-old counselor also had gone to the Girl Scouts’ Hidden Falls.

Hiwela, the Oshkosh CFG camp, was run for years by the late Jo Weber.

Wintaka was operated by the Long Beach Area CFG council. The counselor also had gone to Saunga.

Birdsell Edey was run by the Penn Lakes Girl Scout Council of Meadville, Pennsylvania. The 18-year-old also had spent time at Judson, Hawthorne Ridge, Happy Acres, and Conshatwba. All were GS camps in Pennsylvania. In 1975 she had attended the Girl Scout National Center West in Wyoming.

The Congregational church held its Bible camp in Chico, California. The woman, who was a Presbyterian, went with a friend. She said "I believe I thought it was vaguely foreign, maybe African. I had some image of Christian missionaries in Africa, and I thought the word might have been African." [9]

Availability
I have found no reference to the legend in published sources. Also, I have not seen a songbook or heard a version that used the crying/praying/singing verse order. Would love to know if any of you heard the legend or know more about it.

Table

Questionnaire Response	Male	Female
Yes	5	12
Come		6
Africa	5	18
Other place	3	5
Other legend		4
Total	13	45
Sample size	33	153
% sample	0.394	0.294

Source: Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 649. The percentages were based on the number of responses to the questionnaire. Only female responses for coed camps were counted, because all the men were counted separately, regardless of the type of camp they attended. The girls’ camps included Girl Scouts and privately owned ones.

End Notes
1. The questionnaire was described in the post for 25 October 2017.

2. The only better known songs were ceremonial ones like the "Star Spangled Banner" and some graces like the "Doxology."

3. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 64

4. A mnemonic is "a system such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations which assists in remembering something" according to the Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries website.

5. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 64.

6. Peggy Hayes. "Summer Camp Folksongs, A Collection of 40." Ohio State University. English Department, Folklore Archives. 1973. She dated her version 7 June 1970.

7. Email to author. 12 April 2016.

8. Etiological myths "explain origins and causes," usually of the universe or a cultural group. Etiological legends provide the same kinds of explanations for events or objects that occurred after the original creation. (Alice Mills. "Etiological Myth." 301-302 in Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Edited by David A. Leeming, Kathryn Madden, and Stanton Marlan. New York: Springer US, 2010.)

9. Email to author. 12 April 2016.