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.
Showing posts with label Camp CFG Kitanniwa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Camp CFG Kitanniwa. Show all posts
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Camp Kitanniwa - Kumbaya
Topic: Theology - Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventists rejected the Greek separation of body and soul. Instead, they believed the body, mind, and soul were one entity that must be maintained in good condition to be ready for Resurrection. That is, the health of the body was the health of the soul.
Shortly after the denomination organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1863, Ellen White had a vision that led to the establishment of the Health Reform Institute whose goal was to instruct believers on healthful living. [1] John Kellogg became its superintendent in 1876. He transformed it into a sanitarium that promoted vegetarianism, exercise, and natural remedies like water. [2]
Although the church broke with him in 1902, [3] and moved to Takoma Park, Maryland, in 1904, [4] he and his brother William Keith stayed in Battle Creek, one with the sanitarium, the other with the breakfast-food company. Each continued endeavoring to instruct and improve the health of his neighbors.
John organized the Race Betterment Foundation in 1913, [5] and invited Luther Halsey Gulick and his wife, Charlotte Vetter, to Battle Creek to discuss the Camp Fire Girls at the 1914 meeting. [6] Soon after, a woman associated with the Congregational church organized the city’s first Camp Fire group. [7] The next year, the local Seventh-day Adventist press published Ethel Rogers’ book-length description of Vetter’s camping program at Sebago-Wohelo. [8]
The Kiwanis Club helped the CFG council buy land for its own camp on Clear Lake in 1926. Kitanniwa’s appeal waned during the depression. In 1933, William’s Kellogg Foundation paid the mortgage debts and assumed ownership. The council received three-month summer leases, while the facilities were used in winter to teach healthier living to children. By 1937, the Foundation needed the camp all year, and bought the Camp Fire Girls a new site near Hastings, Michigan. [9]
Although I do not remember ever meeting anyone who was an Adventist when I went to Kitanniwa in the 1950s, its philosophy permeated the program. The director’s most important credential was her training as a dietician. [10] She had no experience in Camp Fire, and let the senior counselors run the activities.
The emphasis was on swimming, partly because the American Red Cross provided training and curriculum, and partly because swimming was part of Battle Creek’s county-club culture. It also fell within the Adventists emphasis on the importance of exercise for good health.
The 1950s director did stop insisting everyone drink a cup of water before they ate breakfast, but continued to schedule stewed prunes midweek to regulate digestion. [11] The emphasis on cleansing the internal plumbing with water was a relic of the Adventist’s interest in hydrotherapy.
Clear Lake became a model for public-school outdoor education programs. [12] Kitanniwa survived until 1974, when a fire destroyed the main lodge. I visited the camp during the last session that summer with a woman who had gone to the camp in the 1940s. She arranged for a group of counselors to come together and sing during a free period.
For most songs, the camp director or a counselor simply suggested a title, and they sang it through. "Kumbaya" was more complex because the group included young women from different traditions. They first had to settle on the verses they would sing. [13] Then, when they could not agree on the best key, they sang it twice. On the second set, one of the counselors continued the singing by adding one of her verses that was not included in the first.
When they began, another counselor set the beat. They began singing in timbraic harmony, that is, in unison with harmonic effects caused by the interaction between overtones of individual voices. On the second repetition, one person tried singing a lower, parallel part. In the third, another person tried a soprano parallel part. Harmonic effects resulting from overtones increased.
When they began the chorus the second time, timbraic effects with an added part changed into fully balanced two-part parallel harmony. In the fifth repetition, a third parallel part emerged. Tonal richness resulting from the overtones increased in the final two iterations. They sustained some notes so the transition between tones was modulated into a form of sostenuto.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: eight women
Vocal Director: none; the group made decisions following patterns established during the summer together
Instrumental Accompaniment: staff brought four guitars and an accordion
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not noted at the time
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying; come by here was added the second time
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none; entire song was repeated instead
Ending: one felt the "come by here" verse should be used as an ending
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: not recorded, probably moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with increasing harmonic complexity
Notes on Performance
They sat on chairs set in the grass in the afternoon.
Notes on Performers
The group was typical of a CFG camp staff. It included five who had gone to Kitanniwa as girls; one who went to CFG camps sponsored by the Seattle, Washington, council; one who had gone to YWCA camps in Michigan, and one who had gone to church camps in Ohio and was attending a local college.
The women from Kitanniwa included two who were working to support the camp in town and three who were on staff. One staff member was the daughter of one of the women; one had been working with the youngest campers, the Blue Birds, since the early 1960s; and the third was the director.
Availability
As I indicated in the post for 25 October 2017, I have not attempted to play the tapes I made in 1974 because I do not how well they have aged. I used notes made at the time, and ones used to write Camp Songs.
End Notes
1. Gary Land. "Health Reform" 147-148 in Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005. 147.
2. Land. "Kellogg, John Harvey." 179-181 in Dictionary. 180.
3. Land, Kellogg. 181.
4. "General Conference Tours." Seventh-day Adventist website.
5. Land, Kellogg. 181.
6. The Gulicks founded Camp Fire; they were discussed in the post for 15 October 2017.
7. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 12-13.
8. Ethel Rogers. Sebago-Wohelo Camp Fire Girls. Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing Company, 1915. I could find no information on Rogers. Does anyone know anything about her?
9. Camp Songs. 13-14.
10. Her obituary.
11. Camp Songs quoted a woman who remembered the ways older campers circumvented this requirement in the 1940s. 266-267.
12. The Kellogg Foundation turned management of Clear Lake over to the Battle Creek school district in 1947, and deeded it to them in 1957. I and most of the girls who went to Kitanniwa also spent at least one week at Clear Lake if we attended public schools in Battle Creek or a cooperating school district. In the spring on 1956, there are no overlap in repertoire between the all-girls and the coed camp.
The district began having serious financial problems after 2000, when "the state’s Schools of Choice program eroded" the number of students enrolled. The camp was in danger of closing in 2014. (John Sherwood. "One More Year: Clear Lake Camp Lives On." Battle Creek Inquirer website. 18 August 2014). Even before 2000, the city’s population, and with it the tax base of the school system, was declining. (Wikipedia. "Battle Creek, Michigan.")
13. One girl’s songbook had the verse order: kumbaya, singing, crying, praying, come. Another had: kumbaya, crying, praying, singing, kumbaya.
Seventh-day Adventists rejected the Greek separation of body and soul. Instead, they believed the body, mind, and soul were one entity that must be maintained in good condition to be ready for Resurrection. That is, the health of the body was the health of the soul.
Shortly after the denomination organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1863, Ellen White had a vision that led to the establishment of the Health Reform Institute whose goal was to instruct believers on healthful living. [1] John Kellogg became its superintendent in 1876. He transformed it into a sanitarium that promoted vegetarianism, exercise, and natural remedies like water. [2]
Although the church broke with him in 1902, [3] and moved to Takoma Park, Maryland, in 1904, [4] he and his brother William Keith stayed in Battle Creek, one with the sanitarium, the other with the breakfast-food company. Each continued endeavoring to instruct and improve the health of his neighbors.
John organized the Race Betterment Foundation in 1913, [5] and invited Luther Halsey Gulick and his wife, Charlotte Vetter, to Battle Creek to discuss the Camp Fire Girls at the 1914 meeting. [6] Soon after, a woman associated with the Congregational church organized the city’s first Camp Fire group. [7] The next year, the local Seventh-day Adventist press published Ethel Rogers’ book-length description of Vetter’s camping program at Sebago-Wohelo. [8]
The Kiwanis Club helped the CFG council buy land for its own camp on Clear Lake in 1926. Kitanniwa’s appeal waned during the depression. In 1933, William’s Kellogg Foundation paid the mortgage debts and assumed ownership. The council received three-month summer leases, while the facilities were used in winter to teach healthier living to children. By 1937, the Foundation needed the camp all year, and bought the Camp Fire Girls a new site near Hastings, Michigan. [9]
Although I do not remember ever meeting anyone who was an Adventist when I went to Kitanniwa in the 1950s, its philosophy permeated the program. The director’s most important credential was her training as a dietician. [10] She had no experience in Camp Fire, and let the senior counselors run the activities.
The emphasis was on swimming, partly because the American Red Cross provided training and curriculum, and partly because swimming was part of Battle Creek’s county-club culture. It also fell within the Adventists emphasis on the importance of exercise for good health.
The 1950s director did stop insisting everyone drink a cup of water before they ate breakfast, but continued to schedule stewed prunes midweek to regulate digestion. [11] The emphasis on cleansing the internal plumbing with water was a relic of the Adventist’s interest in hydrotherapy.
Clear Lake became a model for public-school outdoor education programs. [12] Kitanniwa survived until 1974, when a fire destroyed the main lodge. I visited the camp during the last session that summer with a woman who had gone to the camp in the 1940s. She arranged for a group of counselors to come together and sing during a free period.
For most songs, the camp director or a counselor simply suggested a title, and they sang it through. "Kumbaya" was more complex because the group included young women from different traditions. They first had to settle on the verses they would sing. [13] Then, when they could not agree on the best key, they sang it twice. On the second set, one of the counselors continued the singing by adding one of her verses that was not included in the first.
When they began, another counselor set the beat. They began singing in timbraic harmony, that is, in unison with harmonic effects caused by the interaction between overtones of individual voices. On the second repetition, one person tried singing a lower, parallel part. In the third, another person tried a soprano parallel part. Harmonic effects resulting from overtones increased.
When they began the chorus the second time, timbraic effects with an added part changed into fully balanced two-part parallel harmony. In the fifth repetition, a third parallel part emerged. Tonal richness resulting from the overtones increased in the final two iterations. They sustained some notes so the transition between tones was modulated into a form of sostenuto.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: eight women
Vocal Director: none; the group made decisions following patterns established during the summer together
Instrumental Accompaniment: staff brought four guitars and an accordion
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not noted at the time
Verses: kumbaya, singing, praying; come by here was added the second time
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: three-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none; entire song was repeated instead
Ending: one felt the "come by here" verse should be used as an ending
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: not recorded, probably moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition with increasing harmonic complexity
Notes on Performance
They sat on chairs set in the grass in the afternoon.
Notes on Performers
The group was typical of a CFG camp staff. It included five who had gone to Kitanniwa as girls; one who went to CFG camps sponsored by the Seattle, Washington, council; one who had gone to YWCA camps in Michigan, and one who had gone to church camps in Ohio and was attending a local college.
The women from Kitanniwa included two who were working to support the camp in town and three who were on staff. One staff member was the daughter of one of the women; one had been working with the youngest campers, the Blue Birds, since the early 1960s; and the third was the director.
Availability
As I indicated in the post for 25 October 2017, I have not attempted to play the tapes I made in 1974 because I do not how well they have aged. I used notes made at the time, and ones used to write Camp Songs.
End Notes
1. Gary Land. "Health Reform" 147-148 in Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005. 147.
2. Land. "Kellogg, John Harvey." 179-181 in Dictionary. 180.
3. Land, Kellogg. 181.
4. "General Conference Tours." Seventh-day Adventist website.
5. Land, Kellogg. 181.
6. The Gulicks founded Camp Fire; they were discussed in the post for 15 October 2017.
7. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 12-13.
8. Ethel Rogers. Sebago-Wohelo Camp Fire Girls. Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing Company, 1915. I could find no information on Rogers. Does anyone know anything about her?
9. Camp Songs. 13-14.
10. Her obituary.
11. Camp Songs quoted a woman who remembered the ways older campers circumvented this requirement in the 1940s. 266-267.
12. The Kellogg Foundation turned management of Clear Lake over to the Battle Creek school district in 1947, and deeded it to them in 1957. I and most of the girls who went to Kitanniwa also spent at least one week at Clear Lake if we attended public schools in Battle Creek or a cooperating school district. In the spring on 1956, there are no overlap in repertoire between the all-girls and the coed camp.
The district began having serious financial problems after 2000, when "the state’s Schools of Choice program eroded" the number of students enrolled. The camp was in danger of closing in 2014. (John Sherwood. "One More Year: Clear Lake Camp Lives On." Battle Creek Inquirer website. 18 August 2014). Even before 2000, the city’s population, and with it the tax base of the school system, was declining. (Wikipedia. "Battle Creek, Michigan.")
13. One girl’s songbook had the verse order: kumbaya, singing, crying, praying, come. Another had: kumbaya, crying, praying, singing, kumbaya.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Wyandot County 4-H Day Camp - Kumbaya
Topic: Movement - Lexical
I first saw hand gestures used with "Kumbaya" in Wyandot County, Ohio, in 1974 at a 4-H day camp for girls between the ages of ten and twelve. They were keyed to words in the text and repeated whenever the words were sung.
Only one was conventional, the one for "praying." The motion for crying took a little thought to create: one finger traced a tear down one cheek, either on the left or right side. No common kinesic vocabulary existed for "singing." The girls placed one of their hands near their mouths and moved them away to indicate the trajectory of sound.
The origins of the rest of the motions were not obvious. "My Lord" was denoted by diagonally moving a hand from one shoulder to the opposite wrist, while "someone" was represented by pointing at the sky. This confused the usual meaning of "someone" as an unnamed human being with other phrases like "someone up there likes me" that refer to God. [1]
The most interesting gestures were the ones for "kumbaya." Girls rolled their hands outward around each other on "kum ba" and spread them open, palms up on "ya." Since the motions had no inherent meaning, they implied the girls imputed no meaning to the phrase, and were treating it as so many sung syllables.
Such vocables [2] were common in the European songs that appeared in camp songbooks published by Cooperative Recreation Service in Delaware, Ohio. The best known to outsiders was "The Happy Wanderer" with its "val di re, val di ra" chorus [3]. The most common one in the song sheet collection of the Wyandot County 4-H agent [4] was "Vive l’Amour," [5] but he also had learned the "oh lay ha ki ki" in "Cuckoo" [6] and "yo ho ho tra la la la" in "Vrenalie" [7] from CRS.
These syllables that carried the melody without any lexical meaning were popular in the Camp Fire Girls’ camps I attended in Michigan in the 1950s, [8] but had faded from the camp repertoire in the late 1960s when girls began singing material from the commercial folk music revival associated with Peter, Paul and Mary.
Before their demise, such passages in camp songs, or similar ones in church services like "alleluia," eroded cultural barriers against the extrarational in the 1950s. As a result of the permission granted older children to utter meaningless sounds, no fear inhibited memorizing a novel word like "kumbaya" when it appeared late in the decade. It could be accepted without an explanation.
One former Girl Scout from the Detroit area simply said she did not know its meaning, when asked by a friend. [9] Another in Ohio wrote, "I was told it means ‘Come by here’ in some long-forgotten language (but I never really believed that)." [10]
When I mailed a questionnaire asking about popular camp songs in 1976, I asked if people had sung "Kumbaya" with gestures. More than 60% of the 154 who responded said they had. [11] I did not ask for details, because of the difficulty describing movements.
However, when I had the opportunity to speak with individuals I did ask if they knew the origins of the movements. One woman told me they were Indian sign language. [12] Another was told, they were either deaf language, or Indian, or African. [13] A third resolved the conflicting stories. Following one pattern of variation in folklore, she found minute differences that could be rationalized. According to her, if one rolled one’s hands outward on "kumbaya," it was Indian. If the hands were rolled inward, it was deaf sign language. [14]
All these women were associated with Camp Fire Girls’ camps. [15] The organization was founded in 1910 by Luther Halsey Gulick as the parallel organization to the Boy Scouts. His wife, Charlotte Vetter Gulick, developed much of the program at their family camp in Maine. The Indian content was suggested by Ernest Thompson Seton a decade before his ideas were adopted by the American Camping Association. [16]
Indian imagery remained important in the CFG program in the middle-1950s when first-year members created Indian names and second-year ones turned the names in symbolgrams using dictionaries published by the organization. [17] Council fires were held every week in summer resident camps. Any song that made a reference to Native Americans was cherished.
Most of this lore was superficial. [18] Sign language was not part of the CFG program in the 1950s; any ideas about its form came from films and television programs. The interest usually was sincere even when the sources were bogus and it created a readiness to accept activities if they could be attributed to Native Americans. In 1976, 65% of the girls in the responding Camp Fire camps knew the gestures for "Kumbaya." [19]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: girls aged ten to twelve
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not noted at the time
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 4 verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Length: 8 syllables
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
I made a cassette tape in 1974, and transcribed the words without comments on the music. I still have the tape, but have not tried to play it, because I do not how well it has aged. I would have made a note if the singing style differed from the song I knew. Based on that, the tune was the standard 1-3-5. Since the emphasis was on the gestures, the girls probably sang in unison. It was sung after lunch and, at that time, would not have had a slow tempo.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Wyandot County, Ohio, 4-H day camp after-lunch sing, 12 July 1974
Location: Camp Trinity, Upper Sandusky, Ohio
Microphones: none
Notes on Movement
Kumba: roll hands around each other in outward direction
Ya: hands out flat, palms facing up
Lord: cross self diagonally, with hand, from one shoulder to opposite wrist
Oh: make circle with thumb and forefinger
Someone: point to sky
Praying: hands in prayer
Crying: trace tear down cheek with finger
Singing: move hand outward from mouth following a tune
Notes on Performers
The Wyandot county seat of Upper Sandusky first was settled by Northerners: Presbyterians and Methodists formed congregations in 1845. Then came families from Pennsylvania, followed by those from German-speaking states. The English-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church organized in 1849; the Church of God in 1851; Trinity Reformed Church of the Synod of the Reformed Church, which offered German and English Sabbath schools in 1852; the Roman Catholics, with a few Irish among the Germans in 1857; the United Brethren Church in 1858; Trinity Church of the Evangelical Association, with German and English Sunday schools in 1860; the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1868, and the Universalist Church in 1870. [20]
United Brethren were heirs to the Moravians who had contact with John Wesley and George Whitefield. Church of God was the formal name taken by followers of John Winebrenner, who broke with the German Reformed church in 1823. They had fled wars in the Palatinate in the 1730s. [21] One of his disciples, Jeremiah Tabler, led revivals in Upper in its early years. [22]
A constant influx of German-speaking immigrants meant new music traditions were mixed with existing ones. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had encouraged the development of male singing groups to nurture the national spirit. [23] These liedertafel were suppressed after the 1848 revolution. Group singing turned to folk music in sängerbunds that implicitly denied any support for a supra-state identity. Würzburg organized the first festival in 1845. [24]
In 1849, male choruses from Louisville, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana, both located on the Ohio river, joined in Cincinnati for a sängerfest. [25] Upper organized its first sängerbund in 1858 and began going to sängerfests in 1860. [26]
When I lived in Wyandot County between 1973 and 1975, many of the oldest buildings along the road I drove to Upper were Pennsylvania German-style banked barns. Evangelical United Brethren had merged with the Methodist Church in 1968, but none of the small rural churches had changed their signs. [27]
Camp Trinity was built by Upper’s Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church. The original Trinity Reformed had become the Evangelical Assembly, and, in 1934, been subsumed into the E and R. It had been assimilated in the United Church of Christ by the Congregational Church in 1957, [28] but had not changed it name.
I did not interview any campers in 1974: I was trying to record their singing traditions without being intrusive. I did not learn their names or addresses, so do not know which parts of the county population were reached by the 4-H camping program.
Availability
My version is not available and I have not yet found any similar video on YouTube.
End Notes
1. The use of someone to refer to God appeared in the 1956 film "Someone Up There likes Me." The theme song used somebody, and was sung by Perry Como. I don’t know how popular a film about boxer Rocky Graziano was with children attending camps, but the record reached spot 18 on the Billboard chart that year. (Wikipedia. "Perry Como discography.")
2. Wikipedia said "the term is currently used for utterances which are not considered words." In a more specific sense, it said
"Such non-lexical vocables are often used in music, for example la la la or dum dee dum [. . .] Many Native American songs consist entirely of vocables." ("Vocable.")
3. Obernkirchen Children’s Choir performed the song in England in 1953, and recorded it on a British label. The original lyrics were by Florenz Siegesmund, and were adapted by Edith Möller to music by her brother, Friedrich Wilhelm Möller. The common English translation was made by Antonia Ridge. (Wikipedia. "The Happy Wanderer.")
4. The 4-H agent had accumulated a collection of song sheets dating back at least 30 years.
5. Lauritz Melchoir, a Wagnerian tenor, popularized "Vive l’Amour" in 1944; he often had his audiences sing along. I remember this was used by a Calhoun County, Michigan, 4-H song leader at an awards program in 1956; people had to shake the hand of the person on their right and left.
6. "Cuckoo - (Kuckuck)." Austria. English by K. F. R. [Katharine Ferris Rohrbough]. Copyright 1953, Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc., Delaware, Ohio. The original was "ho li rah hi hi ha," but camps converted it into a consonant rhyme with "oh lay ah cuckoo."
7. "Vrenalie." Swiss. Translation by V. M. S. [Violet Synge]. In Janet Tobitt. The Ditty Bag. Published by Tobitt, 1946. Republished in CRS songbooks.
8. Both were sung at Kitanniwa, the Battle Creek, Michigan, CFG camp. They changed the "yo ho ho" chorus of "Vrenalie" into a call-response section and used patterned gestures for "Cuckoo." (Camp Songs. 309, 178, 185.)
9. William D. Doebler. Tape of camp songs. Wayne State University folklore archives. 1965. The archives no longer exist.
10. A woman who attended Camp o’ the Hills, sponsored by the Irish Hills Girl Scout Council in Jackson, Michigan, from 1963 to 1970. Email to author, 12 April 2016.
11. I mailed the questionnaire to camps of all sorts during the summer season in 1976. Since I already had heard from a number of CFG camps, I include as many boys’ camps and camps with different sponsors in different part of the company as possible. I believe I sent out some 400 letters to camps listed in the then current directory of the American Camping Association.
While the sample was designed to be representative, the responses were not. Perhaps because a number of the songs came from the CFG repertoire, many of the answers came from people who shared the Midwestern girls’ traditions.
12. Camp Songs. 68.
13. Camp Songs. 68.
14. Camp Songs. 68-69.
15. One woman was at Kitanniwa (see #8), a second was a CFG leader in Maryland, and the third was the music counselor at Aloha Hive. Technically, the last was a private camp. However, it was founded by Edward Leeds Gulick. He was the brother of the organizer of the Camp Fire Girls. In the early years they shared program ideas.
16. Camp Songs. On the founding of CFG, 12; Seton was discussed throughout the book. He changed his name from Ernest Evan Thompson, and also was known as Ernest Seton Thompson.
17. The requirements for ranks were specified in The Book of the Camp Fire Girls. (New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., 1953. 88, 92. The source for symbolgrams was Francis Loomis Wallace and Earlleen Kirby. Your Symbol Book. (New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., 1951). My mother apparently did not have a copy of the name dictionary, but several were recommended based on one compiled by Charlotte V. Gulick. A List of Indian Words. (New York: The Camp Fire Outfitting Company, 1915.)
18. Indian lore often degenerated when it was used in camps that did not provide an institutional framework like that in CFG camps. I remember only one song that was filled with negative stereotypes, "We Are the Redmen." In the 1970s, when camps were purging their repertoires, this was the hardest to remove from CFG repertoires. I think it was because girls learned it so young they had no idea what the words meant, and built up associations with it, Native Americans, and camp or Camp Fire that were positive.
19. As suggested in #11, the total sample of responses did not represent the variety of summer camps in 1976. However, I had no reason to think any serious biases colored the subsets of responses. The one factor that may have skewed the results was the order of questions. The first asked it they had sung "Kumbaya" with motions, and the second was had they sung it without. Many may simply have seen the song title in the first line, checked it, and gone on without reading the detail.
In descending order, 89% of the Girl Scout camps who answered by questionnaire knew gestures for "Kumbaya," followed by 66% of CFG camps, 61% of religious camps, 44% of general public camps, 29% of private camps, and 20% of Boy Scout camps.
20. The History of Wyandot County Ohio. Chicago: Leggett, Conaway and Company, 1884. 537-543.
21. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 616.
22. Wyandot County, history. 503-505.
23. Pestalozzi lived in a Swiss community twice occupied by Napoléon’s troops. (Wikipedia. "Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.")
24. Camp Songs. 482.
25. Charles Frederic Goss. Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912. Cincinnati: The S. J. Clark Publishing Company, 1912. 2:466-467.
26. Wyandot County, history. 548. It originally was called a männerchor and was still active in 1884, but was having problems attracting the American-born sons of its first members (p 551).
27. Wikipedia. "Evangelical United Brethren Church."
28. Wikipedia. "Evangelical and Reformed Church."
I first saw hand gestures used with "Kumbaya" in Wyandot County, Ohio, in 1974 at a 4-H day camp for girls between the ages of ten and twelve. They were keyed to words in the text and repeated whenever the words were sung.
Only one was conventional, the one for "praying." The motion for crying took a little thought to create: one finger traced a tear down one cheek, either on the left or right side. No common kinesic vocabulary existed for "singing." The girls placed one of their hands near their mouths and moved them away to indicate the trajectory of sound.
The origins of the rest of the motions were not obvious. "My Lord" was denoted by diagonally moving a hand from one shoulder to the opposite wrist, while "someone" was represented by pointing at the sky. This confused the usual meaning of "someone" as an unnamed human being with other phrases like "someone up there likes me" that refer to God. [1]
The most interesting gestures were the ones for "kumbaya." Girls rolled their hands outward around each other on "kum ba" and spread them open, palms up on "ya." Since the motions had no inherent meaning, they implied the girls imputed no meaning to the phrase, and were treating it as so many sung syllables.
Such vocables [2] were common in the European songs that appeared in camp songbooks published by Cooperative Recreation Service in Delaware, Ohio. The best known to outsiders was "The Happy Wanderer" with its "val di re, val di ra" chorus [3]. The most common one in the song sheet collection of the Wyandot County 4-H agent [4] was "Vive l’Amour," [5] but he also had learned the "oh lay ha ki ki" in "Cuckoo" [6] and "yo ho ho tra la la la" in "Vrenalie" [7] from CRS.
These syllables that carried the melody without any lexical meaning were popular in the Camp Fire Girls’ camps I attended in Michigan in the 1950s, [8] but had faded from the camp repertoire in the late 1960s when girls began singing material from the commercial folk music revival associated with Peter, Paul and Mary.
Before their demise, such passages in camp songs, or similar ones in church services like "alleluia," eroded cultural barriers against the extrarational in the 1950s. As a result of the permission granted older children to utter meaningless sounds, no fear inhibited memorizing a novel word like "kumbaya" when it appeared late in the decade. It could be accepted without an explanation.
One former Girl Scout from the Detroit area simply said she did not know its meaning, when asked by a friend. [9] Another in Ohio wrote, "I was told it means ‘Come by here’ in some long-forgotten language (but I never really believed that)." [10]
When I mailed a questionnaire asking about popular camp songs in 1976, I asked if people had sung "Kumbaya" with gestures. More than 60% of the 154 who responded said they had. [11] I did not ask for details, because of the difficulty describing movements.
However, when I had the opportunity to speak with individuals I did ask if they knew the origins of the movements. One woman told me they were Indian sign language. [12] Another was told, they were either deaf language, or Indian, or African. [13] A third resolved the conflicting stories. Following one pattern of variation in folklore, she found minute differences that could be rationalized. According to her, if one rolled one’s hands outward on "kumbaya," it was Indian. If the hands were rolled inward, it was deaf sign language. [14]
All these women were associated with Camp Fire Girls’ camps. [15] The organization was founded in 1910 by Luther Halsey Gulick as the parallel organization to the Boy Scouts. His wife, Charlotte Vetter Gulick, developed much of the program at their family camp in Maine. The Indian content was suggested by Ernest Thompson Seton a decade before his ideas were adopted by the American Camping Association. [16]
Indian imagery remained important in the CFG program in the middle-1950s when first-year members created Indian names and second-year ones turned the names in symbolgrams using dictionaries published by the organization. [17] Council fires were held every week in summer resident camps. Any song that made a reference to Native Americans was cherished.
Most of this lore was superficial. [18] Sign language was not part of the CFG program in the 1950s; any ideas about its form came from films and television programs. The interest usually was sincere even when the sources were bogus and it created a readiness to accept activities if they could be attributed to Native Americans. In 1976, 65% of the girls in the responding Camp Fire camps knew the gestures for "Kumbaya." [19]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: girls aged ten to twelve
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: not noted at the time
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing
Vocabulary:
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 4 verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Line Length: 8 syllables
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
I made a cassette tape in 1974, and transcribed the words without comments on the music. I still have the tape, but have not tried to play it, because I do not how well it has aged. I would have made a note if the singing style differed from the song I knew. Based on that, the tune was the standard 1-3-5. Since the emphasis was on the gestures, the girls probably sang in unison. It was sung after lunch and, at that time, would not have had a slow tempo.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Wyandot County, Ohio, 4-H day camp after-lunch sing, 12 July 1974
Location: Camp Trinity, Upper Sandusky, Ohio
Microphones: none
Notes on Movement
Kumba: roll hands around each other in outward direction
Ya: hands out flat, palms facing up
Lord: cross self diagonally, with hand, from one shoulder to opposite wrist
Oh: make circle with thumb and forefinger
Someone: point to sky
Praying: hands in prayer
Crying: trace tear down cheek with finger
Singing: move hand outward from mouth following a tune
Notes on Performers
The Wyandot county seat of Upper Sandusky first was settled by Northerners: Presbyterians and Methodists formed congregations in 1845. Then came families from Pennsylvania, followed by those from German-speaking states. The English-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church organized in 1849; the Church of God in 1851; Trinity Reformed Church of the Synod of the Reformed Church, which offered German and English Sabbath schools in 1852; the Roman Catholics, with a few Irish among the Germans in 1857; the United Brethren Church in 1858; Trinity Church of the Evangelical Association, with German and English Sunday schools in 1860; the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1868, and the Universalist Church in 1870. [20]
United Brethren were heirs to the Moravians who had contact with John Wesley and George Whitefield. Church of God was the formal name taken by followers of John Winebrenner, who broke with the German Reformed church in 1823. They had fled wars in the Palatinate in the 1730s. [21] One of his disciples, Jeremiah Tabler, led revivals in Upper in its early years. [22]
A constant influx of German-speaking immigrants meant new music traditions were mixed with existing ones. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had encouraged the development of male singing groups to nurture the national spirit. [23] These liedertafel were suppressed after the 1848 revolution. Group singing turned to folk music in sängerbunds that implicitly denied any support for a supra-state identity. Würzburg organized the first festival in 1845. [24]
In 1849, male choruses from Louisville, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana, both located on the Ohio river, joined in Cincinnati for a sängerfest. [25] Upper organized its first sängerbund in 1858 and began going to sängerfests in 1860. [26]
When I lived in Wyandot County between 1973 and 1975, many of the oldest buildings along the road I drove to Upper were Pennsylvania German-style banked barns. Evangelical United Brethren had merged with the Methodist Church in 1968, but none of the small rural churches had changed their signs. [27]
Camp Trinity was built by Upper’s Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church. The original Trinity Reformed had become the Evangelical Assembly, and, in 1934, been subsumed into the E and R. It had been assimilated in the United Church of Christ by the Congregational Church in 1957, [28] but had not changed it name.
I did not interview any campers in 1974: I was trying to record their singing traditions without being intrusive. I did not learn their names or addresses, so do not know which parts of the county population were reached by the 4-H camping program.
Availability
My version is not available and I have not yet found any similar video on YouTube.
End Notes
1. The use of someone to refer to God appeared in the 1956 film "Someone Up There likes Me." The theme song used somebody, and was sung by Perry Como. I don’t know how popular a film about boxer Rocky Graziano was with children attending camps, but the record reached spot 18 on the Billboard chart that year. (Wikipedia. "Perry Como discography.")
2. Wikipedia said "the term is currently used for utterances which are not considered words." In a more specific sense, it said
"Such non-lexical vocables are often used in music, for example la la la or dum dee dum [. . .] Many Native American songs consist entirely of vocables." ("Vocable.")
3. Obernkirchen Children’s Choir performed the song in England in 1953, and recorded it on a British label. The original lyrics were by Florenz Siegesmund, and were adapted by Edith Möller to music by her brother, Friedrich Wilhelm Möller. The common English translation was made by Antonia Ridge. (Wikipedia. "The Happy Wanderer.")
4. The 4-H agent had accumulated a collection of song sheets dating back at least 30 years.
5. Lauritz Melchoir, a Wagnerian tenor, popularized "Vive l’Amour" in 1944; he often had his audiences sing along. I remember this was used by a Calhoun County, Michigan, 4-H song leader at an awards program in 1956; people had to shake the hand of the person on their right and left.
6. "Cuckoo - (Kuckuck)." Austria. English by K. F. R. [Katharine Ferris Rohrbough]. Copyright 1953, Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc., Delaware, Ohio. The original was "ho li rah hi hi ha," but camps converted it into a consonant rhyme with "oh lay ah cuckoo."
7. "Vrenalie." Swiss. Translation by V. M. S. [Violet Synge]. In Janet Tobitt. The Ditty Bag. Published by Tobitt, 1946. Republished in CRS songbooks.
8. Both were sung at Kitanniwa, the Battle Creek, Michigan, CFG camp. They changed the "yo ho ho" chorus of "Vrenalie" into a call-response section and used patterned gestures for "Cuckoo." (Camp Songs. 309, 178, 185.)
9. William D. Doebler. Tape of camp songs. Wayne State University folklore archives. 1965. The archives no longer exist.
10. A woman who attended Camp o’ the Hills, sponsored by the Irish Hills Girl Scout Council in Jackson, Michigan, from 1963 to 1970. Email to author, 12 April 2016.
11. I mailed the questionnaire to camps of all sorts during the summer season in 1976. Since I already had heard from a number of CFG camps, I include as many boys’ camps and camps with different sponsors in different part of the company as possible. I believe I sent out some 400 letters to camps listed in the then current directory of the American Camping Association.
While the sample was designed to be representative, the responses were not. Perhaps because a number of the songs came from the CFG repertoire, many of the answers came from people who shared the Midwestern girls’ traditions.
12. Camp Songs. 68.
13. Camp Songs. 68.
14. Camp Songs. 68-69.
15. One woman was at Kitanniwa (see #8), a second was a CFG leader in Maryland, and the third was the music counselor at Aloha Hive. Technically, the last was a private camp. However, it was founded by Edward Leeds Gulick. He was the brother of the organizer of the Camp Fire Girls. In the early years they shared program ideas.
16. Camp Songs. On the founding of CFG, 12; Seton was discussed throughout the book. He changed his name from Ernest Evan Thompson, and also was known as Ernest Seton Thompson.
17. The requirements for ranks were specified in The Book of the Camp Fire Girls. (New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., 1953. 88, 92. The source for symbolgrams was Francis Loomis Wallace and Earlleen Kirby. Your Symbol Book. (New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., 1951). My mother apparently did not have a copy of the name dictionary, but several were recommended based on one compiled by Charlotte V. Gulick. A List of Indian Words. (New York: The Camp Fire Outfitting Company, 1915.)
18. Indian lore often degenerated when it was used in camps that did not provide an institutional framework like that in CFG camps. I remember only one song that was filled with negative stereotypes, "We Are the Redmen." In the 1970s, when camps were purging their repertoires, this was the hardest to remove from CFG repertoires. I think it was because girls learned it so young they had no idea what the words meant, and built up associations with it, Native Americans, and camp or Camp Fire that were positive.
19. As suggested in #11, the total sample of responses did not represent the variety of summer camps in 1976. However, I had no reason to think any serious biases colored the subsets of responses. The one factor that may have skewed the results was the order of questions. The first asked it they had sung "Kumbaya" with motions, and the second was had they sung it without. Many may simply have seen the song title in the first line, checked it, and gone on without reading the detail.
In descending order, 89% of the Girl Scout camps who answered by questionnaire knew gestures for "Kumbaya," followed by 66% of CFG camps, 61% of religious camps, 44% of general public camps, 29% of private camps, and 20% of Boy Scout camps.
20. The History of Wyandot County Ohio. Chicago: Leggett, Conaway and Company, 1884. 537-543.
21. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 616.
22. Wyandot County, history. 503-505.
23. Pestalozzi lived in a Swiss community twice occupied by Napoléon’s troops. (Wikipedia. "Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.")
24. Camp Songs. 482.
25. Charles Frederic Goss. Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912. Cincinnati: The S. J. Clark Publishing Company, 1912. 2:466-467.
26. Wyandot County, history. 548. It originally was called a männerchor and was still active in 1884, but was having problems attracting the American-born sons of its first members (p 551).
27. Wikipedia. "Evangelical United Brethren Church."
28. Wikipedia. "Evangelical and Reformed Church."
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