Frederick Hilborn Talbot - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Frederick Hilborn Talbot was a talented man lucky enough to attract the attention of people outside his family.  Like many parents, his mother thought he was special and worked to earn the money for his school fees. [1]  His uncle was the minister at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in British Guiana’s capital city of Georgetown [2] where Talbot became a soloist in the choir. [3]

While he was an adolescent Talbot began singing in Vesta Lowe’s choir, where again he became a soloist. [4]  His exposure to her led him to organize a youth choir named for the then current AME district bishop.  When William Reid Wilkes heard the group, he arranged a scholarship for Talbot to study at Allen University, the premier AME school in the United States. [5]

This led to a fellowship to the Yale Divinity School where he did field work for the Wesley Foundation.  Talbot recalls the foundation’s head, Douglas Cook, “made it possible for me to attend several ecumenical conferences and I soon developed a special interest in collecting folk tunes from around the world.” [6]  One of the conferences was the meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement in Athens, Ohio, where he became aware of the work of Lynn Rohrbough. [7]

Talbot’s first job after Yale was at Shorter College in Arkansas, [8] where he took over the English department when his cousin left for another position. [9]  Talbot then took classes at the Pacific School of Religion. [10]  It was in this period that he worked on the Guinea Sings project described in the post for 7 August 2022.

His musical style still was influenced by the arranged spirituals sung by Lowe [11] and by Allen University. [12]  Paul Robeson was the ideal when Talbot was young in British Guinea.  Vibert Cambridge said Cheddi Jagan used his recordings in his 1953 election campaign. [13]  Talbot’s bass-baritone voice [14] fit the aesthetic.

At this point, Talbot seems to have been pursuing an academic career.  His next position was with AME’s Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio.  However, while he was at Payne, his uncle died in Georgetown and he volunteered to return to Guiana to serve the Saint Peter congregation. [15]  He said, when he returned, he began “incorporating Caribbean music and art forms into the liturgy.” [16]

Talbot had left British Guiana while independence was more a chimera than a reality, and had been “acculturated in the United States.” [17]  His wife was from the Virgin Islands with a master’s degree in Public Health from Yale. [18]  He obviously returned to visit his family, or else he would not have been involved with the Guinea Sings recording.

He returned to a country plagued by riots between descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants.  The United Kingdom introduced a new electoral system in 1964, and a Black, Forbes Burnham, led the government through independence in 1966. [19]  In 1971, Burnham asked Talbot to represent Guyana in the United Nations. [20]

Since the late 1940s, the AME hierarchy had been pressured to elect bishops born outside the United States, and, in 1948, elevated Ormonde Walker and Joseph Gomez. [21]  However, neither was assigned to the Caribbean district.  Wilkes was from Georgia. [22]

In 1971, someone sent a letter to the AME newsletter, The Christian Recorder, demanding a native bishop.  Talbot was elected in 1972, and assigned the Caribbean district. [23]  It was in this position that he hosted a district youth conference in 1973.  The church issued a commemorative album that included performances from artists from member countries.  An unidentified trio sang “Kum Ba Yah.”

Title
Kum Ba Yah

Performers
Vocal Soloists: unidentified young male trio
Vocal Group: children’s choir [24]
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano with stringed instrument

Credits
None given

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: even stress on syllables

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: quick

Basic Structure: solist supported by humming group alternates with group singing

Singing Style: one note to one syllable

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano provides rhythmic accompaniment

Ending: sung slowly in chordal harmony, with divergent harmony on last line

Notes on Performance
Occasion: first meeting of the Caribbean Conference of Churches, 20–22 June 1973 

Location: Guyana

Microphones: The album cover says it was recorded live and that Radio Demerara made “their recording facilities available.”  It probably was taped using the station’s equipment, and then edited for the recording in their building.  Dave Braithwaite, who worked on projects for Ray Charles, [25] was the re-mix engineer.  The album itself was produced by The Dave Nelson Company in Los Angeles.

Cover: green with photograph of girl and flags of participating countries

Notes on Performers
Talbot served two four-year terms in the Caribbean, the maximum allowed by the church.  He then was assigned to the Georgia-South Carolina district.  After eight years, he spent four devoted to ecumenical affairs.  From 1992 to 1996 he was in the Arkansas-Oklahoma district, and for the eight years before he retired in the Tennessee-Kentucky jurisdiction. [26]

With the move into the bureaucracy in the United States he sacrificed some of his freedom to organizational politics.  When he was serving both the church and Guyana in the 1970s, some had complained he was “mixing religion and politics.” [27]  While he was in Georgia, he began working on a PhD from Columbia Theological Seminary.  He remembered this “radical and unprecedented step” was met with “consternation or wonderment, and it even strained the credulity of many.” [28]

It was while he was in Little Rock that Talbot published a book on liturgy, which included a résumé that tied his professional advances to his involvement with different forms of worship. [29]  In 2016, I contacted him to confirm he had heard “Kumbaya” at the Athens meeting.  When I asked him if he has sung “Kumbaya” elsewhere, he told me:

“I do recall leading a version of ‘Come by Here’ which is often referred to as ‘Kumbaya’.  ‘Come by Here’ is the American version sung in small rural American churches.  I often led both versions in the song as a young pastor in South Carolina and elsewhere. [30]

Talbot died in 2019. [31]

Availability
Album: “Kum Ba Yah.”  Partners in Mission.  16th A.M.E. Records 1001.  Released 1974.

End Notes
I would like to thank Andrew Franklin of Yale who helped me identify Frederick Talbot as the one Rohrbough called “B.Talbot” on the carbon copy of his letter that was reprinted in the post for 31 July 2022. [32]  I would also like to thank the Allen University alumni office who forwarded my inquiries to him.

1.  “Frederick Talbot.”  Lewis and Wright Funeral Directors website, April 2019.

2.  “Retired Bishop Frederick Hilborn Talbot, S.T.M., D.Min Appeal for St. Peter’s AME Church Restoration Fund.”  The Christian Recorder Online, 16 October 2015.  His uncle was David Patterson Talbot.

3.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  African American Worship.  Lima, Ohio: Fairway Press, 1998.  Reprinted by Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2007.  18.

4.  Talbot, Worship.  18.  Lowe is discussed in the post for 7 August 2022.
5.  Lewis and Wright.
6.  Talbot, Worship.  20.  Cook became head of SVM in 1958. [33]
7. The Athens meeting is discussed in the post for 31 July 2022.
8.  Talbot, Worship.  20.

9.  “Dr. David Arlington Talbot.”  Texas A&M University Commerce website.  David was the son of David Patterson Talbot.

10.  Talbot, Worship.  21.

11.  Talbot, Worship.  18.  He recalled that “along with great anthems and other choral arrangements, the choir interpreted Negro spirituals in a very moving way.”

12.  Talbot, Worship.  19.  At Allen, Talbot studied “voice and conducting” with John Wesley Hunter.  Hunter had graduated from Juilliard, and emphasized “high class music.”  Talbot remembers “excerpts from operas and a variety of anthems from famed composers were sung with style, but he also interpreted the Negro spirituals with pathos.”

13.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.  126.  Jagan brought recordings back after he was a student at Northwestern University. [34]  Perhaps this contributed to the British view that Jagan was too close to the Communists.  Robeson’s association with the Soviet Union is mentioned in the posts for 17 August 2017 and 12 October 2017.

14.  Talbot, Worship.  23.  While at Saint Peter’s, Talbot entered the National Music Festival and won the “national award as bass soloist and later an award in the baritone class.”

15.  Talbot, Worship.  22.

16.  Talbot, Worship.  22.  This was after the Vatican changed its view of the liturgy in 1964 and folk elements were given legitimacy in masses.  This first is mentioned in the post for 25 November 2017.

17.  Dennis C. Dickerson.  The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.  492.

18.  “Sylvia Ross Talbot Ed.D Bio.”  The AMEC Supervisors Council website.  She later earned a PhD in Health Education from Teacher’s College, Columbia.

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

20.  Talbot, Worship.  23.
21.  Dickerson.  488–489.

22.  Item on 1948 AME convention.  Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 May 1948.

23.  Lewis and Wright.

24.  The last side of the double album includes songs from each country.  While a few performers are named, most are not.  It is possible the base group was the United District Choir.

25.  “David Braithwaite.”  Rate Your Music website.
26.  Lewis and Wright.
27.  Talbot, Worship.  23.

28.  Talbot, Worship.  25.  He noted that after he had broken the barrier, other pastors also pursued advanced degrees.

29.  Talbot, Worship.  15–26.

30.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  Letter, 18 October 2016.  As soon as he was ordained a deacon, Talbot was assigned the Little Mountain Circuit with churches in Chapin and Little Mountain. [35]  Chapin is a rail town about 25 miles from Columbia, where Saint John’s AME church was organized before 1892. [36]  Little Mountain is five miles farther on the rail line.  It has been the home of a folk festival sponsored by Newberry College since 1882. [37]  As mentioned in the post for 27 July 2022, Thomas H. Wiseman learned a variant of “Come by Here” in an AME church in Columbia, South Carolina.

31.  Lewis and Wright.

32.  Andrew Franklin.  Email, 21 September 2016.  “The man you’re looking for is Bishop Frederick H. Talbot.  He graduated from YDS with an M.Div. in 1957, which would mean he matriculated in 1955.  He is an AME Bishop in the Virgin Islands.”

33.  “Student Volunteer Movement.”  The Christian Scholar 41(3):433–434:September 1958.
34.  Cambridge.  118.
35.  Talbot, Worship.  19.
36.  “Chapin, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.
37.  “Little Mountain, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.

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.