Topic: Theology - Evangelicals
Pentecostals and Fundamentalists were not the same people. Indeed, in the aftermath of the trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee pubic school, [1] the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association condemned the "‘tongues movement,’ and the present wave of fanatical and unscriptural healing which is sweeping the country today." [2]
The two movements were rooted in divergent religious traditions that responded differently to changes in intellectual methods in the nineteenth century. Pentecostals were applying scientific criteria when they sought proof of salvation in resurrecting practices of the original church of the apostles. [3] Fundamentalists, who were devoted to sermons that explicated the word, were dismayed when the application of scientific methods to the original texts of the Bible produced interpretations that did not match their beliefs. [4]
The groups remained isolated from one another until World War II. Then, the Federal Council of Churches persuaded the two major radio networks "not to sell time to religious broadcasters, but to allot free time to ‘recognized’ faith communities" like its Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and northern Baptist members. [5]
Harold Ockenga and Elwin Wright organized an opposing National Association of Evangelicals in 1943. Ockenga focused on beliefs the groups shared, rather than points of doctrine that separated them, and invited Pentecostal groups to join. The defining point of faith was their belief the Bible was "the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God." [6]
The 1945 NAE convention limited its role to facilitating shared goals, rather than arbitrating doctrinal disagreements. It decided the organization would not sponsor crusades, but its regional offices could support individual efforts. The group’s historian noted, the result was "those who had been looking to the NAE for a more direct role in evangelism began to look elsewhere to parachurch agencies such as Youth for Christ and its promising first evangelist, Billy Graham." Graham became the de facto spokesman for this coalition called evangelicals. [7]
Youth for Christ began with a 1944 Chicago rally held by Torrey Johnson. [8] It promoted a view that being a Christian was fun, [9] and used popular music to attract potential adolescent converts. When traditionalists complained, Johnson responded, the rallies were not church services. [10] Editors of the first songbook "reminded users of the songbook that ‘the components of any religious experience are heart and mind’ and that ‘both are needed’." [11]
Ralph Carmichael became its most important muse when he staged productions [12] at the association’s annual conventions at Winona Lake, Indiana, and wrote scores for Graham films. [13] Maintaining the balance between the competing elements of the evangelical alliance was not easy. He was not asked to continue after his Winona Lake productions were criticized as too "Hollywood" and too "worldly." [14]
By the late 1950s, he was working for Sacred Records, [15] who rented facilities from Capital Records. That led to his being asked to make arrangements for one of Capital’s artists, Nat King Cole. [16] This time, his church told him they would not renew his ordination. [17]
Word Records of Waco, Texas, bought Sacred in the early 1960s. [18] It had hired Kurt Kaiser in 1959 to produce records. [19] Bill Pearce, a performer from Chicago, remembered Carmichael raised the company’s artistic level when he hired professional musicians to work as session men. [20]
The rise of rock ‘n’ roll created the same problems for evangelicals as it did other religious groups. Thomas Bergler suggested they feared the ecstatic release that occurred in rock concerts would compete with religious emotion. [21]
The commercial folk-music revival provided a more acceptable alternative. In 1969, Carmichael and Kaiser collaborated on one of the first successful Christian folk musicals, Tell It Like It Is. [22] The next year, the two produced an album and songbook for Cliff Barrows, Graham’s music director, that included two songs from the show, one from a Graham film, and a version of "Kumbaya." [23]
They used the standard crying/singing/praying verses. Then, to make the version unique and eligible for copyright, they added a final verse that placed it in the evangelical tradition. It assured listeners that He would listen to their prayers.
The melody for burden between singing and praying verses was sung "in 2nd." This use of a tenor lead was borrowed from early Protestant music in this country and perpetuated in the sacred-harp song books discussed in the post for 21 December 2017.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: scored for SATB
Vocal Director: Kurt Kaiser
Instrumental Accompaniment: harpsichord
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
Songbook
African Melody
Arr. By Ralph Carmichael
Album
P.D. [public domain]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: the written melody for the word "kumbaya" used two eighth-notes followed by a dotted-eighth; their Southern propensity to stress the first syllable of a word led the choristers to treat it more like a dotted-eighth sixteenth dotted-eighth. [24]
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying, own verse
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: burden-verse
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none in text
Unique Features: special verse emphasized the efficacy of prayer
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: Carmichael specified "Moderately slow"; Kaiser used a quicker tempo on the recording
Key Signature (songbook)
Kumbaya - no flats or sharps
Verse - 5 flats
Verse - 2 sharps
Verse - 5 flats
Verse - no flats or sharps
Basic Structure: repetition with variations in key and use of male and female voices
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord." They sang the last line much slower.
Harmony: in the first verse set, Carmichael relied of parallel third chords. In the singing verse he used parallel fifths for the verse and more complex chords for the burden. Instead of repeating the burden before the last verse, the choristers hummed. He also varied the parts by gender, so the men sang the opening verse, followed by the women. Later, the sopranos and altos hummed while the tenors and basses sang.
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: the score showed the piano accompanying the group with chords. On the recording, the harpsichord simulated a banjo and only played chords when a stringed instrument would have been strummed. Occasionally, it added arpeggios above the melodic line.
Notes on Performers
Carmichael was raised in an Assembly of God household, and attended its college to become a minister like all the men in the family. [25] However, his father encouraged his interest in music and hoped he would become a professional violinist. [26] He had become a part owner of Lexicon music when it was associated with Sacred Records, and remained a half owner when it was acquired by Word. [27]
Kaiser’s family were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a British precursor of the Pentecostal movement discussed in the post for 25 December 2017. He studied music at the American Conservatory of Music and Northwestern. While he was with Word, he directed Baylor University’s Religious Hour Choir from 1965 to 1970. [28]
Baylor was a Baptist school located in Waco. [29] The Kurt Kaiser Singers most likely were Baylor students. One choir member said they were called the Kurt Kaiser Singers on Word’s recording of Tell It Like It Is in 1969. [30] Another remembered Word was auditioning students for another musical in the fall in 1970, [31] after Kaiser no longer was the director. The record was not dated, but the songbook was copyrighted in 1970.
Availability
Album: Kurt Kaiser Singers. Cliff Barrows Now! Word WST-8500-LP.
Songbook: Cliff Barrows Now. Arrangements by Ralph Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser. Waco, Texas: Lexicon Music, Inc, 1970. 21-27.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Scopes Trial." The trial occurred in 1925.
2. Convention resolution, 1928. Quoted by Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 208. He may have been thinking of Aimee Semple McPherson who was then popular.
3. The quest for evidence of salvation was discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
4. The unintended consequences of European Biblical research are discussed by Wikipedia. "Historical Criticism."
5. National Association of Evangelicals. "History." Its website. The FCC also included African-American conferences association with each group. It became the National Council of Churches in 1950. (Wikipedia. "Federal Council of Churches.")
6. NAE. "Statement of Faith (1943)." Quoted by Wikipedia. "National Association of Evangelicals." This use of evangelical differed from Martin Luther; most Lutheran synods did not affiliate with the organization.
7. NAE, History.
8. Wikipedia. "Youth for Christ."
9. Thomas E. Bergler. "‘I Found My Thrill’: The Youth for Christ Movement and American Congregational Singing, 1940-1970." 123-149 in Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology. Edited by Mark A. Noll and Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. 128. "Billy Graham repeatedly told Youth for Christ audiences that ‘the young people around the world today who are having the best time are the young people who know Jesus Christ’."
10. YFC Leaders Conference, 1945, said "Y.F.C. is a youth rally, rather than a church service." Quoted by Bergler. 128.
11. Singing Youth for Christ. Edited by Frank C. Phillips, Robert A. Cook, and Cliff Barrows. Chicago: Youth for Christ International, 1948. Quoted by Bergler. 127-128.
12. Bergler. 126.
13. Wikipedia. "Ralph Carmichael."
14. Bergler. 126.
15. "Sacred Records." Discogs website. The first recordings they dated for Carmichael were from 1958.
16. Marc Myers. "Interview: Ralph Carmichael (Part 1)." All About Jazz website.
17. Wikipedia, Carmichael.
18. Don Cusic. The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990. 136.
19. Wikipedia. "Kurt Kaiser." Technically, he was responsible for what was termed A&R, or artists and repertoire.
20. Wikipedia. "Bill Pearce." Pearce recorded for Word.
21. Bergler. 141.
22. Wikipedia, Carmichael. The first folk musical was Good News in 1965. (Cusic, 127)
23. The songs from the musical were "Pass It On" and "Love Is Surrender." The one from the film His Land was "The New 23rd."
24. Erik R. Thomas said the Southern speech area spread from the Atlantic to west Texas and parts of eastern new Mexico, and at least as far north as the north flowing tributaries of the Ohio river. Within that area there was a "tendency to place stress to the initial syllable of particular words," which elsewhere were pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. "Rural White Southern Accents." 300-324 in A Handbook of Varieties of English. Edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004.
25. Wikipedia, Carmichael.
26. Myers.
27. Cusic. 136.
28. Wikipedia, Kaiser.
29. Wikipedia. "Baylor University."
30. M. J. Wofford. Post on BRH Choir Alumni Public Group Facebook page.. 14 August 2017.
31. Betty Newman. "On a Natural High with Kurt Kaiser." White Bluff Chapel, Whitney, Texas, website. 3 May 2012.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Deeper Life Bible Church - Kumbaya
Topic: Theology - Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism was taken to Liberia by Lucy Farrow in 1906 [1] and, as mentioned in the post for 15 September 2017, to South Africa by followers of Charles Parham in 1908. [2] The number of converts began increasing when European colonies were granted independence beginning in 1957. They represented 5% of the continent’s population in 1970, [3] when indigenous Pentecostal churches were just beginning to expand. In 2006, the various congregations had attracted 12% of the population. [4]
William Kumuyi was part of the exodus from older denominations. His parents were Anglicans living in the Yoruba part of southwestern Nigeria when he was born in 1941. He said he lost interest in religion in secondary school, where "our principal taught us atheism." [5] After graduating in 1961, a year after Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom, he taught at the Mayflower School the next year. [6]
Following a year teaching in the secondary school, Kumuyi entered the University of Ibadan to study mathematics. [7] While there "a group of singers and preachers from a Gospel church got permission to come to the school." [8]
He began reading works by the major nineteenth-century revivalists: John Wesley of the Methodists, Charles Finney of the Presbyterians, and Charles Spurgeon of the British Particular Baptists. [9] Kumuyi was born again in 1964 and joined the Apostolic Faith church. [10] As mentioned in the post for 15 September 2017, that church was established by white followers of William Seymour who recoiled against the more emotional aspects of Azusa Street.
After graduation, Kumuyi returned to Mayflower to teach for five years. [11] It was in those years that religious tensions in Nigeria between the Moslems in the north and the Christians in the south turned violent. [12] The Biafran war raged from 1967 to 1970 in the southeast, while oil companies were drilling for oil in the southwest of the Yoruba. Money flooded the country in 1973, when oil prices rose "following the Yom Kipur War." [13]
Kumuyi entered graduate school in the capital city of Lagos in 1973, and began a Bible study group. The Apostolic Faith church expelled him in 1975 for preaching without credentials. Undeterred, he formed his own sect in Lagos, which became Deeper Life Bible Church in 1982. [14]
It described itself as Pentecostal, but he was more in the tradition of Anglo-Scot Reformers who relied on the Word. Alan Isaccson described Kumuyi as "one of the greatest living preachers, giving a straightforward Bible-based message" [15] The Lagos website suggested one first was baptized by full immersion, then sanctified, and finally baptized in the Holy Ghost by speaking in tongues. It stipulated "We do not teach or instruct people how to speak in tongues; the Holy Spirit gives utterance." [16]
Unlike the early twentieth-century Pentecostal churches, Deeper Life’s millennialism had been influenced by the end-times movement of Hal Lindsey that posited an imminent Rapture. [17] This suggestion the current chaos was a prelude to Christ’s imminent return may have been key to Deeper Life’s appeal in a country that had not been stable since independence, and where some Muslims in the north had been radicalized by international jihads against non-believers.
Deeper Life expanded into other countries. When the youth choir of a Washington, DC, congregation sang the Soweto Gospel Choir’s version of "Kumbaya" in 2013, it probably was less because of the theology imbedded in the text, and more because the arrangement had been made by someone who had been associated with the Apostolic Faith Mission in South Africa. [18]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: several girls had solo passages
Vocal Group: 15 girls and 8 boys
Vocal Director: adult woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard and amplified guitar played by adult men
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Version: Lucas Deon Bok
Language: English
Basic Form: medley of "Lord I Need You" followed by "Kumbaya." The pairing suggested the key phrase in "Kumbaya" was "somebody needs you."
Notes on Music
Arrangement: Lucas Deon Bok. Simplifications in vocal parts were done to accommodate the abilities of the youth choir. Some looked too young to have been baptized as adults or spoken in tongues. Others had reached their full height.
Singing Style: mainly in unison, with soloists. The vocal tone was not melliferous. There was no effort to blend the various parts. The aesthetic reflected the independence of performers that Zora Neale Hurston said created the "ragged harmony" characteristic of African-American religious music. [19]
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano was the dominant instrument, usually playing chords on the down beat with the drums heard on the upbeat. The guitarist could be seen, but not heard, while the drums were heard, but were not visible on stage.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Friends Day, 2013.
Location: Deeper Life Bible Church, Washington DC. The red-carpeted platform was raised three steps from the floor of the church. Steps were in the center with short plexiglass walls to the sides at the front. The altar area was defined by yellow curtains at the back, with white walls to either side. Flags stood along the wall on the right side; the musicians were on the left (from the audience’s view). A clear plexiglass lectern was in front of the choir.
Microphones: three girls had hand-held microphones with windscreens. The foam covers are used to protect the equipment and muffle sounds of breathing or "vocal plosives" like /b/ and /p/. [20] Four amplifiers were placed in front near the plexiglass panels.
Clothing: choristers were dressed in black, white, and purple. The boys wore white or purple shirts and black slacks; a few added purple ties. The girls wore purple blouses or jackets, and black skirts that reached the mid-calf or ankle. The sleeves were long or elbow-length. Most of the girls wore black or purple hats, while the boys’ hair was cropped. The director wore a black suit and hat.
Notes on Movement
The choir stood in two rows with the tallest boys and girls at the ends of both lines. Boys and girls were grouped between the two poles in the front row. In the back, there generally were two girls between each boy.
They faced straight ahead, with their arms relaxed at their sides. When the music started for "Lord I Need You" the singers began transferring their weight from foot to foot. They slid one foot to the side on one beat, then moved the other to it on the next. The feet were in a dancer’s parallel first, and the movement came from the hips. The knees only bent enough to move the feet. One boy in the front flexed his knees more.
At the prescribed place in the arrangement, they began clapping their hands at the same time they moved their trailing feet. Their hands were between their waists and chests, and cupped slightly. One tall boy in the rear clapped over his head with straightened hands.
Four girls in the front row did a few mimic hand gestures. At one time, they brought their hands together on the phrase "hear my prayer" then spread their arms low on "in despair." They looked to be about ten-years-old, the age when children often attempt movement patterns triggered by words. [21]
The director stood on the floor below the platform. She made four distinct movements to the left, followed by four to the right. The camera only showed her from the waist up, so it was not possible to see how she was using her body to set the beat for the singers. Her hands generally were kept in front, but sometimes she spread them wide, with the hands raised from the elbows. There was no transition between songs, but she pointed her fingers towards the singers at that point.
No one had sheet music. They filed off when they were finished, one row at a time.
Notes on Audience
There were many empty seats, and people were seated in groups. A number of women wore head wraps. There was a little applause at the end, but no response during the singing.
Notes on Performers
Michael Dada was pastor at the Washington church. The only biographical information available indicated he had earned bachelors and masters degrees in business administration, worked as a banker, and was serving as the regional overseer for the denomination. [22]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by pastor Michael on 25 November 2013.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "African Pentecostalism." Farrow was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
2. Parham was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
3. Pew Research Center. "Pentecostalism in Africa." 5 October 2006. The number included both charismatics and Pentecostalists.
4. World Christian Database. Reported by Pew, Africa.
5. William Folorunso Kumuyi. Quoted by Alan Isaacson. Deeper Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990. Requoted on "Pastor W. F. Kumuyi" tab. Deeper Life website, Washington, DC.
6. Wikipedia. "William Kumuyi."
7. He graduated from secondary school in 1961, taught at Mayflower in 1962, and graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1967. If he took the usual four years, he matriculated in 1963. (Wikipedia, Kumuyi)
8. Kumuyi. Quoted on Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington. The term Gospel church, with a capital G, often was used for Aimee Simple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church. It entered Nigeria in 1954. (Pew Research Center. "Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in Nigeria." 5 October 2006.)
9. Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
10. Wikipedia. "Deeper Christian Life Ministry."
11. Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
12. Culturally Nigeria was divided into three unequal parts by the Niger River. The Hausa and Fulani lived in the north, the Yoruba and Ewe in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast. There were more people and more land in the north, creating a political imbalance between the groups.
13. Wikipedia. "History of Nigeria."
14. Wikipedia, Ministry.
15. Isaacson. Quoted on Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
16. "What We Believe." Deeper Life website, Lagos, Nigeria.
17. Zondervan published Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth in 1970. (Wikipedia. "Hal Lindsey.) Seven of Deeper Life’s 22 tenets of "What We Believe" related to the second coming. Only one was devoted to each of the other topics. (Deeper Life, Nigeria)
18. The post for 29 August 2017 provided background on the arranger, Lucas Deon Bok.
19. Zora Neale Hurston. "Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals." 79-84 in The Sanctified Church. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1983. 80. She was mentioned in post for 16 October 2017.
20. "What Is the Difference Between a Windscreen and a Pop Filter?" Audio-Technica website. 13 August 2015.
21. For more on the age children learn mimic gestures, see the post for 8 November 2017. They shared the interest of girls their age, but were limited by their small the pool of movements. Girls in Camp Fire Girls camps, at least in the Midwest, had a larger repertoire of gestures to draw upon.
22. "Pastor Michael A. Dada." Deeper Life website, Washington, DC.
Pentecostalism was taken to Liberia by Lucy Farrow in 1906 [1] and, as mentioned in the post for 15 September 2017, to South Africa by followers of Charles Parham in 1908. [2] The number of converts began increasing when European colonies were granted independence beginning in 1957. They represented 5% of the continent’s population in 1970, [3] when indigenous Pentecostal churches were just beginning to expand. In 2006, the various congregations had attracted 12% of the population. [4]
William Kumuyi was part of the exodus from older denominations. His parents were Anglicans living in the Yoruba part of southwestern Nigeria when he was born in 1941. He said he lost interest in religion in secondary school, where "our principal taught us atheism." [5] After graduating in 1961, a year after Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom, he taught at the Mayflower School the next year. [6]
Following a year teaching in the secondary school, Kumuyi entered the University of Ibadan to study mathematics. [7] While there "a group of singers and preachers from a Gospel church got permission to come to the school." [8]
He began reading works by the major nineteenth-century revivalists: John Wesley of the Methodists, Charles Finney of the Presbyterians, and Charles Spurgeon of the British Particular Baptists. [9] Kumuyi was born again in 1964 and joined the Apostolic Faith church. [10] As mentioned in the post for 15 September 2017, that church was established by white followers of William Seymour who recoiled against the more emotional aspects of Azusa Street.
After graduation, Kumuyi returned to Mayflower to teach for five years. [11] It was in those years that religious tensions in Nigeria between the Moslems in the north and the Christians in the south turned violent. [12] The Biafran war raged from 1967 to 1970 in the southeast, while oil companies were drilling for oil in the southwest of the Yoruba. Money flooded the country in 1973, when oil prices rose "following the Yom Kipur War." [13]
Kumuyi entered graduate school in the capital city of Lagos in 1973, and began a Bible study group. The Apostolic Faith church expelled him in 1975 for preaching without credentials. Undeterred, he formed his own sect in Lagos, which became Deeper Life Bible Church in 1982. [14]
It described itself as Pentecostal, but he was more in the tradition of Anglo-Scot Reformers who relied on the Word. Alan Isaccson described Kumuyi as "one of the greatest living preachers, giving a straightforward Bible-based message" [15] The Lagos website suggested one first was baptized by full immersion, then sanctified, and finally baptized in the Holy Ghost by speaking in tongues. It stipulated "We do not teach or instruct people how to speak in tongues; the Holy Spirit gives utterance." [16]
Unlike the early twentieth-century Pentecostal churches, Deeper Life’s millennialism had been influenced by the end-times movement of Hal Lindsey that posited an imminent Rapture. [17] This suggestion the current chaos was a prelude to Christ’s imminent return may have been key to Deeper Life’s appeal in a country that had not been stable since independence, and where some Muslims in the north had been radicalized by international jihads against non-believers.
Deeper Life expanded into other countries. When the youth choir of a Washington, DC, congregation sang the Soweto Gospel Choir’s version of "Kumbaya" in 2013, it probably was less because of the theology imbedded in the text, and more because the arrangement had been made by someone who had been associated with the Apostolic Faith Mission in South Africa. [18]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: several girls had solo passages
Vocal Group: 15 girls and 8 boys
Vocal Director: adult woman
Instrumental Accompaniment: keyboard and amplified guitar played by adult men
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Version: Lucas Deon Bok
Language: English
Basic Form: medley of "Lord I Need You" followed by "Kumbaya." The pairing suggested the key phrase in "Kumbaya" was "somebody needs you."
Notes on Music
Arrangement: Lucas Deon Bok. Simplifications in vocal parts were done to accommodate the abilities of the youth choir. Some looked too young to have been baptized as adults or spoken in tongues. Others had reached their full height.
Singing Style: mainly in unison, with soloists. The vocal tone was not melliferous. There was no effort to blend the various parts. The aesthetic reflected the independence of performers that Zora Neale Hurston said created the "ragged harmony" characteristic of African-American religious music. [19]
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano was the dominant instrument, usually playing chords on the down beat with the drums heard on the upbeat. The guitarist could be seen, but not heard, while the drums were heard, but were not visible on stage.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: Friends Day, 2013.
Location: Deeper Life Bible Church, Washington DC. The red-carpeted platform was raised three steps from the floor of the church. Steps were in the center with short plexiglass walls to the sides at the front. The altar area was defined by yellow curtains at the back, with white walls to either side. Flags stood along the wall on the right side; the musicians were on the left (from the audience’s view). A clear plexiglass lectern was in front of the choir.
Microphones: three girls had hand-held microphones with windscreens. The foam covers are used to protect the equipment and muffle sounds of breathing or "vocal plosives" like /b/ and /p/. [20] Four amplifiers were placed in front near the plexiglass panels.
Clothing: choristers were dressed in black, white, and purple. The boys wore white or purple shirts and black slacks; a few added purple ties. The girls wore purple blouses or jackets, and black skirts that reached the mid-calf or ankle. The sleeves were long or elbow-length. Most of the girls wore black or purple hats, while the boys’ hair was cropped. The director wore a black suit and hat.
Notes on Movement
The choir stood in two rows with the tallest boys and girls at the ends of both lines. Boys and girls were grouped between the two poles in the front row. In the back, there generally were two girls between each boy.
They faced straight ahead, with their arms relaxed at their sides. When the music started for "Lord I Need You" the singers began transferring their weight from foot to foot. They slid one foot to the side on one beat, then moved the other to it on the next. The feet were in a dancer’s parallel first, and the movement came from the hips. The knees only bent enough to move the feet. One boy in the front flexed his knees more.
At the prescribed place in the arrangement, they began clapping their hands at the same time they moved their trailing feet. Their hands were between their waists and chests, and cupped slightly. One tall boy in the rear clapped over his head with straightened hands.
Four girls in the front row did a few mimic hand gestures. At one time, they brought their hands together on the phrase "hear my prayer" then spread their arms low on "in despair." They looked to be about ten-years-old, the age when children often attempt movement patterns triggered by words. [21]
The director stood on the floor below the platform. She made four distinct movements to the left, followed by four to the right. The camera only showed her from the waist up, so it was not possible to see how she was using her body to set the beat for the singers. Her hands generally were kept in front, but sometimes she spread them wide, with the hands raised from the elbows. There was no transition between songs, but she pointed her fingers towards the singers at that point.
No one had sheet music. They filed off when they were finished, one row at a time.
Notes on Audience
There were many empty seats, and people were seated in groups. A number of women wore head wraps. There was a little applause at the end, but no response during the singing.
Notes on Performers
Michael Dada was pastor at the Washington church. The only biographical information available indicated he had earned bachelors and masters degrees in business administration, worked as a banker, and was serving as the regional overseer for the denomination. [22]
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by pastor Michael on 25 November 2013.
End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "African Pentecostalism." Farrow was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
2. Parham was mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017.
3. Pew Research Center. "Pentecostalism in Africa." 5 October 2006. The number included both charismatics and Pentecostalists.
4. World Christian Database. Reported by Pew, Africa.
5. William Folorunso Kumuyi. Quoted by Alan Isaacson. Deeper Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990. Requoted on "Pastor W. F. Kumuyi" tab. Deeper Life website, Washington, DC.
6. Wikipedia. "William Kumuyi."
7. He graduated from secondary school in 1961, taught at Mayflower in 1962, and graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1967. If he took the usual four years, he matriculated in 1963. (Wikipedia, Kumuyi)
8. Kumuyi. Quoted on Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington. The term Gospel church, with a capital G, often was used for Aimee Simple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church. It entered Nigeria in 1954. (Pew Research Center. "Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in Nigeria." 5 October 2006.)
9. Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
10. Wikipedia. "Deeper Christian Life Ministry."
11. Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
12. Culturally Nigeria was divided into three unequal parts by the Niger River. The Hausa and Fulani lived in the north, the Yoruba and Ewe in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast. There were more people and more land in the north, creating a political imbalance between the groups.
13. Wikipedia. "History of Nigeria."
14. Wikipedia, Ministry.
15. Isaacson. Quoted on Kumuyi tab, Deeper Life, Washington.
16. "What We Believe." Deeper Life website, Lagos, Nigeria.
17. Zondervan published Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth in 1970. (Wikipedia. "Hal Lindsey.) Seven of Deeper Life’s 22 tenets of "What We Believe" related to the second coming. Only one was devoted to each of the other topics. (Deeper Life, Nigeria)
18. The post for 29 August 2017 provided background on the arranger, Lucas Deon Bok.
19. Zora Neale Hurston. "Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals." 79-84 in The Sanctified Church. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1983. 80. She was mentioned in post for 16 October 2017.
20. "What Is the Difference Between a Windscreen and a Pop Filter?" Audio-Technica website. 13 August 2015.
21. For more on the age children learn mimic gestures, see the post for 8 November 2017. They shared the interest of girls their age, but were limited by their small the pool of movements. Girls in Camp Fire Girls camps, at least in the Midwest, had a larger repertoire of gestures to draw upon.
22. "Pastor Michael A. Dada." Deeper Life website, Washington, DC.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Doc McKenzie - Come By Here
Topic: Theology - Pentecostalism
Don McKenzie was raised in Saint Mark’s Holiness Church in Lake City, South Carolina. Its roots lay in the Holiness revivals held in the Carolinas in the 1880s. Some were open to Blacks, like one led by Elijah Lowney in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1892, [1] and some, like one held in Clinton, North Carolina, in 1896 by Abner Crumpler, had separate services for Blacks and whites. [2]
A number of groups who accepted the validity of the Azusa Street revival mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017 merged into the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Falcon, North Carolina, in 1911. [3] In 1913, the same year whites withdrew into the Assemblies of God, John Henry Pendergrass returned from its convention in Georgia convinced "leaving the Pentecostal Holiness Movement was inevitable." He and others formed the Believers Holiness Church two years later. Today the African-American conference has seventeen congregations, most in South Carolina. [4]
MacKenzie’s father, Leroy, was a deacon in the Lake City church, and historian for the conference. [5] Doc himself began attending church when he was three, led the choir when he was six, and was teaching Sunday School when he was eleven. The pastor gave him his nickname "because of his ability to ‘doctor’ just about anything." [6]
Lake City was located on the inland plain below the fall line in Florence County where Scots Irish had settled in 1736. The area grew with railroads just before the Civil War, and remained a rail center. During the period when the Holiness movement was spreading in the area, a mob murdered "the city’s black postmaster and his infant daughter." [7]
At some time, members of the extended McKenzie family began migrating north to Patterson, New Jersey. His sister, Beronzy, and her husband moved there after she graduated from high school in 1964. [8] She began singing with her cousin, Handy McFadden. Doc joined them a few years later. [9]
They made their first commercial record in 1981 for a small company, and one for Savoy in 1983 as Doc McKenzie and The Gospel Hi-Lites. He must have returned South in 1985, when he recorded under that name for Meltone Records of Atlanta. [10] He recorded "Come by Here" for Meltone in 1989, [11] when he was 40-years-old. [12]
His version followed the prelude-denouement format that began with a spoken introduction asking the Lord for a favor. He then sang verses that asked the Lord to come because "somebody needs You." After five verses, he was clear, "we need the Holy Ghost." He switched to a guttural voice on some lines, before chanting "we need You" in a list of places. He continued pleading for "one more touch" as the record ended.
The backup group emphasized the plea for the Lord to manifest Himself. In the first part, they finished his lines with "stop by here." During the denouement, they repeated "stop by" as McKenzie said he was praying.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Doc McKenzie
Vocal Group: The Gospel Hi-Lites. They were all men on this recording.
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano, organ
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, need You, need a blessing, send a blessing, send a healing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody, we, I
Term for Deity: Lord, Jesus
Special Terms: stop by here
Basic Form: prelude-denouement
Prelude
Verse Length: four lines
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB, with slight variations in each repetition of A
Line Form: statement-refrain, with the form of the statements varying by verse
Denouement
Verse form: incremental repetition
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: one tone, with a descent on the last words
Tempo: upbeat from the beginning, but the drummer began sounding more beats in the transition and continued during the denouement
Solo Singing Style: unornamented. McKenzie changed to gutteral phrases and shouts in the denouement.
Group Singing Style: chordal harmony.
Solo-Group Dynamics: they sang the first three lines of the early verses separately, and joined on the last. During the denouement, the group began repeating phrases that began after he sang the first word and continued while he finished.
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano, guitar and drum began just before he began speaking, and continued throughout.
Notes on Performers
McKenzie recorded for Meltone, whose owner provided session musicians and backup singers. Melvin Couch also arranged concerts for his performers. However, he began having financial problems that led him to sell his recording studio to a drug dealer. That, in turn, led to investigations in 1990 by the Drug Enforcement Administration. [13]
McKenzie apparently responded by taking control of all his recordings and bookings. In 1990, he released six albums made for three companies: Savoy, Meltone, and Gospel AIR of Atlanta [14] I only found recent lists of members of The Gospel Hi-Lites.
His sister Beronzy stayed in Patterson where she was a "charter member of The Hope of Deliverance Church of God." She continued to sing with the Tribulation Ensemble and the Gospel Enchanters. [15]
At least two other sisters moved to Patterson: Teletha [16] and Ginnie. The latter left after graduating from high school in 1970, and moved back to Lake City. She sang in the Gospel Hi-Lites at one time. "She was a praise and worship leader and would sing whenever she was called on. She would sing at funeral services, conferences and revivals. She never said no when it came to singing, she loved to praise God in song." [17]
Availability
Album: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Meltone 1501. 1989.
Reissue: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Meltone 1501. 17 October 1990.
Reissue: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Grammercy Records. 1 June 2004.
Reissue: The Best Of Doc McKenzie & The Gospel Hi-Lites. Grammercy Records. 5 May 2010. CD.
YouTube: uploaded by Gospel Experience on 23 February 2012.
End Notes
1. David D. Daniels, III. "Pentecostalism." 585-595 in Encyclopedia of African American Religions. Edited by Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, and Gary L. Ward. Abington-on-Thames, Oxford: Routledge, 2013 edition. 587.
2. R. Michael Thornton. Fire in the Carolinas: The Revival Legacy of G. B. Cashwell and A. B. Crumpler. Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma Media, 2014. 61.
3. Wikipedia. "International Pentecostal Holiness Church."
4. "Our History." Believers Holiness Church Conference website. Dropping the word "Pentecostal" from its name may have had less to do with doctrine, and more with white connotations that were developing around word. The conference’s only comment on doctrine was "We strive by the leading of the Holy Ghost."
5. Believers Holiness Church.
6. South Carolina General Assembly. Joint Resolution S.1203, "To show appreciation to Doc McKenzie." Adopted 28 April 2004. The explanation for his name was ambiguous. I found no reference to him as a man with special healing skills.
7. Wikipedia. "Lake City, South Carolina."
8. Obituary for "Beronzy ‘Bea’ McKenzie." Carrie P. Bragg Funeral Home, Patterson, New Jersey.
9. SC General Assembly.
10. "Doc McKenzie And The Gospel Hi-Lites." Discogs website.
11. "Meltone Records." Just Gospel website.
12. SC General Assembly.
13. Melvin Couch. Power, Money, Music and the Almighty. With Kate E. Stephenson. New York: Welstar Publications, Inc., 2009. Chapter 12, "Scandalized My Name."
14. Wikipedia. "Doc McKenzie." Gospel AIR was owned by Alan Freeman’s Atlantic International Records. (Freeman’s Linked-In page)
15. Beronzy McKenzie.
16. Obituary for "Teletha (McKenzie) Horne." Legacy website.
17. Obituary for "Mary Delores ‘Ginnie’ McKenzie." Carrie P. Bragg Funeral Home, Patterson, New Jersey.
Don McKenzie was raised in Saint Mark’s Holiness Church in Lake City, South Carolina. Its roots lay in the Holiness revivals held in the Carolinas in the 1880s. Some were open to Blacks, like one led by Elijah Lowney in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1892, [1] and some, like one held in Clinton, North Carolina, in 1896 by Abner Crumpler, had separate services for Blacks and whites. [2]
A number of groups who accepted the validity of the Azusa Street revival mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017 merged into the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Falcon, North Carolina, in 1911. [3] In 1913, the same year whites withdrew into the Assemblies of God, John Henry Pendergrass returned from its convention in Georgia convinced "leaving the Pentecostal Holiness Movement was inevitable." He and others formed the Believers Holiness Church two years later. Today the African-American conference has seventeen congregations, most in South Carolina. [4]
MacKenzie’s father, Leroy, was a deacon in the Lake City church, and historian for the conference. [5] Doc himself began attending church when he was three, led the choir when he was six, and was teaching Sunday School when he was eleven. The pastor gave him his nickname "because of his ability to ‘doctor’ just about anything." [6]
Lake City was located on the inland plain below the fall line in Florence County where Scots Irish had settled in 1736. The area grew with railroads just before the Civil War, and remained a rail center. During the period when the Holiness movement was spreading in the area, a mob murdered "the city’s black postmaster and his infant daughter." [7]
At some time, members of the extended McKenzie family began migrating north to Patterson, New Jersey. His sister, Beronzy, and her husband moved there after she graduated from high school in 1964. [8] She began singing with her cousin, Handy McFadden. Doc joined them a few years later. [9]
They made their first commercial record in 1981 for a small company, and one for Savoy in 1983 as Doc McKenzie and The Gospel Hi-Lites. He must have returned South in 1985, when he recorded under that name for Meltone Records of Atlanta. [10] He recorded "Come by Here" for Meltone in 1989, [11] when he was 40-years-old. [12]
His version followed the prelude-denouement format that began with a spoken introduction asking the Lord for a favor. He then sang verses that asked the Lord to come because "somebody needs You." After five verses, he was clear, "we need the Holy Ghost." He switched to a guttural voice on some lines, before chanting "we need You" in a list of places. He continued pleading for "one more touch" as the record ended.
The backup group emphasized the plea for the Lord to manifest Himself. In the first part, they finished his lines with "stop by here." During the denouement, they repeated "stop by" as McKenzie said he was praying.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Doc McKenzie
Vocal Group: The Gospel Hi-Lites. They were all men on this recording.
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano, organ
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: come by here, need You, need a blessing, send a blessing, send a healing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: somebody, we, I
Term for Deity: Lord, Jesus
Special Terms: stop by here
Basic Form: prelude-denouement
Prelude
Verse Length: four lines
Line Repetition Pattern: AAAB, with slight variations in each repetition of A
Line Form: statement-refrain, with the form of the statements varying by verse
Denouement
Verse form: incremental repetition
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: one tone, with a descent on the last words
Tempo: upbeat from the beginning, but the drummer began sounding more beats in the transition and continued during the denouement
Solo Singing Style: unornamented. McKenzie changed to gutteral phrases and shouts in the denouement.
Group Singing Style: chordal harmony.
Solo-Group Dynamics: they sang the first three lines of the early verses separately, and joined on the last. During the denouement, the group began repeating phrases that began after he sang the first word and continued while he finished.
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano, guitar and drum began just before he began speaking, and continued throughout.
Notes on Performers
McKenzie recorded for Meltone, whose owner provided session musicians and backup singers. Melvin Couch also arranged concerts for his performers. However, he began having financial problems that led him to sell his recording studio to a drug dealer. That, in turn, led to investigations in 1990 by the Drug Enforcement Administration. [13]
McKenzie apparently responded by taking control of all his recordings and bookings. In 1990, he released six albums made for three companies: Savoy, Meltone, and Gospel AIR of Atlanta [14] I only found recent lists of members of The Gospel Hi-Lites.
His sister Beronzy stayed in Patterson where she was a "charter member of The Hope of Deliverance Church of God." She continued to sing with the Tribulation Ensemble and the Gospel Enchanters. [15]
At least two other sisters moved to Patterson: Teletha [16] and Ginnie. The latter left after graduating from high school in 1970, and moved back to Lake City. She sang in the Gospel Hi-Lites at one time. "She was a praise and worship leader and would sing whenever she was called on. She would sing at funeral services, conferences and revivals. She never said no when it came to singing, she loved to praise God in song." [17]
Availability
Album: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Meltone 1501. 1989.
Reissue: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Meltone 1501. 17 October 1990.
Reissue: That’s Why They Call Me Doc. Grammercy Records. 1 June 2004.
Reissue: The Best Of Doc McKenzie & The Gospel Hi-Lites. Grammercy Records. 5 May 2010. CD.
YouTube: uploaded by Gospel Experience on 23 February 2012.
End Notes
1. David D. Daniels, III. "Pentecostalism." 585-595 in Encyclopedia of African American Religions. Edited by Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, and Gary L. Ward. Abington-on-Thames, Oxford: Routledge, 2013 edition. 587.
2. R. Michael Thornton. Fire in the Carolinas: The Revival Legacy of G. B. Cashwell and A. B. Crumpler. Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma Media, 2014. 61.
3. Wikipedia. "International Pentecostal Holiness Church."
4. "Our History." Believers Holiness Church Conference website. Dropping the word "Pentecostal" from its name may have had less to do with doctrine, and more with white connotations that were developing around word. The conference’s only comment on doctrine was "We strive by the leading of the Holy Ghost."
5. Believers Holiness Church.
6. South Carolina General Assembly. Joint Resolution S.1203, "To show appreciation to Doc McKenzie." Adopted 28 April 2004. The explanation for his name was ambiguous. I found no reference to him as a man with special healing skills.
7. Wikipedia. "Lake City, South Carolina."
8. Obituary for "Beronzy ‘Bea’ McKenzie." Carrie P. Bragg Funeral Home, Patterson, New Jersey.
9. SC General Assembly.
10. "Doc McKenzie And The Gospel Hi-Lites." Discogs website.
11. "Meltone Records." Just Gospel website.
12. SC General Assembly.
13. Melvin Couch. Power, Money, Music and the Almighty. With Kate E. Stephenson. New York: Welstar Publications, Inc., 2009. Chapter 12, "Scandalized My Name."
14. Wikipedia. "Doc McKenzie." Gospel AIR was owned by Alan Freeman’s Atlantic International Records. (Freeman’s Linked-In page)
15. Beronzy McKenzie.
16. Obituary for "Teletha (McKenzie) Horne." Legacy website.
17. Obituary for "Mary Delores ‘Ginnie’ McKenzie." Carrie P. Bragg Funeral Home, Patterson, New Jersey.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
William Seymour
Topic: Theology - Pentecostalism
The question posed by the Anglo-Scots Reformation persists: how does one know one is saved?
Phoebe Palmer looked for answers in John Wesley’s belief that sanctification was a separate step. [1] Since she was raised a Methodist, and baptized as a child, she had not experienced conversion. She hoped this second baptism or second birth would answer her need for certainty.
When even that did not provide assurance, she fell back on Jean Calvin’s covenant theology. [2] She argued, if she did accept Christ, then God could not disown his implicit agreement with humans. [3] To prove her sincerity she devoted her life to doing good deeds in His name. [4]
Camp meetings sponsored by the National Holiness Association disseminated her ideas after the Civil War. From those roots in the Northern Methodist Church, they moved south through African-American churches in the 1870s and 1880s. The set of beliefs expanded in the 1880s as German-American preachers spread the word through Ohio. By 1890, Holiness speakers had come to include elements of premillennialism and faith healing in their sermons.
The question of proof became more urgent after the Panic of 1893 when even God-fearing people lost their jobs or farms. Revivals erupted in Europe and this country. [5] Holiness preachers began emphasizing premillennial connections, and urging people to save themselves by leaving their established churches for new ones that promised ways to survive the coming apocalypse. [6]
Charles Parham was one of many who believed the nature of the proof had been defined by the first chapters of the Book of Acts. After Christ’s death, the apostles had gathered to discuss how to continue His ministry without Judas. They narrowed their choice for a replacement to two men, then cast lots so the Lord could indicate His preference. [7] When they met on the anniversary of Pentecost, they were given a better sign: they heard a wind, then saw tongues of fire come down and touch them. [8]
"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." [9]
Parham gathered a group to study Acts that stumbled on a method for inducing glossolalia. [10] Lucy Farrow, an African-American woman who worked for him in 1905, took his ideas to her church where William Seymour was a member. [11] When the son of slaves went to California, he preached the doctrine of tongues, but members of the congregation were unwilling to accept the possibility their sanctification had been incomplete. Only when Farrow arrived and was able to reproduce Parham’s experiment did they listen. [12]
Their experience of what they called speaking in tongues led to the Azusa Street Revival that lasted in Los Angeles from 1906 to 1915. Religious seekers flocked there. Whites, used to the defined order of worship in Methodist and other churches, were surprised at the seeming randomness of events. Fifty-nine years later, Ernest Williams described his first impression. He arrived when "the altar service was at its height."
"I wish I could describe what I saw. Prayer and worship were everywhere. The altar area was filled with seekers; some were kneeling; others were prone on the floor; some were speaking in tongues. Everyone was doing something; all seemingly lost in God. I simply stood and looked, for I had never seen anything like it." [13]
Arthur Osterberg remembered Seymour was no orator in the tradition of George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards. "He might preach for three-quarters of an hour with no more emotionalism than that there post." [14] Instead of a sermon explicating the word, his services featured prayers for the gift of tongues, testimonies, and the altar calls like the one described by Williams. [15]
Singing was described as "sporadic" and "a capella," although instruments were not proscribed. [16] Seymour’s wife played piano. [17] Stephen Dove found three kinds of music mentioned in revival memoirs: "singing in the Spirit, new compositions written in a conventional style, and traditional hymns." [18]
Years later, a white jazz historian experienced the same disorientation when he entered an African-American church that used "drums, piano, trumpet, saxophone, guitar, and ukulele." Rudi Blesh wrote:
"I recall vividly an evening service in a San Francisco Negro church where the singing began with hand-clapping and the percussive tinkle of tambourines throughout the congregation. The small and nondescript orchestra participated, and soon numbers of the communicants, adults and children, were dancing in the pews and in the aisles. After perhaps ten minutes, the pastor and, one by one, the elders, began to dance on the platform. The last, a white-haired man, reached under his chair, pulled a fiddle from its case, and began to play while swaying, totteringly but rhythmically. For about twenty minutes the music, like a tidal wave, rose in intensity and fervor. As spontaneously as it began, the singing stopped, and, joyous and refreshed, the congregation took up the service again." [19]
The most radical aspect of Azusa Street was the intermingling of men and women, Blacks and whites. This was at the time when Jim Crow practices were spreading beyond the Deep South. Discomforts with racial mixing, blurred social-class boundaries, and unrestrained emotions at Azusa Street led to the formation of dissident sects.
In 1913, the editor of an independent Pentecostal publication, issued a call to all "saints who believe in baptism with the Holy Ghost" to meet in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to create some form of coordinating organization. The all-white Assemblies of God was the result. [20]
Eudorus Bell’s group explicitly endorsed speaking in tongues as the only proof of salvation, but others were not so adamant. Some Pentecostalists accepted being healed by faith, hearing voices, or dancing as equally important signs of divine blessing. Many were persuaded they could receive some benefits of salvation upon committing themselves to Christ. Most demonstrated their status by adopting conservative dress and avoiding a list of tabooed activities.
Not all whites joined the Assemblies of God. Liston Pope visited a white Pentecostal church in Gastonia, North Carolina, [21] that differed little from Azusa Street. The three-hour service began with the usual opening hymns, Bible readings, and a sermon. Then it progressed to testimonies and an altar call with a mourning bench.
Emotions permeated the proceedings. Before the service began, "a band, including three stringed instruments and a saxophone, plays occasional music." [22] Then, rather than a formal call to service
"the actions of the congregation become more intense and concerted in character; there is almost nothing by way of formal announcement. The choir, in coöperation with the pastor, breaks into a rhythmic hymn, and the congregation follows suit. The hymn has an interminable number of stanzas, and a refrain reminiscent of mountain ballads both in music and in narrative form. The hymn looks toward a narrative climax, and the excitement of the congregation increases as the singing proceeds. The stanzas are punctuated with loud shouts of ‘Hallelujah,’ ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ‘Glory,’ and the rhythmic clapping of hands and tapping of feet. Almost immediately, various members of the congregation begin to ‘get the Holy Ghost’ (as a teen-age boy awesomely remarks)." [23]
The term Pentecostal has developed several meanings since the formation of the Assemblies of God. Outsiders tend to confuse Pentecostals with other forms of conservative or evangelizing Protestantism, and often dismiss them all as Holy Rollers. However, all those groups know the differences between themselves because doctrine is what distinguishes them from one another. [24]
The music, including versions of Kumbaya recorded by Pentecostal artists, tends to follow the patterns described by Blesh and Pope: it serves to initiate contact with the Spirit. The lyrics often emphasize the fact people need Christ’s attention. Some specifically request His healing. The end of the world has faded as a theme in their repertoire.
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "The Scripture Way of Salvation." Sermon 43. Sermons on Several Occasions. First Series. London: James Nichols, 1771. This version was edited by Anne-Elizabeth Powell, with amendments by Ryan Danker and George Lyons. Available on Northwest Nazarene University, Wesley Center for Applied Theology website.
2. Wikipedia. "Covenant Theology."
3. She documented her struggles in faith in her journal. It later was published as The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. Edited by Richard Wheatley. New York: W. C. Palmer, Jr., 1876.
4. She upended the idea condemned by Martin Luther and others that doing good deeds would ensure her entry into Heaven. She performed good deed only after she was assured of her eternal fate. In 1850, she helped found the Five Points Mission to service Irish immigrants in Lower Manhattan. (John G. McEllhenney. "Phoebe Palmer." The United Methodist Church General Commission on Archives and History website.) Her example contributed to the rise of the Social Gospel.
5. Chronologically, William Kostlevy noted premillenialism became part of the Holiness movement during the depression that followed the panic. ("Introduction." " xxxiii-xl in Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2009, second edition. xxxviii).
Vinson Synan observed the significance of Willam Jennings Bryan’s campaign for president in 1896 to the growth of the radical Holiness movement in the Midwest. (The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 42.)
A revival in Wales that began in1904, a few years before Azusa Street, "swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America." (Wikipedia. "1904–1905 Welsh revival.") Many believe it prepared the way for many to accept Pentecostalism.
6. The call to exit the church led the Southern Methodist hierarchy to denounce Holiness preachers and to close its facilities to them. Synan noted, "most of the holiness groups began in the decade after 1894, although a few began earlier and some as late as 1917. The majority of these new churches, however, were organized during the four years following the 1894 General Conference of the Southern Methodist Church." (Synan, Holiness. 48.)
7. Act 1:24-26, King James translation.
8. Act 2:3, King James translation. Thereafter, casting lots and other resorts to chance were condemned as pagan; later card playing and gambling were condemned for the same reasons.
9. Acts 2:4, King James translation.
10. Glossolalia was the linguist’s term for the various forms of incomprehensible speech attributed to divine inspiration. (Wikipedia. "Glossolalia.")
11. Seymour was raised in a part of southern Louisiana where sugarcane was the primary crop. He escaped farm labor for Memphis in 1891, and was in Saint Louis by 1893, converted by Methodists in Indianapolis in the 1ate 1890s, and exposed to Holiness theory by Daniel Warner’s Evening Lights Saints when he was living in Cincinnati around 1900. For unknown reasons, he returned to the South where he joined the prayer group led by Farrow in Houston in 1905. A woman, who had heard him preach, recommended him for a vacancy that took him to California.
See: Charles R. Fox Jr. "William J. Seymour: Pioneer of the Azusa Street Revival." 15-167 in William Seymour: Pioneer of the Azusa Street Revival. Edited by Vinson Synan and Fox. Alachua, Florida: Bridge Logos Foundation, 2012. On Indianapolis, 30; on Cincinnati, 32.
Roberts Liardon. The Azusa Street Revival. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Image Publishers, 2006. On Memphis and Saint Louis, 90.
Synan, Holiness. On Houston, 94.
12. Seymour himself had not spoken in tongues when he arrived in California. After the church that called him rejected his doctrine, he continued to board with one the members of the congregation. It was while he was living there that he invited Farrow to come to Los Angeles. (Eddie L. Hyatt. "Lucy Farrow: The Forgotten Apostle of Pentecost." Charisma 20 February 2014.)
13. Ernest S. Williams. Pentecostal Evangel 4 April 1966. Reproduced on 312 Azusa Street website. He later was a General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God.
14. Arthur Osterberg. Quoted by Vinson Synan. "The Lasting Legacies of the Azusa Street Revival." Enrichment Journal, February 2006. The General Council of the Assemblies of God website.
15. Wikipedia. "Azusa Street Revival."
16. Wikipedia, Azusa Street.
17. Glenn Clark. "Jennie Evans Moore Seymour - Vanguard of Pentecost." Charisma Magazine website. 30 November 2003.
18. Stephen Dove. "Hymnody and Liturgy in the Azusa Street Revival, 1906-1908." Pneuma 31:242-263:2009. Quotation from abstract.
19. Rudi Blesh. Shining Trumpets. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. 69. Bolded words reflect the Protestant view that there was a prescribed order of service, and the shout, which slaves added after the service, was seen as a deviation from the official program.
20. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 821. The editor was Eudorus N. Bell. His publication was Word and Witness.
21. Liston Pope. Millhands and Preachers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942. He noted "Negroes, comprising a relatively small percentage of the population of the county and its surrounding territory, were excluded from the mills almost entirely." (12) He added that on the piedmont, "The rise of the mills represented to considerable degree the economic triumph of the poor white man over the emancipated black. As the whites moved into the cotton mills. The Negroes drifted rapidly into farm tenancy and to Northern cities." (12-13) Pope was a sociologist studying the community after a particularly ugly strike in 1929. (Wikipedia. "Loray Mill Strike.")
22. Pope. 130.
23. Pope. 130-131.
24. I try to use the term Pentecostal only for people who apply it to themselves.
The question posed by the Anglo-Scots Reformation persists: how does one know one is saved?
Phoebe Palmer looked for answers in John Wesley’s belief that sanctification was a separate step. [1] Since she was raised a Methodist, and baptized as a child, she had not experienced conversion. She hoped this second baptism or second birth would answer her need for certainty.
When even that did not provide assurance, she fell back on Jean Calvin’s covenant theology. [2] She argued, if she did accept Christ, then God could not disown his implicit agreement with humans. [3] To prove her sincerity she devoted her life to doing good deeds in His name. [4]
Camp meetings sponsored by the National Holiness Association disseminated her ideas after the Civil War. From those roots in the Northern Methodist Church, they moved south through African-American churches in the 1870s and 1880s. The set of beliefs expanded in the 1880s as German-American preachers spread the word through Ohio. By 1890, Holiness speakers had come to include elements of premillennialism and faith healing in their sermons.
The question of proof became more urgent after the Panic of 1893 when even God-fearing people lost their jobs or farms. Revivals erupted in Europe and this country. [5] Holiness preachers began emphasizing premillennial connections, and urging people to save themselves by leaving their established churches for new ones that promised ways to survive the coming apocalypse. [6]
Charles Parham was one of many who believed the nature of the proof had been defined by the first chapters of the Book of Acts. After Christ’s death, the apostles had gathered to discuss how to continue His ministry without Judas. They narrowed their choice for a replacement to two men, then cast lots so the Lord could indicate His preference. [7] When they met on the anniversary of Pentecost, they were given a better sign: they heard a wind, then saw tongues of fire come down and touch them. [8]
"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." [9]
Parham gathered a group to study Acts that stumbled on a method for inducing glossolalia. [10] Lucy Farrow, an African-American woman who worked for him in 1905, took his ideas to her church where William Seymour was a member. [11] When the son of slaves went to California, he preached the doctrine of tongues, but members of the congregation were unwilling to accept the possibility their sanctification had been incomplete. Only when Farrow arrived and was able to reproduce Parham’s experiment did they listen. [12]
Their experience of what they called speaking in tongues led to the Azusa Street Revival that lasted in Los Angeles from 1906 to 1915. Religious seekers flocked there. Whites, used to the defined order of worship in Methodist and other churches, were surprised at the seeming randomness of events. Fifty-nine years later, Ernest Williams described his first impression. He arrived when "the altar service was at its height."
"I wish I could describe what I saw. Prayer and worship were everywhere. The altar area was filled with seekers; some were kneeling; others were prone on the floor; some were speaking in tongues. Everyone was doing something; all seemingly lost in God. I simply stood and looked, for I had never seen anything like it." [13]
Arthur Osterberg remembered Seymour was no orator in the tradition of George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards. "He might preach for three-quarters of an hour with no more emotionalism than that there post." [14] Instead of a sermon explicating the word, his services featured prayers for the gift of tongues, testimonies, and the altar calls like the one described by Williams. [15]
Singing was described as "sporadic" and "a capella," although instruments were not proscribed. [16] Seymour’s wife played piano. [17] Stephen Dove found three kinds of music mentioned in revival memoirs: "singing in the Spirit, new compositions written in a conventional style, and traditional hymns." [18]
Years later, a white jazz historian experienced the same disorientation when he entered an African-American church that used "drums, piano, trumpet, saxophone, guitar, and ukulele." Rudi Blesh wrote:
"I recall vividly an evening service in a San Francisco Negro church where the singing began with hand-clapping and the percussive tinkle of tambourines throughout the congregation. The small and nondescript orchestra participated, and soon numbers of the communicants, adults and children, were dancing in the pews and in the aisles. After perhaps ten minutes, the pastor and, one by one, the elders, began to dance on the platform. The last, a white-haired man, reached under his chair, pulled a fiddle from its case, and began to play while swaying, totteringly but rhythmically. For about twenty minutes the music, like a tidal wave, rose in intensity and fervor. As spontaneously as it began, the singing stopped, and, joyous and refreshed, the congregation took up the service again." [19]
The most radical aspect of Azusa Street was the intermingling of men and women, Blacks and whites. This was at the time when Jim Crow practices were spreading beyond the Deep South. Discomforts with racial mixing, blurred social-class boundaries, and unrestrained emotions at Azusa Street led to the formation of dissident sects.
In 1913, the editor of an independent Pentecostal publication, issued a call to all "saints who believe in baptism with the Holy Ghost" to meet in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to create some form of coordinating organization. The all-white Assemblies of God was the result. [20]
Eudorus Bell’s group explicitly endorsed speaking in tongues as the only proof of salvation, but others were not so adamant. Some Pentecostalists accepted being healed by faith, hearing voices, or dancing as equally important signs of divine blessing. Many were persuaded they could receive some benefits of salvation upon committing themselves to Christ. Most demonstrated their status by adopting conservative dress and avoiding a list of tabooed activities.
Not all whites joined the Assemblies of God. Liston Pope visited a white Pentecostal church in Gastonia, North Carolina, [21] that differed little from Azusa Street. The three-hour service began with the usual opening hymns, Bible readings, and a sermon. Then it progressed to testimonies and an altar call with a mourning bench.
Emotions permeated the proceedings. Before the service began, "a band, including three stringed instruments and a saxophone, plays occasional music." [22] Then, rather than a formal call to service
"the actions of the congregation become more intense and concerted in character; there is almost nothing by way of formal announcement. The choir, in coöperation with the pastor, breaks into a rhythmic hymn, and the congregation follows suit. The hymn has an interminable number of stanzas, and a refrain reminiscent of mountain ballads both in music and in narrative form. The hymn looks toward a narrative climax, and the excitement of the congregation increases as the singing proceeds. The stanzas are punctuated with loud shouts of ‘Hallelujah,’ ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ‘Glory,’ and the rhythmic clapping of hands and tapping of feet. Almost immediately, various members of the congregation begin to ‘get the Holy Ghost’ (as a teen-age boy awesomely remarks)." [23]
The term Pentecostal has developed several meanings since the formation of the Assemblies of God. Outsiders tend to confuse Pentecostals with other forms of conservative or evangelizing Protestantism, and often dismiss them all as Holy Rollers. However, all those groups know the differences between themselves because doctrine is what distinguishes them from one another. [24]
The music, including versions of Kumbaya recorded by Pentecostal artists, tends to follow the patterns described by Blesh and Pope: it serves to initiate contact with the Spirit. The lyrics often emphasize the fact people need Christ’s attention. Some specifically request His healing. The end of the world has faded as a theme in their repertoire.
End Notes
1. John Wesley. "The Scripture Way of Salvation." Sermon 43. Sermons on Several Occasions. First Series. London: James Nichols, 1771. This version was edited by Anne-Elizabeth Powell, with amendments by Ryan Danker and George Lyons. Available on Northwest Nazarene University, Wesley Center for Applied Theology website.
2. Wikipedia. "Covenant Theology."
3. She documented her struggles in faith in her journal. It later was published as The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. Edited by Richard Wheatley. New York: W. C. Palmer, Jr., 1876.
4. She upended the idea condemned by Martin Luther and others that doing good deeds would ensure her entry into Heaven. She performed good deed only after she was assured of her eternal fate. In 1850, she helped found the Five Points Mission to service Irish immigrants in Lower Manhattan. (John G. McEllhenney. "Phoebe Palmer." The United Methodist Church General Commission on Archives and History website.) Her example contributed to the rise of the Social Gospel.
5. Chronologically, William Kostlevy noted premillenialism became part of the Holiness movement during the depression that followed the panic. ("Introduction." " xxxiii-xl in Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2009, second edition. xxxviii).
Vinson Synan observed the significance of Willam Jennings Bryan’s campaign for president in 1896 to the growth of the radical Holiness movement in the Midwest. (The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 42.)
A revival in Wales that began in1904, a few years before Azusa Street, "swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America." (Wikipedia. "1904–1905 Welsh revival.") Many believe it prepared the way for many to accept Pentecostalism.
6. The call to exit the church led the Southern Methodist hierarchy to denounce Holiness preachers and to close its facilities to them. Synan noted, "most of the holiness groups began in the decade after 1894, although a few began earlier and some as late as 1917. The majority of these new churches, however, were organized during the four years following the 1894 General Conference of the Southern Methodist Church." (Synan, Holiness. 48.)
7. Act 1:24-26, King James translation.
8. Act 2:3, King James translation. Thereafter, casting lots and other resorts to chance were condemned as pagan; later card playing and gambling were condemned for the same reasons.
9. Acts 2:4, King James translation.
10. Glossolalia was the linguist’s term for the various forms of incomprehensible speech attributed to divine inspiration. (Wikipedia. "Glossolalia.")
11. Seymour was raised in a part of southern Louisiana where sugarcane was the primary crop. He escaped farm labor for Memphis in 1891, and was in Saint Louis by 1893, converted by Methodists in Indianapolis in the 1ate 1890s, and exposed to Holiness theory by Daniel Warner’s Evening Lights Saints when he was living in Cincinnati around 1900. For unknown reasons, he returned to the South where he joined the prayer group led by Farrow in Houston in 1905. A woman, who had heard him preach, recommended him for a vacancy that took him to California.
See: Charles R. Fox Jr. "William J. Seymour: Pioneer of the Azusa Street Revival." 15-167 in William Seymour: Pioneer of the Azusa Street Revival. Edited by Vinson Synan and Fox. Alachua, Florida: Bridge Logos Foundation, 2012. On Indianapolis, 30; on Cincinnati, 32.
Roberts Liardon. The Azusa Street Revival. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Destiny Image Publishers, 2006. On Memphis and Saint Louis, 90.
Synan, Holiness. On Houston, 94.
12. Seymour himself had not spoken in tongues when he arrived in California. After the church that called him rejected his doctrine, he continued to board with one the members of the congregation. It was while he was living there that he invited Farrow to come to Los Angeles. (Eddie L. Hyatt. "Lucy Farrow: The Forgotten Apostle of Pentecost." Charisma 20 February 2014.)
13. Ernest S. Williams. Pentecostal Evangel 4 April 1966. Reproduced on 312 Azusa Street website. He later was a General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God.
14. Arthur Osterberg. Quoted by Vinson Synan. "The Lasting Legacies of the Azusa Street Revival." Enrichment Journal, February 2006. The General Council of the Assemblies of God website.
15. Wikipedia. "Azusa Street Revival."
16. Wikipedia, Azusa Street.
17. Glenn Clark. "Jennie Evans Moore Seymour - Vanguard of Pentecost." Charisma Magazine website. 30 November 2003.
18. Stephen Dove. "Hymnody and Liturgy in the Azusa Street Revival, 1906-1908." Pneuma 31:242-263:2009. Quotation from abstract.
19. Rudi Blesh. Shining Trumpets. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. 69. Bolded words reflect the Protestant view that there was a prescribed order of service, and the shout, which slaves added after the service, was seen as a deviation from the official program.
20. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 821. The editor was Eudorus N. Bell. His publication was Word and Witness.
21. Liston Pope. Millhands and Preachers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942. He noted "Negroes, comprising a relatively small percentage of the population of the county and its surrounding territory, were excluded from the mills almost entirely." (12) He added that on the piedmont, "The rise of the mills represented to considerable degree the economic triumph of the poor white man over the emancipated black. As the whites moved into the cotton mills. The Negroes drifted rapidly into farm tenancy and to Northern cities." (12-13) Pope was a sociologist studying the community after a particularly ugly strike in 1929. (Wikipedia. "Loray Mill Strike.")
22. Pope. 130.
23. Pope. 130-131.
24. I try to use the term Pentecostal only for people who apply it to themselves.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Wintley Phipps - Kumbaya
Topic: Theology - Seventh-day Adventist
Adventist leaders, like those of most churches in the United States today, behave more like the board of a multinational corporation than a religious brotherhood. This, of course, is partly because that, in fact, is what they are. In 1965, denomination adherents in the US represented one-quarter of the total membership; [1] in 2016 that percentage was down to 6%. [2]
More important, leaders throughout the hierarchy, from the president of the General Conference to local elders and deacons, had fiduciary obligations. That meant, they had to navigate an economic environment where they had to follow certain government rules to maintain their tax-exempt status. They also had to address the potential costs and liabilities that came from owning real estate open to the public and from hiring non-ministerial employees.
The authorities’ tendencies, again like those of most denominations in this country, were to retreat rather than face challenges. In 1965 they began having problems with the IRS over their policy of providing tax-exempt housing to both their ordained and licensed ministers. The second group included women. When faced with redefining ritual functions, they chose to disregard women rather than ordain them to meet IRS rules in 1975. [3]
This was similar to the hierarchy’s response in 1943 when African Americans demanded equal membership in the church. Rather than cede the authority of whites, the denomination introduced separate but equal conferences, state ones for whites and regional ones for Blacks. [4] That was just five years before Harry Truman integrated the military [5] and nine years before the Supreme Court ruled such arrangements were unconstitutional. [6]
The same tendency toward retrenchment characterized its response to the increased costs of maintaining a music department. In 1982, it simply eliminated the function. The King’s Heralds incorporated themselves and became independent contractors, available to work for any sponsor, not just Adventists. [7]
The long-term consequence of converting employees into independent contractors was diminished church activity because individuals no longer thought of bring the church new ideas for mission activity. Instead, they formed foundations or private corporations, then approached the church for contracts or commissions that enriched them, not the polity.
Wintley Phipps was an ordained minister between assignments [8] when he began recording gospel music in 1984. [9] Soon after, he was called to a Washington DC church, [10] where he pastored and continued to record; he was nominated for a grammy in 1988. A few years later, church members elected him to the General Conference Public Affairs Department. [11] He transferred to a Lanham, Maryland, church as an assistant pastor. [12]
During this time period, he began visiting prisoners and discovered the problems faced by their children. In 1998, he established a non-profit, tax-exempt organization to provide tutoring and mentoring to children between the ages of 7 and 11. [13] He then administered the US Dream Academy while preaching for the church and speaking for fees.
The problem with working as a part-time, independent singer was Phipps had limited control over his venues. His current agent’s website told would-be sponsors he had several standard speeches that came with one song, but that other arrangements could be made. [14]
In 2014, he recorded "Kumbaya" for a digital album released by an independent Christian distributor. He probably had two additional tapes made from the session - one with the music and chorus, but not his voice, and one with just the music. This enabled him to perform for a Maranatha function with no local musicians. When he performed the same song at the Oakwood Adventist Academy in Alabama and at a charitable organization’s meeting in Romania he was accompanied by the tape and local choral groups.
He had the greatest control at the Marantha function, which was held in an auditorium designed to make professional recordings. The YouTube video showed him at his best as a singer.
He also would have been comfortable at Oakwood. It was the K-12 school associated with the college he had attended, and he was performing in the college’s church. The video was made by a parent sitting some distance from the platform. From afar, the high school choir sounded like a choir who existed to support the soloist.
The trip to Romania would have been variation: [15] it involved at least one long plane ride to a city were English was not the primary language. The musical tradition also was different: polyphonic choral music had been introduced in the eighteenth-century and was learned orally through the end of the nineteenth. During the decades of rule by the Soviet Union, uniform melodies were adopted so congregations could participate in toto. [16]
Many of the young choristers in Grupo Voco may have been born after the end of Communist rule in 1989, but the older aesthetics persisted. They were able to learn from listening to Phipps’ recording, and transform the repeated background phrases into European part music to support a Caribbean-born gospel singer from the United States who shared their Adventist religion.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Wintley Phipps, bass baritone
Instrumental Accompaniment: tape had an orchestra
Rhythm Accompaniment: tape also had a drum
Oakwood Adventist Academy 9-12 Choir
Vocal Group: I could see 10 girls and 19 boys
Vocal Director: Justin Jordan [17]
Grupul Voces
Vocal Group: its website said it had 8 sopranos, 7 altos, 5 tenors, and 6 basses [18]
Vocal Director: Emanuel Suciu
Credits
Album
Copyright: (c) 2014 Discovery House Music
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: when Phipps introduced the song in Romania, he said kum BYE yah with a downward intonation of three tones on yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing, original text
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: C1 VV C VV C
Verses
Unique Features: "come by here" used instead of "kumbaya" with crying verse and, on album, with praying
Chorus
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Rhyme Pattern: AABB
Line Meter: trochaic Xx
Line Length: 11 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: none
Line Format: reversed statement-refrain form; "kumbaya my Lord" was followed by original text.
Ending: repeated last two lines of the chorus that emphasize request to the Lord to be near
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: Phipps’ pacing did not vary, because the tape was the same, but it seemed faster with Grupo Voces and slower with the Oakwood senior high choir.
Basic Structure: vocal solo with accompanying group repeating key phrases during the singing
Singing Style: Phipps sustained tones, especially at the ends of verses. When he held the last syllable of "kumbaya" on the second line or "Oh Lord" in the last line, he dropped down several tones. A couple times he sang the "ing" much higher, and returned to the original melodic line for the following "Lord." He said he was influenced by Tom Jones:
"So I mimicked his breath control, his phrasing, the way he would hold a note for a long time and then break into a vibrato, and applied it to gospel." [19]
The vocal groups sang chords. Grupo Voces familiarity with part-singing allowed them to sound more percussive.
Notes on Performance
Oakwood Adventist Academy
Occasion: Alumni Day, 5 September 2015
Location: Oakwood University Church, Huntsville, Alabama. Phipps was at the front of the platform with an unused grand piano on one side and an organ on the other. The choir stood on risers divided by wooden rails; a row of potted plants was in front of the first row.
Microphones: Phipps used a hand-held mike. Floor mikes were spaced around the front of the stage, some distance from the choir.
Clothing: boys in dark suits or vests and white shirts, no ties. Girls wore dresses of various colors with their hair loose. Phipps and the director wore dark suits, white shirts, and no ties.
Grupul Voces
Occasion: convention of ASI Targu Mures.
Location: stage in a convention center with blue fabric draped on the ceiling like a tent. Doric columns stood on each side of center stage with large video screens projecting Phipps’ face to the sides. A row of potted white flowers was on the apron.
Microphones: Phipps and each chorister had a hand-held microphone
Clothing: men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor and Phipps wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties. The women wore black dresses; most came to the knee, a few were a bit longer, and one was shorter. Their hair was loose, and several were blondes.
Maranatha
Occasion: not known
Location: studio auditorium with room for television cameras. Back of stage lined with flags on stands; one for Israel was prominent.
Microphones: cordless mike in right hand
Clothing: dark suit with matching dark tie and white shirt
Notes on Movement
Phipps
He bent his knees to keep time, and used his hands sparingly, and more toward the end than in the beginning. At Oakwood he raised his right hand on the key word of each phrase, and turned slightly toward the choir and raised his hand when the music was changing key. He used his arms more in Romania. At the Maranatha conference, he finished by spreading his arms wide and then rising them while he held the last note.
Oakwood Adventist Academy
The Oakwood choir stood still. The director used only his right hand in front of his body, which was raised, suggesting he was using the traditional cruciform pattern to mark time. His left arm stayed at his side.
Grupul Voces
The Romanian singers moved their heads a little. Their director mouthed or sang the words as he used his right hand to set the time and communicate the quality of sound desired. Occasionally, he used his left hand in front of his body.
Notes on Audience
All applauded at the end, but none made not any response during the performances. At Maranatha, not all the seats were filled and people were scattered.
Viewers’ Perceptions
The YouTube comments followed patterns found in many discussions of "Kumbaya." The ones in Romania wondered if rhythmic music was legitimate for praising God. The ones raised to heed and understand the word asked the meaning of the term "kumbaya."
Notes on Performers
Phipps was born in San Fernando, Trinidad, [20] to parents who moved to Montréal, Canada, where he attended an Adventist high school. When he began college in the 1970s, he selected the historically Black Oakwood College in Alabama, rather than a nearer, recently integrated Adventist school. Cleran Hollancid reported, the denomination’s primary seminary, Andrews University in southwestern Michigan, had a reputation for maltreating its African-American students. [21] Presumably those problems had subsided when Phipps earned his masters in theology there in 1979. [22]
His career was equally delimited by the denomination’s continued acceptance of segregation. The churches where he served as the senior pastor were in regional conferences: Capital Hill was in the Allegheny East Conference [23] and his current assignment in Palm Bay, Florida, was in the Southeastern Conference. [24] When he was on the General Conference staff and only an assistant pastor, his Seabrook Church was in the Potomac Conference. It was founded in 1883. [25]
Oakwood opened in 1896 as an industrial school that, by 1917, had expanded to teach college courses. [26] In 1974, the college shed the secondary school, which was taken over as a day-school by local churches in the South Central Conference. [27]
Maranatha organized volunteer efforts to support international missions. Its most visible activities were done by groups who traveled at their own cost to a site to build a church or school. It was organized in 1969 by John Freeman. [28]
Asociatia pentru Suport si Initiativa din Romania or ASI Romania was a Christian, voluntary association that supported missionary work. [29] Grupo Voces was organized in 2009 in the Transylvanian region of Romania and was affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist church in Târgu Mureº. [30]
Availability
Album: I Surrender All. Discovery House Music. 1 October 2014.
YouTube: uploaded by Wintley Phipps Networks on 9 March 2017.
Oakland Adventist Academy
YouTube: uploaded by TrishsMom on 12 September 2015.
Maranatha
YouTube: uploaded by Maranatha Mission Stories on 18 October 2015.
Grupul Voces
YouTube: uploaded by Pianistul Azs on 8 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by YOUR LIVING MANNA on 6 July 2016. This featured close-ups of Grupo Voces.
End Notes
1. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 959.
2. "Church Membership by World Divisions." 2016 Annual Statistical Report. Silver Spring, Maryland: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, revised 2 February 2017. 4. Canada and the United States were reported together as the North American Division.
3. Bert Haloviak. "The Internal Revenue Service and the Redefinition of Adventist Ministry." SDA Net website.
4. Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. "Separate Black and White Conferences--Part 1." His website. Based on his book Must We Be Silent? Berrien Springs, Michigan: Berean Books, 2001 edition. He was from Ghana.
5. Wikipedia. "Military History of African Americans." Truman signed executive order 9981 on 26 July 1948.
6. Wikipedia. "Brown v. Board of Education." Supreme Court published its ruling on segregation in public schools on 17 May 1954.
7. Dan Shultz. "The King’s Heralds." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2007.
8. Wintley Phipps. Your Best Destiny: Becoming the Person You Were Created to Be. Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2015. No page numbers in on-line version.
9. D. S. "Wintley Augustus Phipps, Sr." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2013. He was singing professionally while he was in college. (Wintley Phipps. "Finding My Voice." Guideposts website. 27 June 2016.)
10. "Our History." Capital Hill Seventh-day Adventist church website.
11. "Phipps, Wintley." Contemporary Black Biography. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005.
12. Robert Redding Jr. "Phipps: Spreading the Gospel." The Gazette website [The Washington Post]. 18 November 1999.
13. Thomas Gale. Phipps was influenced by Charles Colson.
14. Gold Stars Speakers Bureau. "Wintley Phipps." Its website.
15. He said "I take my family with me wherever I go. There are few African American families that have been able to visit all the countries of the world." Quoted by Redding in 1999. This may have changed when his sons got older.
16. Ivan Moody. "Music in the Orthodox Church." 531-546 in The Orthodox Christian World. Edited by Augustine Casiday. Abington, Oxford, England: Routledge, 2012. 535.
17. The Oakwood academy website identified Jordan as its high-school choir director.
18. "Despre noi." Grupul Voces website.
19. Phipps, Guideposts.
20. "Wintley Phipps, born in the city of San Fernando, Trinidad." OMG website. 30 July 2017.
21. Cleran Hollancid. "More about the Legacy of Race in Seventh-day Adventist Culture." Adventist Today website. 26 May 2017. Someone burned a cross on the campus in the 1960s.
22. D. S.
23. Capitol Hill Seventh-day Adventist church’s website.
24. Adventist Directory website entry for church.
25. Adventist Directory.
26. Wikipedia. "Oakwood University."
27. Wikipedia. "Oakwood Adventist Academy."
28. "History." Maranatha website.
29. "ASI Romania." Facebook.
30. "Grupul Voces." Facebook.
Adventist leaders, like those of most churches in the United States today, behave more like the board of a multinational corporation than a religious brotherhood. This, of course, is partly because that, in fact, is what they are. In 1965, denomination adherents in the US represented one-quarter of the total membership; [1] in 2016 that percentage was down to 6%. [2]
More important, leaders throughout the hierarchy, from the president of the General Conference to local elders and deacons, had fiduciary obligations. That meant, they had to navigate an economic environment where they had to follow certain government rules to maintain their tax-exempt status. They also had to address the potential costs and liabilities that came from owning real estate open to the public and from hiring non-ministerial employees.
The authorities’ tendencies, again like those of most denominations in this country, were to retreat rather than face challenges. In 1965 they began having problems with the IRS over their policy of providing tax-exempt housing to both their ordained and licensed ministers. The second group included women. When faced with redefining ritual functions, they chose to disregard women rather than ordain them to meet IRS rules in 1975. [3]
This was similar to the hierarchy’s response in 1943 when African Americans demanded equal membership in the church. Rather than cede the authority of whites, the denomination introduced separate but equal conferences, state ones for whites and regional ones for Blacks. [4] That was just five years before Harry Truman integrated the military [5] and nine years before the Supreme Court ruled such arrangements were unconstitutional. [6]
The same tendency toward retrenchment characterized its response to the increased costs of maintaining a music department. In 1982, it simply eliminated the function. The King’s Heralds incorporated themselves and became independent contractors, available to work for any sponsor, not just Adventists. [7]
The long-term consequence of converting employees into independent contractors was diminished church activity because individuals no longer thought of bring the church new ideas for mission activity. Instead, they formed foundations or private corporations, then approached the church for contracts or commissions that enriched them, not the polity.
Wintley Phipps was an ordained minister between assignments [8] when he began recording gospel music in 1984. [9] Soon after, he was called to a Washington DC church, [10] where he pastored and continued to record; he was nominated for a grammy in 1988. A few years later, church members elected him to the General Conference Public Affairs Department. [11] He transferred to a Lanham, Maryland, church as an assistant pastor. [12]
During this time period, he began visiting prisoners and discovered the problems faced by their children. In 1998, he established a non-profit, tax-exempt organization to provide tutoring and mentoring to children between the ages of 7 and 11. [13] He then administered the US Dream Academy while preaching for the church and speaking for fees.
The problem with working as a part-time, independent singer was Phipps had limited control over his venues. His current agent’s website told would-be sponsors he had several standard speeches that came with one song, but that other arrangements could be made. [14]
In 2014, he recorded "Kumbaya" for a digital album released by an independent Christian distributor. He probably had two additional tapes made from the session - one with the music and chorus, but not his voice, and one with just the music. This enabled him to perform for a Maranatha function with no local musicians. When he performed the same song at the Oakwood Adventist Academy in Alabama and at a charitable organization’s meeting in Romania he was accompanied by the tape and local choral groups.
He had the greatest control at the Marantha function, which was held in an auditorium designed to make professional recordings. The YouTube video showed him at his best as a singer.
He also would have been comfortable at Oakwood. It was the K-12 school associated with the college he had attended, and he was performing in the college’s church. The video was made by a parent sitting some distance from the platform. From afar, the high school choir sounded like a choir who existed to support the soloist.
The trip to Romania would have been variation: [15] it involved at least one long plane ride to a city were English was not the primary language. The musical tradition also was different: polyphonic choral music had been introduced in the eighteenth-century and was learned orally through the end of the nineteenth. During the decades of rule by the Soviet Union, uniform melodies were adopted so congregations could participate in toto. [16]
Many of the young choristers in Grupo Voco may have been born after the end of Communist rule in 1989, but the older aesthetics persisted. They were able to learn from listening to Phipps’ recording, and transform the repeated background phrases into European part music to support a Caribbean-born gospel singer from the United States who shared their Adventist religion.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Wintley Phipps, bass baritone
Instrumental Accompaniment: tape had an orchestra
Rhythm Accompaniment: tape also had a drum
Oakwood Adventist Academy 9-12 Choir
Vocal Group: I could see 10 girls and 19 boys
Vocal Director: Justin Jordan [17]
Grupul Voces
Vocal Group: its website said it had 8 sopranos, 7 altos, 5 tenors, and 6 basses [18]
Vocal Director: Emanuel Suciu
Credits
Album
Copyright: (c) 2014 Discovery House Music
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: when Phipps introduced the song in Romania, he said kum BYE yah with a downward intonation of three tones on yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing, original text
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: C1 VV C VV C
Verses
Unique Features: "come by here" used instead of "kumbaya" with crying verse and, on album, with praying
Chorus
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Rhyme Pattern: AABB
Line Meter: trochaic Xx
Line Length: 11 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: none
Line Format: reversed statement-refrain form; "kumbaya my Lord" was followed by original text.
Ending: repeated last two lines of the chorus that emphasize request to the Lord to be near
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: Phipps’ pacing did not vary, because the tape was the same, but it seemed faster with Grupo Voces and slower with the Oakwood senior high choir.
Basic Structure: vocal solo with accompanying group repeating key phrases during the singing
Singing Style: Phipps sustained tones, especially at the ends of verses. When he held the last syllable of "kumbaya" on the second line or "Oh Lord" in the last line, he dropped down several tones. A couple times he sang the "ing" much higher, and returned to the original melodic line for the following "Lord." He said he was influenced by Tom Jones:
"So I mimicked his breath control, his phrasing, the way he would hold a note for a long time and then break into a vibrato, and applied it to gospel." [19]
The vocal groups sang chords. Grupo Voces familiarity with part-singing allowed them to sound more percussive.
Notes on Performance
Oakwood Adventist Academy
Occasion: Alumni Day, 5 September 2015
Location: Oakwood University Church, Huntsville, Alabama. Phipps was at the front of the platform with an unused grand piano on one side and an organ on the other. The choir stood on risers divided by wooden rails; a row of potted plants was in front of the first row.
Microphones: Phipps used a hand-held mike. Floor mikes were spaced around the front of the stage, some distance from the choir.
Clothing: boys in dark suits or vests and white shirts, no ties. Girls wore dresses of various colors with their hair loose. Phipps and the director wore dark suits, white shirts, and no ties.
Grupul Voces
Occasion: convention of ASI Targu Mures.
Location: stage in a convention center with blue fabric draped on the ceiling like a tent. Doric columns stood on each side of center stage with large video screens projecting Phipps’ face to the sides. A row of potted white flowers was on the apron.
Microphones: Phipps and each chorister had a hand-held microphone
Clothing: men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor and Phipps wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties. The women wore black dresses; most came to the knee, a few were a bit longer, and one was shorter. Their hair was loose, and several were blondes.
Maranatha
Occasion: not known
Location: studio auditorium with room for television cameras. Back of stage lined with flags on stands; one for Israel was prominent.
Microphones: cordless mike in right hand
Clothing: dark suit with matching dark tie and white shirt
Notes on Movement
Phipps
He bent his knees to keep time, and used his hands sparingly, and more toward the end than in the beginning. At Oakwood he raised his right hand on the key word of each phrase, and turned slightly toward the choir and raised his hand when the music was changing key. He used his arms more in Romania. At the Maranatha conference, he finished by spreading his arms wide and then rising them while he held the last note.
Oakwood Adventist Academy
The Oakwood choir stood still. The director used only his right hand in front of his body, which was raised, suggesting he was using the traditional cruciform pattern to mark time. His left arm stayed at his side.
Grupul Voces
The Romanian singers moved their heads a little. Their director mouthed or sang the words as he used his right hand to set the time and communicate the quality of sound desired. Occasionally, he used his left hand in front of his body.
Notes on Audience
All applauded at the end, but none made not any response during the performances. At Maranatha, not all the seats were filled and people were scattered.
Viewers’ Perceptions
The YouTube comments followed patterns found in many discussions of "Kumbaya." The ones in Romania wondered if rhythmic music was legitimate for praising God. The ones raised to heed and understand the word asked the meaning of the term "kumbaya."
Notes on Performers
Phipps was born in San Fernando, Trinidad, [20] to parents who moved to Montréal, Canada, where he attended an Adventist high school. When he began college in the 1970s, he selected the historically Black Oakwood College in Alabama, rather than a nearer, recently integrated Adventist school. Cleran Hollancid reported, the denomination’s primary seminary, Andrews University in southwestern Michigan, had a reputation for maltreating its African-American students. [21] Presumably those problems had subsided when Phipps earned his masters in theology there in 1979. [22]
His career was equally delimited by the denomination’s continued acceptance of segregation. The churches where he served as the senior pastor were in regional conferences: Capital Hill was in the Allegheny East Conference [23] and his current assignment in Palm Bay, Florida, was in the Southeastern Conference. [24] When he was on the General Conference staff and only an assistant pastor, his Seabrook Church was in the Potomac Conference. It was founded in 1883. [25]
Oakwood opened in 1896 as an industrial school that, by 1917, had expanded to teach college courses. [26] In 1974, the college shed the secondary school, which was taken over as a day-school by local churches in the South Central Conference. [27]
Maranatha organized volunteer efforts to support international missions. Its most visible activities were done by groups who traveled at their own cost to a site to build a church or school. It was organized in 1969 by John Freeman. [28]
Asociatia pentru Suport si Initiativa din Romania or ASI Romania was a Christian, voluntary association that supported missionary work. [29] Grupo Voces was organized in 2009 in the Transylvanian region of Romania and was affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist church in Târgu Mureº. [30]
Availability
Album: I Surrender All. Discovery House Music. 1 October 2014.
YouTube: uploaded by Wintley Phipps Networks on 9 March 2017.
Oakland Adventist Academy
YouTube: uploaded by TrishsMom on 12 September 2015.
Maranatha
YouTube: uploaded by Maranatha Mission Stories on 18 October 2015.
Grupul Voces
YouTube: uploaded by Pianistul Azs on 8 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by YOUR LIVING MANNA on 6 July 2016. This featured close-ups of Grupo Voces.
End Notes
1. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 959.
2. "Church Membership by World Divisions." 2016 Annual Statistical Report. Silver Spring, Maryland: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, revised 2 February 2017. 4. Canada and the United States were reported together as the North American Division.
3. Bert Haloviak. "The Internal Revenue Service and the Redefinition of Adventist Ministry." SDA Net website.
4. Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. "Separate Black and White Conferences--Part 1." His website. Based on his book Must We Be Silent? Berrien Springs, Michigan: Berean Books, 2001 edition. He was from Ghana.
5. Wikipedia. "Military History of African Americans." Truman signed executive order 9981 on 26 July 1948.
6. Wikipedia. "Brown v. Board of Education." Supreme Court published its ruling on segregation in public schools on 17 May 1954.
7. Dan Shultz. "The King’s Heralds." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2007.
8. Wintley Phipps. Your Best Destiny: Becoming the Person You Were Created to Be. Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2015. No page numbers in on-line version.
9. D. S. "Wintley Augustus Phipps, Sr." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2013. He was singing professionally while he was in college. (Wintley Phipps. "Finding My Voice." Guideposts website. 27 June 2016.)
10. "Our History." Capital Hill Seventh-day Adventist church website.
11. "Phipps, Wintley." Contemporary Black Biography. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005.
12. Robert Redding Jr. "Phipps: Spreading the Gospel." The Gazette website [The Washington Post]. 18 November 1999.
13. Thomas Gale. Phipps was influenced by Charles Colson.
14. Gold Stars Speakers Bureau. "Wintley Phipps." Its website.
15. He said "I take my family with me wherever I go. There are few African American families that have been able to visit all the countries of the world." Quoted by Redding in 1999. This may have changed when his sons got older.
16. Ivan Moody. "Music in the Orthodox Church." 531-546 in The Orthodox Christian World. Edited by Augustine Casiday. Abington, Oxford, England: Routledge, 2012. 535.
17. The Oakwood academy website identified Jordan as its high-school choir director.
18. "Despre noi." Grupul Voces website.
19. Phipps, Guideposts.
20. "Wintley Phipps, born in the city of San Fernando, Trinidad." OMG website. 30 July 2017.
21. Cleran Hollancid. "More about the Legacy of Race in Seventh-day Adventist Culture." Adventist Today website. 26 May 2017. Someone burned a cross on the campus in the 1960s.
22. D. S.
23. Capitol Hill Seventh-day Adventist church’s website.
24. Adventist Directory website entry for church.
25. Adventist Directory.
26. Wikipedia. "Oakwood University."
27. Wikipedia. "Oakwood Adventist Academy."
28. "History." Maranatha website.
29. "ASI Romania." Facebook.
30. "Grupul Voces." Facebook.
Wintley Phipps - Kumbaya
Topic: Theology - Seventh-day Adventist
Adventist leaders, like those of most churches in the United States today, behave more like the board of a multinational corporation than a religious brotherhood. This, of course, is partly because that, in fact, is what they are. In 1965, denomination adherents in the US represented one-quarter of the total membership; [1] in 2016 that percentage was down to 6%. [2]
More important, leaders throughout the hierarchy, from the president of the General Conference to local elders and deacons, had fiduciary obligations. That meant, they had to navigate an economic environment where they had to follow certain government rules to maintain their tax-exempt status. They also had to address the potential costs and liabilities that came from owning real estate open to the public and from hiring non-ministerial employees.
The authorities’ tendencies, again like those of most denominations in this country, were to retreat rather than face challenges. In 1965 they began having problems with the IRS over their policy of providing tax-exempt housing to both their ordained and licensed ministers. The second group included women. When faced with redefining ritual functions, they chose to disregard women rather than ordain them to meet IRS rules in 1975. [3]
This was similar to the hierarchy’s response in 1943 when African Americans demanded equal membership in the church. Rather than cede the authority of whites, the denomination introduced separate but equal conferences, state ones for whites and regional ones for Blacks. [4] That was just five years before Harry Truman integrated the military [5] and nine years before the Supreme Court ruled such arrangements were unconstitutional. [6]
The same tendency toward retrenchment characterized its response to the increased costs of maintaining a music department. In 1982, it simply eliminated the function. The King’s Heralds incorporated themselves and became independent contractors, available to work for any sponsor, not just Adventists. [7]
The long-term consequence of converting employees into independent contractors was diminished church activity because individuals no longer thought of bring the church new ideas for mission activity. Instead, they formed foundations or private corporations, then approached the church for contracts or commissions that enriched them, not the polity.
Wintley Phipps was an ordained minister between assignments [8] when he began recording gospel music in 1984. [9] Soon after, he was called to a Washington DC church, [10] where he pastored and continued to record; he was nominated for a grammy in 1988. A few years later, church members elected him to the General Conference Public Affairs Department. [11] He transferred to a Lanham, Maryland, church as an assistant pastor. [12]
During this time period, he began visiting prisoners and discovered the problems faced by their children. In 1998, he established a non-profit, tax-exempt organization to provide tutoring and mentoring to children between the ages of 7 and 11. [13] He then administered the US Dream Academy while preaching for the church and speaking for fees.
The problem with working as a part-time, independent singer was Phipps had limited control over his venues. His current agent’s website told would-be sponsors he had several standard speeches that came with one song, but that other arrangements could be made. [14]
In 2014, he recorded "Kumbaya" for a digital album released by an independent Christian distributor. He probably had two additional tapes made from the session - one with the music and chorus, but not his voice, and one with just the music. This enabled him to perform for a Maranatha function with no local musicians. When he performed the same song at the Oakwood Adventist Academy in Alabama and at a charitable organization’s meeting in Romania he was accompanied by the tape and local choral groups.
He had the greatest control at the Marantha function, which was held in an auditorium designed to make professional recordings. The YouTube video showed him at his best as a singer.
He also would have been comfortable at Oakwood. It was the K-12 school associated with the college he had attended, and he was performing in the college’s church. The video was made by a parent sitting some distance from the platform. From afar, the high school choir sounded like a choir who existed to support the soloist.
The trip to Romania would have been variation: [15] it involved at least one long plane ride to a city were English was not the primary language. The musical tradition also was different: polyphonic choral music had been introduced in the eighteenth-century and was learned orally through the end of the nineteenth. During the decades of rule by the Soviet Union, uniform melodies were adopted so congregations could participate in toto. [16]
Many of the young choristers in Grupo Voco may have been born after the end of Communist rule in 1989, but the older aesthetics persisted. They were able to learn from listening to Phipps’ recording, and transform the repeated background phrases into European part music to support a Caribbean-born gospel singer from the United States who shared their Adventist religion.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Wintley Phipps, bass baritone
Instrumental Accompaniment: tape had an orchestra
Rhythm Accompaniment: tape also had a drum
Oakwood Adventist Academy 9-12 Choir
Vocal Group: I could see 10 girls and 19 boys
Vocal Director: Justin Jordan [17]
Grupul Voces
Vocal Group: its website said it had 8 sopranos, 7 altos, 5 tenors, and 6 basses [18]
Vocal Director: Emanuel Suciu
Credits
Album
Copyright: (c) 2014 Discovery House Music
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: when Phipps introduced the song in Romania, he said kum BYE yah with a downward intonation of three tones on yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing, original text
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: C1 VV C VV C
Verses
Unique Features: "come by here" used instead of "kumbaya" with crying verse and, on album, with praying
Chorus
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Rhyme Pattern: AABB
Line Meter: trochaic Xx
Line Length: 11 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: none
Line Format: reversed statement-refrain form; "kumbaya my Lord" was followed by original text.
Ending: repeated last two lines of the chorus that emphasize request to the Lord to be near
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: Phipps’ pacing did not vary, because the tape was the same, but it seemed faster with Grupo Voces and slower with the Oakwood senior high choir.
Basic Structure: vocal solo with accompanying group repeating key phrases during the singing
Singing Style: Phipps sustained tones, especially at the ends of verses. When he held the last syllable of "kumbaya" on the second line or "Oh Lord" in the last line, he dropped down several tones. A couple times he sang the "ing" much higher, and returned to the original melodic line for the following "Lord." He said he was influenced by Tom Jones:
"So I mimicked his breath control, his phrasing, the way he would hold a note for a long time and then break into a vibrato, and applied it to gospel." [19]
The vocal groups sang chords. Grupo Voces familiarity with part-singing allowed them to sound more percussive.
Notes on Performance
Oakwood Adventist Academy
Occasion: Alumni Day, 5 September 2015
Location: Oakwood University Church, Huntsville, Alabama. Phipps was at the front of the platform with an unused grand piano on one side and an organ on the other. The choir stood on risers divided by wooden rails; a row of potted plants was in front of the first row.
Microphones: Phipps used a hand-held mike. Floor mikes were spaced around the front of the stage, some distance from the choir.
Clothing: boys in dark suits or vests and white shirts, no ties. Girls wore dresses of various colors with their hair loose. Phipps and the director wore dark suits, white shirts, and no ties.
Grupul Voces
Occasion: convention of ASI Targu Mures.
Location: stage in a convention center with blue fabric draped on the ceiling like a tent. Doric columns stood on each side of center stage with large video screens projecting Phipps’ face to the sides. A row of potted white flowers was on the apron.
Microphones: Phipps and each chorister had a hand-held microphone
Clothing: men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor and Phipps wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties. The women wore black dresses; most came to the knee, a few were a bit longer, and one was shorter. Their hair was loose, and several were blondes.
Maranatha
Occasion: not known
Location: studio auditorium with room for television cameras. Back of stage lined with flags on stands; one for Israel was prominent.
Microphones: cordless mike in right hand
Clothing: dark suit with matching dark tie and white shirt
Notes on Movement
Phipps
He bent his knees to keep time, and used his hands sparingly, and more toward the end than in the beginning. At Oakwood he raised his right hand on the key word of each phrase, and turned slightly toward the choir and raised his hand when the music was changing key. He used his arms more in Romania. At the Maranatha conference, he finished by spreading his arms wide and then rising them while he held the last note.
Oakwood Adventist Academy
The Oakwood choir stood still. The director used only his right hand in front of his body, which was raised, suggesting he was using the traditional cruciform pattern to mark time. His left arm stayed at his side.
Grupul Voces
The Romanian singers moved their heads a little. Their director mouthed or sang the words as he used his right hand to set the time and communicate the quality of sound desired. Occasionally, he used his left hand in front of his body.
Notes on Audience
All applauded at the end, but none made not any response during the performances. At Maranatha, not all the seats were filled and people were scattered.
Viewers’ Perceptions
The YouTube comments followed patterns found in many discussions of "Kumbaya." The ones in Romania wondered if rhythmic music was legitimate for praising God. The ones raised to heed and understand the word asked the meaning of the term "kumbaya."
Notes on Performers
Phipps was born in San Fernando, Trinidad, [20] to parents who moved to Montréal, Canada, where he attended an Adventist high school. When he began college in the 1970s, he selected the historically Black Oakwood College in Alabama, rather than a nearer, recently integrated Adventist school. Cleran Hollancid reported, the denomination’s primary seminary, Andrews University in southwestern Michigan, had a reputation for maltreating its African-American students. [21] Presumably those problems had subsided when Phipps earned his masters in theology there in 1979. [22]
His career was equally delimited by the denomination’s continued acceptance of segregation. The churches where he served as the senior pastor were in regional conferences: Capital Hill was in the Allegheny East Conference [23] and his current assignment in Palm Bay, Florida, was in the Southeastern Conference. [24] When he was on the General Conference staff and only an assistant pastor, his Seabrook Church was in the Potomac Conference. It was founded in 1883. [25]
Oakwood opened in 1896 as an industrial school that, by 1917, had expanded to teach college courses. [26] In 1974, the college shed the secondary school, which was taken over as a day-school by local churches in the South Central Conference. [27]
Maranatha organized volunteer efforts to support international missions. Its most visible activities were done by groups who traveled at their own cost to a site to build a church or school. It was organized in 1969 by John Freeman. [28]
Asociatia pentru Suport si Initiativa din Romania or ASI Romania was a Christian, voluntary association that supported missionary work. [29] Grupo Voces was organized in 2009 in the Transylvanian region of Romania and was affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist church in Târgu Mureº. [30]
Availability
Album: I Surrender All. Discovery House Music. 1 October 2014.
YouTube: uploaded by Wintley Phipps Networks on 9 March 2017.
Oakland Adventist Academy
YouTube: uploaded by TrishsMom on 12 September 2015.
Maranatha
YouTube: uploaded by Maranatha Mission Stories on 18 October 2015.
Grupul Voces
YouTube: uploaded by Pianistul Azs on 8 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by YOUR LIVING MANNA on 6 July 2016. This featured close-ups of Grupul Voces.
End Notes
1. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 959.
2. "Church Membership by World Divisions." 2016 Annual Statistical Report. Silver Spring, Maryland: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, revised 2 February 2017. 4. Canada and the United States were reported together as the North American Division.
3. Bert Haloviak. "The Internal Revenue Service and the Redefinition of Adventist Ministry." SDA Net website.
4. Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. "Separate Black and White Conferences--Part 1." His website. Based on his book Must We Be Silent? Berrien Springs, Michigan: Berean Books, 2001 edition. He was from Ghana.
5. Wikipedia. "Military History of African Americans." Truman signed executive order 9981 on 26 July 1948.
6. Wikipedia. "Brown v. Board of Education." Supreme Court published its ruling on segregation in public schools on 17 May 1954.
7. Dan Shultz. "The King’s Heralds." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2007.
8. Wintley Phipps. Your Best Destiny: Becoming the Person You Were Created to Be. Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2015. No page numbers in on-line version.
9. D. S. "Wintley Augustus Phipps, Sr." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2013. He was singing professionally while he was in college. (Wintley Phipps. "Finding My Voice." Guideposts website. 27 June 2016.)
10. "Our History." Capital Hill Seventh-day Adventist church website.
11. "Phipps, Wintley." Contemporary Black Biography. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005.
12. Robert Redding Jr. "Phipps: Spreading the Gospel." The Gazette website [The Washington Post]. 18 November 1999.
13. Thomas Gale. Phipps was influenced by Charles Colson.
14. Gold Stars Speakers Bureau. "Wintley Phipps." Its website.
15. He said "I take my family with me wherever I go. There are few African American families that have been able to visit all the countries of the world." Quoted by Redding in 1999. This may have changed when his sons got older.
16. Ivan Moody. "Music in the Orthodox Church." 531-546 in The Orthodox Christian World. Edited by Augustine Casiday. Abington, Oxford, England: Routledge, 2012. 535.
17. The Oakwood academy website identified Jordan as its high-school choir director.
18. "Despre noi." Grupul Voces website.
19. Phipps, Guideposts.
20. "Wintley Phipps, born in the city of San Fernando, Trinidad." OMG website. 30 July 2017.
21. Cleran Hollancid. "More about the Legacy of Race in Seventh-day Adventist Culture." Adventist Today website. 26 May 2017. Someone burned a cross on the campus in the 1960s.
22. D. S.
23. Capitol Hill Seventh-day Adventist church’s website.
24. Adventist Directory website entry for church.
25. Adventist Directory.
26. Wikipedia. "Oakwood University."
27. Wikipedia. "Oakwood Adventist Academy."
28. "History." Maranatha website.
29. "ASI Romania." Facebook.
30. "Grupul Voces." Facebook.
Adventist leaders, like those of most churches in the United States today, behave more like the board of a multinational corporation than a religious brotherhood. This, of course, is partly because that, in fact, is what they are. In 1965, denomination adherents in the US represented one-quarter of the total membership; [1] in 2016 that percentage was down to 6%. [2]
More important, leaders throughout the hierarchy, from the president of the General Conference to local elders and deacons, had fiduciary obligations. That meant, they had to navigate an economic environment where they had to follow certain government rules to maintain their tax-exempt status. They also had to address the potential costs and liabilities that came from owning real estate open to the public and from hiring non-ministerial employees.
The authorities’ tendencies, again like those of most denominations in this country, were to retreat rather than face challenges. In 1965 they began having problems with the IRS over their policy of providing tax-exempt housing to both their ordained and licensed ministers. The second group included women. When faced with redefining ritual functions, they chose to disregard women rather than ordain them to meet IRS rules in 1975. [3]
This was similar to the hierarchy’s response in 1943 when African Americans demanded equal membership in the church. Rather than cede the authority of whites, the denomination introduced separate but equal conferences, state ones for whites and regional ones for Blacks. [4] That was just five years before Harry Truman integrated the military [5] and nine years before the Supreme Court ruled such arrangements were unconstitutional. [6]
The same tendency toward retrenchment characterized its response to the increased costs of maintaining a music department. In 1982, it simply eliminated the function. The King’s Heralds incorporated themselves and became independent contractors, available to work for any sponsor, not just Adventists. [7]
The long-term consequence of converting employees into independent contractors was diminished church activity because individuals no longer thought of bring the church new ideas for mission activity. Instead, they formed foundations or private corporations, then approached the church for contracts or commissions that enriched them, not the polity.
Wintley Phipps was an ordained minister between assignments [8] when he began recording gospel music in 1984. [9] Soon after, he was called to a Washington DC church, [10] where he pastored and continued to record; he was nominated for a grammy in 1988. A few years later, church members elected him to the General Conference Public Affairs Department. [11] He transferred to a Lanham, Maryland, church as an assistant pastor. [12]
During this time period, he began visiting prisoners and discovered the problems faced by their children. In 1998, he established a non-profit, tax-exempt organization to provide tutoring and mentoring to children between the ages of 7 and 11. [13] He then administered the US Dream Academy while preaching for the church and speaking for fees.
The problem with working as a part-time, independent singer was Phipps had limited control over his venues. His current agent’s website told would-be sponsors he had several standard speeches that came with one song, but that other arrangements could be made. [14]
In 2014, he recorded "Kumbaya" for a digital album released by an independent Christian distributor. He probably had two additional tapes made from the session - one with the music and chorus, but not his voice, and one with just the music. This enabled him to perform for a Maranatha function with no local musicians. When he performed the same song at the Oakwood Adventist Academy in Alabama and at a charitable organization’s meeting in Romania he was accompanied by the tape and local choral groups.
He had the greatest control at the Marantha function, which was held in an auditorium designed to make professional recordings. The YouTube video showed him at his best as a singer.
He also would have been comfortable at Oakwood. It was the K-12 school associated with the college he had attended, and he was performing in the college’s church. The video was made by a parent sitting some distance from the platform. From afar, the high school choir sounded like a choir who existed to support the soloist.
The trip to Romania would have been variation: [15] it involved at least one long plane ride to a city were English was not the primary language. The musical tradition also was different: polyphonic choral music had been introduced in the eighteenth-century and was learned orally through the end of the nineteenth. During the decades of rule by the Soviet Union, uniform melodies were adopted so congregations could participate in toto. [16]
Many of the young choristers in Grupo Voco may have been born after the end of Communist rule in 1989, but the older aesthetics persisted. They were able to learn from listening to Phipps’ recording, and transform the repeated background phrases into European part music to support a Caribbean-born gospel singer from the United States who shared their Adventist religion.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: Wintley Phipps, bass baritone
Instrumental Accompaniment: tape had an orchestra
Rhythm Accompaniment: tape also had a drum
Oakwood Adventist Academy 9-12 Choir
Vocal Group: I could see 10 girls and 19 boys
Vocal Director: Justin Jordan [17]
Grupul Voces
Vocal Group: its website said it had 8 sopranos, 7 altos, 5 tenors, and 6 basses [18]
Vocal Director: Emanuel Suciu
Credits
Album
Copyright: (c) 2014 Discovery House Music
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: when Phipps introduced the song in Romania, he said kum BYE yah with a downward intonation of three tones on yah
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, singing, original text
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: verse-chorus
Verse Repetition Pattern: C1 VV C VV C
Verses
Unique Features: "come by here" used instead of "kumbaya" with crying verse and, on album, with praying
Chorus
Verse Length: 4 lines
Verse Rhyme Pattern: AABB
Line Meter: trochaic Xx
Line Length: 11 syllables
Line Repetition Pattern: none
Line Format: reversed statement-refrain form; "kumbaya my Lord" was followed by original text.
Ending: repeated last two lines of the chorus that emphasize request to the Lord to be near
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: Phipps’ pacing did not vary, because the tape was the same, but it seemed faster with Grupo Voces and slower with the Oakwood senior high choir.
Basic Structure: vocal solo with accompanying group repeating key phrases during the singing
Singing Style: Phipps sustained tones, especially at the ends of verses. When he held the last syllable of "kumbaya" on the second line or "Oh Lord" in the last line, he dropped down several tones. A couple times he sang the "ing" much higher, and returned to the original melodic line for the following "Lord." He said he was influenced by Tom Jones:
"So I mimicked his breath control, his phrasing, the way he would hold a note for a long time and then break into a vibrato, and applied it to gospel." [19]
The vocal groups sang chords. Grupo Voces familiarity with part-singing allowed them to sound more percussive.
Notes on Performance
Oakwood Adventist Academy
Occasion: Alumni Day, 5 September 2015
Location: Oakwood University Church, Huntsville, Alabama. Phipps was at the front of the platform with an unused grand piano on one side and an organ on the other. The choir stood on risers divided by wooden rails; a row of potted plants was in front of the first row.
Microphones: Phipps used a hand-held mike. Floor mikes were spaced around the front of the stage, some distance from the choir.
Clothing: boys in dark suits or vests and white shirts, no ties. Girls wore dresses of various colors with their hair loose. Phipps and the director wore dark suits, white shirts, and no ties.
Grupul Voces
Occasion: convention of ASI Targu Mures.
Location: stage in a convention center with blue fabric draped on the ceiling like a tent. Doric columns stood on each side of center stage with large video screens projecting Phipps’ face to the sides. A row of potted white flowers was on the apron.
Microphones: Phipps and each chorister had a hand-held microphone
Clothing: men wore black shirts and slacks; the conductor and Phipps wore black suits, white shirts, and black ties. The women wore black dresses; most came to the knee, a few were a bit longer, and one was shorter. Their hair was loose, and several were blondes.
Maranatha
Occasion: not known
Location: studio auditorium with room for television cameras. Back of stage lined with flags on stands; one for Israel was prominent.
Microphones: cordless mike in right hand
Clothing: dark suit with matching dark tie and white shirt
Notes on Movement
Phipps
He bent his knees to keep time, and used his hands sparingly, and more toward the end than in the beginning. At Oakwood he raised his right hand on the key word of each phrase, and turned slightly toward the choir and raised his hand when the music was changing key. He used his arms more in Romania. At the Maranatha conference, he finished by spreading his arms wide and then rising them while he held the last note.
Oakwood Adventist Academy
The Oakwood choir stood still. The director used only his right hand in front of his body, which was raised, suggesting he was using the traditional cruciform pattern to mark time. His left arm stayed at his side.
Grupul Voces
The Romanian singers moved their heads a little. Their director mouthed or sang the words as he used his right hand to set the time and communicate the quality of sound desired. Occasionally, he used his left hand in front of his body.
Notes on Audience
All applauded at the end, but none made not any response during the performances. At Maranatha, not all the seats were filled and people were scattered.
Viewers’ Perceptions
The YouTube comments followed patterns found in many discussions of "Kumbaya." The ones in Romania wondered if rhythmic music was legitimate for praising God. The ones raised to heed and understand the word asked the meaning of the term "kumbaya."
Notes on Performers
Phipps was born in San Fernando, Trinidad, [20] to parents who moved to Montréal, Canada, where he attended an Adventist high school. When he began college in the 1970s, he selected the historically Black Oakwood College in Alabama, rather than a nearer, recently integrated Adventist school. Cleran Hollancid reported, the denomination’s primary seminary, Andrews University in southwestern Michigan, had a reputation for maltreating its African-American students. [21] Presumably those problems had subsided when Phipps earned his masters in theology there in 1979. [22]
His career was equally delimited by the denomination’s continued acceptance of segregation. The churches where he served as the senior pastor were in regional conferences: Capital Hill was in the Allegheny East Conference [23] and his current assignment in Palm Bay, Florida, was in the Southeastern Conference. [24] When he was on the General Conference staff and only an assistant pastor, his Seabrook Church was in the Potomac Conference. It was founded in 1883. [25]
Oakwood opened in 1896 as an industrial school that, by 1917, had expanded to teach college courses. [26] In 1974, the college shed the secondary school, which was taken over as a day-school by local churches in the South Central Conference. [27]
Maranatha organized volunteer efforts to support international missions. Its most visible activities were done by groups who traveled at their own cost to a site to build a church or school. It was organized in 1969 by John Freeman. [28]
Asociatia pentru Suport si Initiativa din Romania or ASI Romania was a Christian, voluntary association that supported missionary work. [29] Grupo Voces was organized in 2009 in the Transylvanian region of Romania and was affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist church in Târgu Mureº. [30]
Availability
Album: I Surrender All. Discovery House Music. 1 October 2014.
YouTube: uploaded by Wintley Phipps Networks on 9 March 2017.
Oakland Adventist Academy
YouTube: uploaded by TrishsMom on 12 September 2015.
Maranatha
YouTube: uploaded by Maranatha Mission Stories on 18 October 2015.
Grupul Voces
YouTube: uploaded by Pianistul Azs on 8 November 2015.
YouTube: uploaded by YOUR LIVING MANNA on 6 July 2016. This featured close-ups of Grupul Voces.
End Notes
1. Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. 959.
2. "Church Membership by World Divisions." 2016 Annual Statistical Report. Silver Spring, Maryland: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, revised 2 February 2017. 4. Canada and the United States were reported together as the North American Division.
3. Bert Haloviak. "The Internal Revenue Service and the Redefinition of Adventist Ministry." SDA Net website.
4. Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. "Separate Black and White Conferences--Part 1." His website. Based on his book Must We Be Silent? Berrien Springs, Michigan: Berean Books, 2001 edition. He was from Ghana.
5. Wikipedia. "Military History of African Americans." Truman signed executive order 9981 on 26 July 1948.
6. Wikipedia. "Brown v. Board of Education." Supreme Court published its ruling on segregation in public schools on 17 May 1954.
7. Dan Shultz. "The King’s Heralds." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2007.
8. Wintley Phipps. Your Best Destiny: Becoming the Person You Were Created to Be. Carol Stream, Illinois: NavPress, 2015. No page numbers in on-line version.
9. D. S. "Wintley Augustus Phipps, Sr." International Adventist Musicians Association website. 2013. He was singing professionally while he was in college. (Wintley Phipps. "Finding My Voice." Guideposts website. 27 June 2016.)
10. "Our History." Capital Hill Seventh-day Adventist church website.
11. "Phipps, Wintley." Contemporary Black Biography. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005.
12. Robert Redding Jr. "Phipps: Spreading the Gospel." The Gazette website [The Washington Post]. 18 November 1999.
13. Thomas Gale. Phipps was influenced by Charles Colson.
14. Gold Stars Speakers Bureau. "Wintley Phipps." Its website.
15. He said "I take my family with me wherever I go. There are few African American families that have been able to visit all the countries of the world." Quoted by Redding in 1999. This may have changed when his sons got older.
16. Ivan Moody. "Music in the Orthodox Church." 531-546 in The Orthodox Christian World. Edited by Augustine Casiday. Abington, Oxford, England: Routledge, 2012. 535.
17. The Oakwood academy website identified Jordan as its high-school choir director.
18. "Despre noi." Grupul Voces website.
19. Phipps, Guideposts.
20. "Wintley Phipps, born in the city of San Fernando, Trinidad." OMG website. 30 July 2017.
21. Cleran Hollancid. "More about the Legacy of Race in Seventh-day Adventist Culture." Adventist Today website. 26 May 2017. Someone burned a cross on the campus in the 1960s.
22. D. S.
23. Capitol Hill Seventh-day Adventist church’s website.
24. Adventist Directory website entry for church.
25. Adventist Directory.
26. Wikipedia. "Oakwood University."
27. Wikipedia. "Oakwood Adventist Academy."
28. "History." Maranatha website.
29. "ASI Romania." Facebook.
30. "Grupul Voces." Facebook.
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