“Utawena” (1961) – The Kingston Trio * Written by Nick Reynolds and Adam Yagodka * Produced by Voyle Gilmore * LP: Make Way * Label: Capitol
Sketchy songwriting credits abounded during the folk revival, with interpreters taking ownership of traditional-sounding tunes as “version-composers.” This could complicate the act of tracking down a song’s proper origins. In the case of “Utawena,” a song on the Kingston Trio’s 1961 Make Way album, the credits go to Trio member Nick Reynolds and his friend Adam Yagodka. But it’s really an arrangement of a South African Kinswahili song called “Ut’he Wena,” which the two credited writers likely learned from the 1960 Schirmer publication Choral Folk Songs from South Africa, with arrangements credited to Pete Seeger and Robert DeCormier. Seeger had previously recorded a number of songs in that book on a 1955 album called Bantu Choral Folk Songs from the Song Swappers. “Ut’he Wena” isn’t included on the record, but its book arrangement shows that Reynolds and Yagodka had consulted it faithfully. (The book includes a translation.)
A thread at Mudcat Cafe about this song illustrates how frustrating origin-hunting can be for curious researchers, with the initiator reporting finding no answers from the Bear Family label’s box set notes, from Yagodka’s widow, and from Reynolds himself via phone, who claimed his memory had failed him. The initiator finally declares it a lost cause. (The recent group history Greenback Dollar only calls the track “awful,” which it isn’t.) Another song on the Make Way album, “En El Agua,” is credited to Trio leader Bob Shane, but on the 1966 Best of the Kingston Trio, Vol. III, the label rightfully credits the then-living “Antonio Fernandez,” the real name of Cuban singer-songwriter Ñico Saquito. He had debuted the song in 1957 as “Maria Cristina.”
Had the pleasure and privilege to talk with Bob Shane after a Kingston Trio concert. He was born and raised as a Hawaiian native, without a drop of actual islander in him. He said his school pals, who were mostly Asian-Hawaiian descent said he sounded like he spoke fluent Hawaiian though Shane actually didn’t know the language at all. He said he would talk in his pig-hawaiian dialect and then interpret what he had just babbled back into English. I have a feeling this is what he did with this song.