Kumbaya

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“Kum Ba Ya”

Song by The Folksmiths including Joe Hickerson

Album

We've Got Some Singing To Do

Recorded

August 1957

Length

2:09

Label

Folkways Records F-2407

We've Got Some Singing To Do track listing

Hold On (Keep Your Hand On the Plow)
(11)

“Kum Ba Ya”
(12)

Wade in the Water
(13)

Roud 11924

Not to be confused with Cumbayá, a town in Ecuador.

"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a song claimed to have been composed by Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918–1992) in the 1930s in Portland, Oregon.

Originally titled "Come By Here", it was first collected by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1936. It appeared in "Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey", a lyric sheet printed in Portland in 1939. In 1946, the song returned from Africa with a missionary family, who toured America singing the song with the text "Kum Ba Yah".^{[citation needed]}

There is debate about the truth of Frey's authorship claim;^[1] recent research has found that sometime between 1922 and 1931, members of an organization called the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals collected a song from the South Carolina coast. Come By Yuh, as they called it, was sung in Gullah, the Creole dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. In Gullah, "Kumbaya" means "Come by here", so the lyric could be translated as "Come by here, my lord, come by here."^[2] Another version was preserved on a wax cylinder in May 1936 by Robert Winslow Gordon, founder of what became the American Folklife Center. Gordon discovered a woman named Ethel Best singing Come By Here with a group in Raiford, Florida.

An intriguing etymology is that Kumbaya is derived from an Aramaic phrase, Qum bi haya, Eli--"Rise with Life, oh my Lord"!

Joe Hickerson, one of the Folksmiths, recorded the song in 1957, as did Pete Seeger in 1958. Joe Hickerson later succeeded Gordon at the American Folklife Center.^[3] The song enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s, largely due to Joan Baez's 1962 recording of the song, and became associated with the Civil Rights Movement of that decade. It is a standard campfire song in Scouting, YMCA, the Indian Guides, and others. It was also commonly used in Catholic "folk" masses of the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

1 Lyrics
2 Recordings
3 Ironic usage
4 References in politics
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Lyrics

Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya

O Lord, kumbaya

Another version of the song:

Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah

Oh Lord, kum ba yah

Hear me crying, Lord, kum ba yah

Oh Lord, kum ba yah

Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah

Oh Lord, kum ba yah

Hear me praying, Lord, kum ba yah

Oh Lord, kum ba yah

Oh I need you, Lord, kum ba yah

Oh Lord, kum ba yah

[edit] Recordings

The Folksmiths including Joe Hickerson recorded the first LNP version of the song in August 1957. As this group traveled from summer camp to summer camp teaching folk songs, they may be the origin of Kumbaya around the campfire.

It was recorded by Pete Seeger in 1958, and The Weavers released it on Traveling on With the Weavers in 1959.

Joan Baez's 1962 In Concert, Volume 1 included her version of the song. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach also sang "Kumbaya" in a 1962 concert, a recording of which was subsequently released in 1963 on the album Shlomo Carlebach Sings.

The Seekers recorded it in 1963 for their first album, "Introducing the Seekers". They later re-recorded for their third album, "Hide & Seekers" (also known as "The Four & Only Seekers"); it was re-released on their 1989 album "The Very Best of the Seekers".

Raffi recorded it for his Baby Beluga album.

Peter, Paul & Mary recorded Kumbaya on their 1998 Around the Campfire album

German rock band Guano Apes and German comedian Michael Mittermeier did a cover of "Kumbaya" called "Kumba yo!" and made a music video. The "Kumba yo!" single came out in 2001.

[edit] Ironic usage

Though the song was originally associated with unity and closeness, it is now often alluded to sarcastically to connote a blandly pious and naively optimistic view of the world and human nature.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References in politics

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The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

After a private farewell dinner on December 5, 2006 at the White House for outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Secretary-General 1996 to 2006), soon-to-resign U.S. Ambassador John Bolton joked that "nobody sang 'Kumbaya.'" When told of Bolton's comment, Annan laughed and asked: "But does he know how to sing it?"^[4]

In a satirical campaign ad by David Zucker that ran before the 2006 Congressional elections, an actress playing Madeleine Albright serves cookies and milk to a group of terrorists; when she notices gunmen and suicide bombers emerging from the basement, her guests distract her and allay her suspicions by picking up a guitar and breaking into a chorus of "Kumbaya".

In October of 2007, Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), announced his new offensive strategy to distinguish policy difference between himself and his opponent and Democratic frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). In his announcement he stated that the notion that Clinton and himself were "holding hands and singing `Kumbaya'" on every issue was completely false.

In October 2007 the US president George W. Bush phoned Turkish President Abdullah Gul to tell him that the United States was willing to bomb PKK strongholds. “It's not 'Kumbaya' time any more,” said an official familiar with the conversation.

In November 2007, Sol Trujillo, the Chief Executive of the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, mocked the proposed $4.7 billion tax payer funded public private partnership for a new national broadband network. He labeled it as some sort of "kumbaya, holding hands" theory.^[5]