Kumbaya
| "Kumbaya" | |
|---|---|
| Song |
- This article is about the song. For the town in Ecuador, see Cumbayá.
"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a spiritual from the 1930s. It enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s and became a standard campfire song in Scouting and other camping organizations.
The song was originally associated with unity and closeness, but more recently is also alluded to sarcastically to connote a blandly pious and naively optimistic view of the world and human nature.[citation needed]
Origins
The origins of the song are disputed. Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918–1992) claimed to have written the song in the 1930s under the title "Come By Here". It first appeared in a collected by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1936 and in "Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey", a lyric sheet printed in Portland, Oregon in 1939. The change of the title to "Kum Ba Yah" came about in 1946, when 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 God!")
Further history
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]
Lyrics
| Most common version: | Another version of the song: |
|---|---|
| Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya |
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah |
| Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya |
Hear me crying, Lord, kum ba yah Hear me crying, Lord, kum ba yah |
| Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya |
Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah |
| Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya |
Hear me praying, Lord, kum ba yah Hear me praying, Lord, kum ba yah |
| Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya |
Oh I need you, Lord, kum ba yah Oh I need you, Lord, kum ba yah |
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.
References in politics
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]
Notes
- ^ Jeffery, Weiss (November 12, 2006). "'Kumbaya': How did a sweet simple song become a mocking metaphor?". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 2007-11-16.
- ^ "Mama Lisa'a World-Kumbaya". Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ Zorn, Eric. "Someone's dissin', Lord, kumbaya". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
- ^ Goldenberg, Suzanne (2006). "Annan bows out of UN with attack on Bush". December 12, 2006 : The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-12-12.
- ^ "Telstra rejects Labor net plan". Australian IT. December 06, 2007.
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References
- Roud Folk Song Index 11924