"Kum ba yah" ("Come by here") is an African American spiritual song of disputed origin, but known to be sung in the Gullah culture of the islands off South Carolina and Georgia, with ties to enslaved Central Africans. The song is thought to have spread from the islands to other Southern states and the North, as well as other places in the world. The first known recording, of someone known only as H. Wylie, who sang in the Gullah dialect, was recorded by folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon in 1926. It later became a standard campfire song in Scouting and summer camps and enjoyed broader popularity during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
The song was originally an appeal to God to come and help those in need. [1] In American politics, the song would later become part of a phrase ( sing Kumbaya ) denoting unrealistic, excessively optimistic compromises.
According to Library of Congress editor Stephen Winick, the song almost certainly originated among African Americans in the Southeastern United States, and had a Gullah version early in its history even if it did not originate in that dialect. [1] The two oldest versions whose year of origin is known for certain were both collected in 1926, and both reside in the Library's American Folklife Center. No precise month or day was recorded for either version, so either may be the earliest known version of the song. One was submitted as a high-school collecting project by a student named Minnie Lee to her teacher, Julian P. Boyd, later a professor of history at Princeton University and president of the American Historical Association. This version, collected in Alliance, North Carolina, is a manuscript featuring lyrics but no music. The other 1926 version was recorded on wax cylinder by Robert Winslow Gordon, founder of what began as the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song, which became the American Folklife Center. The singer's name was H. Wylie, and the song was recorded within a few hours' drive of Darien, Georgia, although Gordon did not note the exact location. Between 1926 and 1928, Gordon recorded three more versions of traditional spirituals with the refrain "come by here" or "come by heah". One of these is a different song concerning the story of Daniel in the den of lions. Of the other two, one has been lost, and one cylinder was broken, so it cannot be determined if they are versions of "Kumbaya". [1]
According to an article in Kodaly Envoy by Lum Chee-Hoo, some time between 1922 and 1931, members of the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals [2] collected a version from the South Carolina coast. [3] "Come by Yuh", as they called it, was sung in Gullah, the creole language spoken by the formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as The Bahamas. [4] It is possible this is the earliest version, if it was collected before 1926. Because the individual songs in this society's publications are not dated, however, it cannot be dated with certainty to before 1931. [1]
In May 1936, John Lomax, Gordon's successor as head of the Archive of Folk Song, discovered a woman named Ethel Best singing "Come by Here" with a group in Raiford, Florida. [5]
These facts contradict the longstanding copyright and authorship attribution to the white Anglo-American songwriter, Reverend Marvin V. Frey. [3] Frey (1918–1992) said he wrote the song circa 1936 under the title "Come By Here", inspired, he said, by a prayer he heard delivered by "Mother Duffin", a storefront evangelist in Portland, Oregon. It first appeared in this version in Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey, a lyric sheet printed in that city in 1939. In an interview at the Library of Congress quoted by Winick, [1] Frey said the change of the title to "Kum Ba Yah" came about in 1946, when a missionary family named Cunningham returned from Africa where they had sung Frey's version. According to Frey, they brought back a partly translated version, and "Kum Ba Yah" was an African phrase from Angola (specifically in Luvale). Frey said the Cunninghams then toured America singing the song with the text "Kum Ba Yah". [1]
The story of an African origin for the phrase circulated in several versions, spread also by the revival group the Folksmiths, whose liner notes for the song stated that "Kum Ba Yah" was brought to America from Angola. [1] As Winick points out, however:
According to Frey, then, the pronunciation “Kum Ba Yah” originated when Luvale-speaking people in Angola and Zaire translated “Come by Here” into their language. That strains credibility on several levels, primarily that “Come by Here” translated into Luvale would not be “Kum Ba Yah;” indeed, for “Come by Here” to translate to “Kum Ba Yah,” the target language would have to be a creole with English as one of its main components, and no such language was common in Angola (then still a Portuguese colony) or Zaire (a country formerly colonized by Belgium, whose primary colonial language was French) in the 1930s. Moreover, the AFC’s cylinder recording of H. Wylie shows that we have no need of such a story. In Wylie’s dialect, which is most likely a form of Gullah, the word “here” is pronounced as “yah,” rendering the song’s most repeated line “come by yah,” a phrase that can be phonetically rendered as either “Kum Ba Yah” or “Kumbaya.” [1]
Although it is often said that the song originated in Gullah, Winick further points out that the Boyd manuscript, which may be the earliest version of the song, was probably not collected from a Gullah speaker. [1]
A 45 rpm recording in a contemporary gospel style was released in 1958 by Little Sugar and the Hightower Brothers as "Come by Here", on the Savoy label (backed with "At the Golden Gate").
The Folksmiths, including Joe Hickerson, recorded the song in 1957, [6] as did Pete Seeger in 1958. [7] Hickerson credits Tony Saletan, then a songleader at the Shaker Village Work Camp, for introducing him to "Kumbaya". [1] Saletan had learned it from Lynn Rohrbough, co-proprietor with his wife Katherine of the camp songbook publisher Cooperative Recreation Service, predecessor to World Around Songs. [3] [5] [8] [9] (Hickerson later succeeded Gordon and Lomax at the American Folklife Center, successor to the Archive of Folk Song.) [10] The song enjoyed newfound popularity during the American folk music revival of the early to mid-1960s, largely due to Joan Baez's 1962 recording of the song, [11] and became associated with the Civil Rights Movement of that decade. For example, there is a recording of marchers singing the song as "Come By Here" during the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery (Alabama) march for voting rights. [12]
The title of the song is often used sarcastically in English-speaking countries, either to make fun of spirituality and interpersonal relationships or to criticize their superficiality.
Beginning in the 1990s and increasing in the following decades, references to "Kumbaya" or "singing 'Kumbaya'" entered idiomatic usage in the politics of the United States, often to suggest that someone other than the speaker is too conciliatory or eager to compromise. [13] [14] Richard Vatz has characterized these references to the song as sarcastic criticism of consensus "that allegedly does not examine the issues or is revelatory of cockeyed optimism." [13]
For example, in discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, U.S. President Barack Obama commented that the substantive disagreements between the parties "can't be reduced to somehow a matter of let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya.'" [15] Many other high-profile political figures have similarly referred derisively to the singing of the song as a way of expressing doubt or disparagement for potential compromise. [14] Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee explained his skepticism that ideologically aligned candidates in the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries would unite around a single individual by saying, "there's not going to be some magic moment at which three or four of these people sit around a campfire toasting marshmallows, singing 'Kumbaya' and giving the nod to one of their competitors." [16] Businessman and political candidate Herman Cain, speaking to a rally in 2011, said, "Singing ‘Kumbaya’ is not a foreign policy strategy." [13]
Version No. 1 [17] | Version No. 2 [18] | Version No. 3 | Version No. 4 [19] |
---|---|---|---|
Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Someone need you, Lord, come by here | For the sun, that rises in the sky |
Someone's laughing, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Hear me crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Now I need you, Lord, come by here | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; |
Someone's crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Hear me singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Come by here, my Lord, come by here, | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; |
Someone's praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Hear me praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; | In the mornin' see, Lord, come by here, | For the second on this world you made, |
Someone's singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; | Oh, I need you, my Lord, kum bay ya; | I gon' need you, Lord, come by here, | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; |
Oh, Sinners need you, Lord, come by here, | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; | ||
In the morning - morning, won't you come by here |
Additional stanzas by Barry Moore (1973), in "Sing and Rejoice" songbook, Herald Press (1979):
In Your Body, Lord, we are one.
In Your Body, Lord, we are one.
In Your Body, Lord, we are one.
O Lord, we are one.
In his banquet, Lord, we find strength.
In his banquet, Lord, we find strength.
In his banquet, Lord, we find strength.
O Lord, we find strength.
Draw us nearer, Lord, each to each.
Draw us nearer, Lord, each to each.
Draw us nearer, Lord, each to each.
O Lord, each to each.
Fill our mind, Lord, with Your peace.
Fill our mind, Lord, with Your peace.
Fill our mind, Lord, with Your peace.
O Lord, with Your peace.
Undivided, Lord, we shall stand.
Undivided, Lord, we shall stand.
Undivided, Lord, we shall stand.
O Lord, we shall stand.
Spirituals is a genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft.
Gullah is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people, an African-American population living in coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia as well as extreme northeastern Florida and the extreme southeast of North Carolina.
Joseph C. Hickerson is a folk singer and songleader. A graduate of Oberlin College, for 35 years (1963–1998) he was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. Joe brought together the Ukrainian source and his own verses to create the basis for "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" in collaboration with Pete Seeger. He participated in the first LP recording of "Kumbayah". Along with Dave Guard, he is credited with the creation of the Kingston Trio's version of "Bonny Hielan Laddie". He is a lecturer, researcher, and performer, especially in New York State, Michigan, and the Chicago area. As of 2013 he is living in Portland, Oregon.
The Archive of Folk Culture was established in 1928 as the first national collection of American folk music in the United States of America. It was initially part of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and now resides in the American Folklife Center.
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music. The center and its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklore and folklife worldwide.
Mary Elizabeth Jones was an American gospel and folk singer credited with helping to bring folk songs, games and stories to wider audiences in the 20th century. Alan Lomax, who first encountered Jones on a field recording trip in 1959, said, "She was on fire to teach America. In my heart, I call her the Mother Courage of American Black traditions."
"Hesitation Blues" is a popular song adapted from a traditional tune. One version was published by Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham. Another was published by W.C. Handy as "Hesitating Blues". Because the tune is traditional, many artists have taken credit as writer, frequently adapting the lyrics of one of the two published versions. Adaptations of the lyrics vary widely, though typically the refrain is recognizably consistent. The song is a jug band standard and is also played as blues and sometimes as Western swing. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11765. Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy.
"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" is a traditional African-American spiritual, first published in 1927. It became an international pop hit in 1957–58 in a recording by English singer Laurie London, and has been recorded by many other singers and choirs.
"Gospel Plow" is a traditional African American spiritual. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index, number 10075. The title is biblical, based on Luke 9:62.
Robert Winslow Gordon was an American academic, known as a collector of folk songs.
Anthony Grant Barrand was a British-born American folk singer and academic. He was a Professor of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University, where his courses included "Stalking the Wild Mind: The Psychology and Folklore of Extra-Sensory Perception and Psychic Phenomena", "English Ritual Dance and Drama", and "Folk Songs as Social History".
"Good Shepherd" is a traditional song, best known as recorded by Jefferson Airplane on their 1969 album Volunteers. It was arranged and sung by the group's lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, who described their interpretation of it as psychedelic folk-rock.
Anthony D. "Tony" Saletan is an American folk singer, children's instructional television pioneer, and music educator, who is responsible for the modern rediscovery, in the mid-1950s, of two of the genre's best-known songs, "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" and "Kumbaya". In 1955, he was the first performer to appear on Boston's educational television station, WGBH. In 1969, Saletan was the first musical guest to appear on Sesame Street.
Come and Praise is a hymnal published by the BBC and widely used in collective worship in British schools. The hymnal was compiled by Geoffrey Marshall-Taylor with musical arrangements by Douglas Coombes, and includes well-known hymns such as “Oil in My Lamp”, “Kum Ba Yah” and “Water of Life” as well as Christmas carols and Easter hymns.
Up Close and Personal is the ninth studio album by Australian recording artist Judith Durham. The album was released in Australia in May 2009.
The Seekers Complete is a 5-disc box set by Australian band The Seekers. It was released in December 1995 following the group's induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame at the ARIA Music Awards of 1995.
Janie Hunter was an American singer and storyteller who worked to preserve Gullah culture and folkways in her home of Johns Island, South Carolina. She received a 1984 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to folk art and traditions.
Griffin Lotson is an African-American historian, born in Crescent, Georgia. He is a seventh-generation Gullah Geechee. He serves as a councilman and the mayor pro-tem in Darien, Georgia. He also manages the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters. He is the national Federal Government vice-chairman and former treasurer of the federal Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission.
Madelyn Sheppard was an American pianist, singer, and composer from Selma, Alabama. She frequently collaborated with lyricist Annelu Burns on spirituals and blues songs, including creating music for the theater and film industries. She composed the score for the 1922 Broadway musical, Just Because, which "may well have been the first full-length Broadway musical authored entirely by women", according to the Library of Congress.