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" Kum ba yah" ("Come by here") is an African-American spiritual of disputed origin, known to have been sung in the Gullah culture of the Sea Islands, with ties to enslaved Central Africans. Originally an appeal to God to come to the aid of those in need, the song is thought to have spread from the islands to other Southern states and the North, as well as to other places outside the United States.
The first known recording was made by the folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon in 1926. It features an unaccompanied tenor voice identified only as "H. Wylie" singing in the Gullah language. The piece became a standard campfire song in Scouting and and enjoyed broader popularity during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. In American politics, the song title gave rise to the phrase "", a thought-terminating cliché depicting peaceful goals as that leave other concerns ignored.
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 collected a version from the South Carolina coast. "Come by Yuh", as they called it, was sung in Gullah language, 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. 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.
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.
These facts contradict the longstanding copyright and authorship attribution to the white Anglo-Americans songwriter Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918–1992), who claimed to have written 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, 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".
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. As Winick points out, however:
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.
A 45-rpm recording in a contemporary Gospel music style was released in 1958 by Little Sugar and the Hightower Brothers as "Come by Here", on the Savoy Records label (backed with "At the Golden Gate").
Beginning in the 1990s and increasing in the following decades, references to "Kumbaya" or "singing 'Kumbaya entered usage in the politics of the United States, often to suggest that someone other than the speaker is too conciliatory or eager to compromise. 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."
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. 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. 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." Businessman and political candidate Herman Cain, speaking to a rally in 2011, said, "Singing ‘Kumbaya’ is not a foreign policy strategy."
| Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Someone need you, Lord, come by here Someone need you, Lord, come by here Someone need you, Lord, come by here Oh, Lord, come by here.|align="center" | For the sun, that rises in the sky For the rhythm of the falling rain For all life, great or small For all that's true, for all you do. | |
| Someone's laughing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's laughing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's laughing, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Hear me crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me crying, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Now I need you, Lord, come by here Sinners need you, Lord, come by here Sinners need you, Lord, come by here Oh, Lord, come by here.|align="center" | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya. |
| Someone's crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's crying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's crying, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Hear me singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me singing, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Come by here, my Lord, come by here, Come by here, my Lord, come by here, Come by here, my Lord, come by here, Oh, Lord, come by here.|align="center" | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya. |
| Someone's praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's praying, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Hear me praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me praying, my Lord, kum bay ya; Hear me praying, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | In the mornin' see, Lord, come by here, In the mornin' see, Lord, come by here, In the mornin' see, Lord, come by here, Oh, Lord, come by here.|align="center" | For the second on this world you made, For the love that will never fade, For a heart beating with joy, For all that's real, for all we feel. |
| Someone's singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's singing, my Lord, kum bay ya; Someone's singing, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | Oh, I need you, my Lord, kum bay ya; Oh, I need you, my Lord, kum bay ya; Oh, I need you, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya.|align="center" | I gon' need you, Lord, come by here, I gon' need you, Lord, come by here, I gon' need you, Lord, come by here, Oh, Lord, come by here.|align="center" | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya. |
|align="center" | |align="center" | Oh, Sinners need you, Lord, come by here, Sinners need you, Lord, come by here, Sinners need you, Lord, come by here, Oh my Lord, won't you come by here.|align="center" | Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya; Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya, O Lord, kum bay ya. |
| In the morning - morning, won't you come by here Mornin' - morning, won't you come by here In the Mornin' - morning, won't you come by here Oh, Lord, come by here. |
Additional stanzas by Barry Moore (1973), in the songbook Sing and Rejoice, Herald Press (1979):
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The World's First "Kumbaya" Moment: New Evidence about an Old Song. Earlier version of Kumbaya: History of an Old Song. Folklife Center News, Volume 32, Nos. 3-4, Summer/Fall 2010, pp. 3-10. Washington, D.C., American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 2010
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