Kumbaya
| "Kumbaya" | |
|---|---|
| song | |
| Genre | Gospel |
| Writer(s) | unknown |
| Composer(s) | unknown |
| "Kum Bah Yah" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by The Folksmiths including Joe Hickerson from the 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 | ||||
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Kum ba yah ("Come by Here") is a spiritual song first recorded in the 1920s. It 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 a simple appeal to God to come and help those in need.
According to Library of Congress editor Stephen Winick, the two earliest 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 celebrated historian. 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".
According to an article in Kodaly Envoy by Lum Chee-Hoo, some time between 1922 and 1931, members of an organization called 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, the creole language spoken by the former slaves 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.
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