Kum By Yah

DESCRIPTION: You know the drill: "Kum by yah, my Lord, kum by yah (x3), Oh, Lord, Kum by yah." "Someone's crying, Lord..." "Someone's singing, Lord..." "Someone's praying, Lord...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1931 (Augustine T. Smythe et al, The Carolina Low Country, according to Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 63-72, 133, 134, 144, 175, 200, 215, 238, 313, 346, 347, 348, 431, 500, 501, 520, 551, "Kumbaya" (notes plus 2 texts on pp. 70-72; bibliography on pp. 645-649)
ChansonsDeNotreChalet, pp. 70-71, "Kum Ba Yah" (1 text, 1 tune)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, pp. 108-109, "Kum Ba Yah" (1 text, 1 tune, plus a "Scout Law Version")
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 368, "Kum Ba Yah" (1 text)
48MuchLovedFolkSongs, p. 19, "Come By Here - Kum Ba Yah" (1 text, 1 tune, which despite the title uses the words "Kum By Yah")
RECORDINGS:
Willie Peacock, "Come By Yah (Kumbaya)" (on VoicesCiv)
Pete Seeger & Sonny Terry, "Kum Ba Yah" (on SeegerTerry)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Come By Here" (form)
NOTES [248 words]: Although almost the prototypical camp song, and certainly a folk song in that right, genuine field collections seem to be few and far between. - RBW
But an early field recording, cited by Steven Winick, makes clear that the song was present among the Gullah people of the sea islands off the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas; the title is "Come By Here" in Gullah dialect. - PJS
Indeed so. Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 63-70, has a discussion of the song, its origins, and the folklore about its origins. It was apparently collected and printed in the 1920s to help support the surviving people of the region, whose dialect and culture was being affected by migration, and to help preserve the dialect. This version, from the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals. Lynn Rohrbach, collector and publisher of play-parties, handed it off to publishers who put it into camp songbooks, and passed it to Pete Seeger in the 1950s, and very little could stop it then.
The origin seems to have been quickly forgotten; as a result, people started claiming it was Korean, or Angolan ("Angola" likely being a mis-hearing of "Gullah," and one that gained authority by association with Pete Seeger), or that it was written by Marvin Frey (who, however, was too young to have produced a version in the 1920s). I don't think there can be any doubt that it was originally Gullah, and genuinely traditional, but that most of its popularity has been driven by revival singers and songbooks. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: FSWB368D

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