The Authentic Story Behind the Folk Anthem ‘Kumbaya’

When ‘Kumbaya’ comes to mind, two distinct associations often emerge. For many, it conjures images of children joyfully belting out the song by a campfire, while others recall its use as a sarcastic jab at naive hopes for unity. While the lyrics may differ slightly, they generally follow this pattern:

“Kumbaya my Lord, kumbayaKumbaya my Lord, kumbayaKumbaya my Lord, kumbayaOh Lord, kumbaya

Someone’s singing Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s singing Lord, kumbayaSomeone’s singing Lord, kumbayaOh Lord, kumbaya”

Practically any action word can replace the lines in later verses, like laughing, crying, praying, and sleeping. For decades, two misleading tales circulated about the roots of this famous folk tune; discover its true origins below.

The Misleading Beginnings of “Kumbaya”

While “Kumbaya” is frequently labeled as an African folk song, its true beginnings are more likely tied to African American heritage.

The misconception that “Kumbaya” hails from Africa gained traction due to The Folksmiths. Their 1958 album We’ve Got Some Singing To Do featured one of the earliest commercial recordings of the song (the other was released the same year by The Hightower Brothers). The Folksmiths, who learned the melody from folk artist Tony Saletan, performed it during their 1957 summer camp tours across America’s east coast, cementing its place in campfire traditions. “Guitar-playing camp counselors loved it because it only required three chords,” band member Joe Hickerson told TMCnet in 2006. 

The Folksmiths provided notes on each track in their album, claiming that “Kum Ba Yah (Come By Here)” originated from “the West coast of southern Africa” [PDF]. They credited the song’s copyright to the Cooperative Recreation Service, a publishing company started by Lynn and Katherine Rohrbough. The couple reportedly “obtained it from a professor at Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio, who heard it from a missionary in Angola, Africa.”

Stephen Winick, a scholar at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, suggests that the Rohrboughs may have attributed the song’s origin to Africa simply because the phrase ‘Kum Ba Yah’ had an exotic, African-like sound. However, they promptly relinquished their copyright upon learning of Marvin Frey’s assertion. 

In 1939, Frey, an Anglo-American Reverend, released the sheet music for a tune titled “Come by Here,” which he claimed to have composed in 1936 after being moved by a prayer. Frey asserted copyright as the song grew in popularity. Regarding the transformation from “Come By Here” to “Kum Ba Yah,” Frey explained that he performed it at a camp in Centralia, Washington, where a missionary’s son heard it and later introduced it to Africa. There, it was adapted into “an African dialect” as “KUM BA YAH.” Frey insisted the phrase was derived from Luvale, spoken in northeast Angola and southeast Zaire. 

The flaw in Frey’s account is that no such phrase exists in Luvale or any neighboring languages. Despite this, the minister steadfastly claimed authorship until his death, with a plaque near his grave commemorating him as the songwriter. However, his assertions were eventually debunked. 

The True Origins of “Kumbaya”

Winick clarified the history of “Kumbaya” in a 2018 article for the Library of Congress. The song’s existence can be verified as early as 1926 through both a manuscript and a recording, though its earlier history remains unclear.  

In 1927, Julian Parks Boyd, a high school principal from North Carolina, submitted a manuscript of the song’s lyrics—gathered from a student named Minnie Lee the prior year—to Robert Winslow Gordon, who later established the American Folklife Center archive in 1928 [PDF]. The song was named after its recurring line, “Oh, Lord, Won’t You Come By Here,” with each verse featuring a single line repeated three times, such as “Somebody’s sick, Lord, come by here,” “Somebody’s dying, Lord, come by here,” and “Somebody’s in trouble, Lord, come by here.”

The oldest known recording of the song was also part of the archive’s initial collection, captured in Georgia by Gordon himself in 1926. This rendition, performed by H. Wylie in Gullah, a Creole language of the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia, represents an early spiritual. Gordon had also gathered other spirituals with similar refrains like “come by here” or “come by yuh,” but the recordings on cylinders have been lost or damaged, making it impossible to confirm if they were variations of the same song.

A version that might predate those of Wylie and Lee was documented by the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals in The Carolina Low-Country. The collection, compiled between 1922 and 1931, includes a song with the lyrics “Somebody needs you, come by yuh,” though its exact place in the “Kumbaya” timeline remains uncertain.

Winick notes that the simultaneous appearance of Wylie and Lee’s versions indicates the song “was likely shared among both Gullah speakers and other African American communities.” Despite its unclear beginnings, the spiritual almost certainly originated among Black Americans in the Southern United States. 

Evolving Interpretations

While the lyrics and melody of “Kumbaya” have remained largely unchanged since its earliest known versions, its cultural significance has evolved dramatically. Originally a spiritual hymn, the song gained new interpretations as it grew in popularity over the years.

During the 1960s, “Kumbaya” transformed into a protest anthem. In 1965, the Zion Methodist Church in Marion, Alabama, sang “Come By Here” to rally behind the civil rights movement. A year later, students in Gary, Indiana, rewrote the lyrics to denounce local corruption: “Gary’s troubled, my Lord, Kumbaya.” In 1980, residents of Middletown, Pennsylvania, sang it during a candlelight vigil commemorating the first anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

However, the song’s reputation began to shift in the mid-1980s. In 1985, film critic Rita Kempley sarcastically mentioned “Kumbaya” in her review of Volunteers for The Washington Post, describing the film as “a late satire of ’60s idealism and the overly earnest Kumbayahoos who aimed to rescue the Third World.” This portrayal of the song as overly sentimental and impractical gained traction over time.

The decline in “Kumbaya’s” standing may have stemmed from its association with children’s summer camps, where it was often seen as overly sweet and trivial. For example, in Addams Family Values (1993), Wednesday (Christina Ricci), Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), and Joel (David Krumholtz) are subjected to a cringe-worthy performance of the song after attempting to flee Camp Chippewa.

Today, “Kumbaya” is often used as a metaphor for an overly idealistic and ineffective approach to serious issues, with the term kumbaya moment typically employed sarcastically. This usage is especially prevalent in politics and business. In 2015, President Barack Obama referenced the song while discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, stating that the differences between his approach and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “can’t be boiled down to simply holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”

From its origins as a soulful spiritual hymn to its roles as a beloved campfire tune, a rallying cry for activists, and even a term of mockery, “Kumbaya” has proven to be a remarkably versatile and ever-evolving musical piece.