Cateyo and I were just BSing on IM about sports rivalries – he’s a Braves fan, which makes him anathema to many Phils fans, so he suggested we unite in our mutual hatred of the Mets, to which I responded “Kumbaya…”
Why did “Kumbaya” become shorthand for “let’s hold hands and make like dippy peaceniks”? The lyrics don’t have a huge amount of content about peace or anything else, and though Wiki comes up with all kinds of examples of that usage, they don’t really talk about how/why it came about. Is it just the distinctiveness of the title?
A quick search of the New York Times archives turns up a couple of interesting references (membership may be required for the cites below).
An article appearing on 5/21/63 reports on a protest by employees of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and Young Women’s Hebew Association. They were protesting the closing of some Jewish community centers in New York. The protestors “sat on the floor of the main lobby and sang ‘Kumbaya’, which one of them described as ‘a sort of spiritual,’ and other folk and labor songs.”
So, it looks like the song had a connection to nonviolent protests at least that far back. In 1968, the bookNonviolent Direct Action, which is described as a “collection of case material selected to illustrate face-to-face nonviolent encounters in the past few years,” mentions protestors singing “Kumbaya” and “We Shall Overcome” and saying, optimistically, that the soldiers were their friends.
In 1969, in what strikes me as kind of a strange event, Pat Nixon invited groups of poor children aboard the Presidential yacht for an afternoon of sailing. An article on 7/8/69 says that the children sang a number of songs, including “Kumbaya”.
The 1963 protest is – I think – about the time that Joan Baez released an album including “Kumbaya”. So it looks like the song’s popularity in the 60’s was connected early on with protests and hippies and was maybe morphing into a general “Let’s all get along” by the late 60’s.
I remember it being sung by school children – it’s a simple tune and one everyone can join in with. I suppose it went from the classroom to the commune in the popular imagination.
To follow up on the Joan Baez connection, the 12/11/78 Timereported on a vigil for the assassinated George Moscone and Harvey Milk. The article says, “At the flower-strewn steps, the mood of the civil rights rebellion of the 1960s was evoked as the crystalline voice of Folk Singer Joan Baez led the assembled marchers in the familiar songs: Kumbaya, Amazing Grace and Oh, Freedom.”
I was born in '73 so I don’t recall from personal experience, but I gather that Joan Baez was a fixture at a lot of rallies and protests. I imagine she led the protestors in “the familiar” “Kumbaya” pretty often. That probably cemented the association with peaceniks.
Yeah, sung at protests, etc. – but my question is, why does the word “Kumbaya” mean “hippie peacenik” in 2009? It wasn’t the only song sung at protests, or even the most common one, probably (I’m guessing that would be “We Shall Overcome”).
But, We Shall Overcome would be the poster song for the Civil Rights for Blacks Movement. It couldn’t be the one chosen to represent “Why can’t we all just get along.”
Do you have another song from the time that would express “hippie peacenik?”
When we sang “Kumbayah” at Scout camp in the early Eighties, we were told by the counselor who taught it to us that it was from the pidgin-English phrase “Come by here,” but that it was about an African standing on the wharf down by the river, trying to get the attention of imperialist sorts passing by on river steamers, and not addressing God directly.
“We Shall Overcome” expressed the struggle and eventual hope for victory. As such it had elements of militancy. “Kumbaya” was much simpler in its sentiments - it was sung mostly just to express spiritual solidarity and a longing for peace and good feeling.
As the article says, besides being sung around campfires, it was also incorporated into “folk masses” in the 1960s; that’s where I first heard it, at a Catholic “guitar mass” when I was in high school.
i can remember in the late 60s the entire elementary school from kindergarden to 6th grade getting together in the auditorium for sing alongs, and then again smaller ones on a classroom by classroom basis [some lady with a guitar would circulate and play 5 or 6 songs that we all sang along with.]
I got in a heap of trouble because I never knew the kiddy lyrics to My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. My dads army buddies thought it was a hoot to teach me Danang Lullaby where the refrain is My God how the mortars roll in … :smack: so that is how I sang along … with the lyrics I knew. So the bunny hugging hippie guitar player had a cow, making the teacher have a cow and call my mom and dad, who went in and had a cow at the teacher for bothering them about something so silly [there isnt a swear word in it at all … it was just whining about not being able to finish a second beer before the counter attack started]
Throw in that it sounds goofy – mockery is so much more satisfying when it can be summed up in three nonsense syllables – and I guess it’s the perfect meme.
I think it also has a connotation of doofy inefectuallness - sitting around in a circle singing Kumbaya to show how concerned we are instead of actually doing something about whatever issue is at hand.
