Marvin V. Frey: Kum Ba Yah

The Wifred Jury Boys Choir perform "Kum Ba Yah" as the offertory anthem under the direction of pianist Rosemary Bannerman as part of the June 8, 2008 Sunday service at Strathroy United Church.

"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a song claimed to have been composed by Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918--1992) in the 1930s in Portland, Oregon.

Originally titled "Come By Here", it was first collected by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1936. It appeared in "Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey", a lyric sheet printed in Portland in 1939. In 1946, the song returned from Africa with a missionary family, who toured America singing the song with the text "Kum Ba Yah".

There is debate about the truth of Frey's authorship claim; recent research has found that sometime between 1922 and 1931, members of an organization called the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals collected a song from the South Carolina coast. Come By Yuh, as they called it, was sung in Gullah, the Creole dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. In Gullah, "Kumbaya" means "Come by here", so the lyric could be translated as "Come by here, my lord, come by here." Another version was preserved on a wax cylinder in May 1936 by Robert Winslow Gordon, founder of what became the American Folklife Center. Gordon discovered a woman named Ethel Best singing Come By Here with a group in Raiford, Florida.

An intriguing etymology is that Kumbaya is derived from an Aramaic phrase, Qum bi haya, Eli--"Rise with Life, oh my Lord"!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Strathroy
• United
• Church
• Wilfred
• Jury
• Public
• School
• Kum
• Ba
• Yah
• Kumbayah

[Shrink18]

mrs bannerman was my music teacher up to grade six and she was the best.

[sadie400]

ahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha­hah thats all i have to say

[mitzag]

fukin love this fukin tune

this is masiv yo fukin sick mate!

[adobo143]

bye

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