yah

"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a song composed by Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918 - 1992) in the 1930s in New York City. Originally titled "Come By Here", it first appeared in "Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey", a lyric sheet printed in Portland, Oregon in 1939. The first
occurrence of the Name YAH occurs in Exodus 15:2, where Moses and Israel sing a. In 1946 the song returned from Africa with a missionary family, who toured America singing the song with its now world famous angolan text "Kum Ba Yah".

Sometimes the song is believed to be an original spiritual, 19th century African American folk song, originating among the Gullah, a group descended from enslaved Africans living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, but there is no evidence of the song before Frey's publication.

The song enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s, largely due to Joan Baez' 1962 recording of the song, and became associated with the civil rights struggles of that decade.

The song is copyrighted material from The Croton Press, Croton-on-Hudson. Yah-Ta-Hey Gallery.