[ "Come by here": Listen as the Maine-based poet Arielle Greenberg
takes you to the radical roots , the heritage and legacy of the
oft-maligned song, Kumbaya.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

“SITTING AROUND SINGING KUMBAYA”  
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Arielle Greenberg
May 1, 2019
Poetry Northwest
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_ "Come by here": Listen as the Maine-based poet Arielle Greenberg
takes you to the radical roots , the heritage and legacy of the
oft-maligned song, Kumbaya. _

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“Sitting Around Singing Kumbaya”

By Arielle Greenberg

As I was putting the baby down for his nap today, singing him
Kumbaya—

which is rumored to be a Gulla phrase meaning “come over”—

the Gulla people descendents of West Africans enslaved and brought to
this country—

having come over and not having wanted to come over—

I thought about how people use the phrase “sitting around singing
Kumbaya”

to mean something you would never want to be caught doing—

something stupid and idealistic and futile—

the song Kumbaya whose origin and meaning is still debated and
partially erased—

I think of sand and sea here, history under sand and lost at sea—

but one thing that is known is that Kumbaya is a song well-meaning
white folk revivalists

“borrowed” from the Gullah people—

“borrowed” a word which, when used by well-meaning white folks,
often means “stolen”—

from the Gullah whose descendants had stayed

on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia

and kept a way of life, kept a language, kept their ways on the
islands off the mainland—

kept a way with walking sticks and with rice and with stories—

with language that is English and Creole and Sierra Leone Krio—

the Gullah people who sang a spiritual about trouble in mind, trouble
in mind

called “Kumbaya” that was perhaps a plea to God to pay attention
and _come over here, Lord_—

a song which was first “caught” by a white guy—

a former English professor, a folklore buff—

(someone kind of like me, really, I think, putting the baby to
sleep—)

a white man who recorded the song, trying to keep it for history and
culture—

but maybe this is a kind of stealing, too—

a kind of enslaving—

how “well meaning” often means “fucked up”

and is most often associated with liberal white folks like me—

if my meaning is even well at all, which I sometimes doubt—

and how the white folk revivalists, many of whom did after all march
with Dr. King

and with union workers and got arrested and got blacklisted—

brought the song out off the islands and into the world—

and Kumbaya became a song sung at Civil Rights marches—

and later sung at summer camps,

probably introduced by well-meaning white folk hippie camp counselors
who had marched—

so that now the folk song, the spiritual Kumbaya—

whose meaning is disputed but maybe means “come by here”—

is associated with little children and hippies—

and thus thought of as weak-minded and boring and worthy of
ridicule—

because we live in a culture where things associated with children are
thought of as idiotic—

so that “sitting around singing Kumbaya” is a shorthand meaning

wasting our time or not getting done what needs to get done—

or something absolutely inane and powerless—

in which people are required to _compromise_ or _find common
ground_—

so that now the phrase “singing Kumbaya,” a song once sung for
peace and justice,

is used to steal the power of people who work for peace and justice—

how U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said sarcastically that he was
surprised that a farewell dinner for then-United Nations president
Kofi Annan did not end in the singing of Kumbaya—

and Republicans said that Barack Obama, our first black president,

was maybe just singing Kumbaya with his ideas for massive health care
reform—

but during his election Obama himself said,

“The politics of hope is not about holding hands and singing,
‘Kumbaya”—

and I think about the Gullah people keeping their culture through and
despite and after

years of forced enslavement, and displacement, and colonization—

and singing, according to the various interpretations of the meaning
of the song Kumbaya—

 

“come over here to this place where we keep what is ours—

bear witness to it, how we have kept it alive”—

or, “come over here and stand with us, if you mean so well”—

or, singing to God, “do not forsake us, we who are suffering so
mightily”—

Kumbaya, a song of peace and justice, a song to be sung in the
streets—

and then I think, as I put the baby to sleep, singing Kumbaya,

about how I think sitting around singing Kumbaya—

singing, in a circle, in a group, the open, arousing song of former
slaves in a language

no one can quite trace, a language risen hot fire from ashes of all
that was stolen—

is perhaps one of the most notable and useful things I can think of
doing—

and that even the song being sung by children at summer camp

or well-meaning white folks in coffee houses is a lot less stupid than
making war—

“making war” itself a phrase associated with hippies

as if one could simply choose instead to “make love”—

an idea, a slogan which seems to have fallen so far out of fashion—

so I am aware that I myself sound like a hippie, really am basically
just a hippie—

if “just” a hippie means someone who, yes, would rather see
children run barefoot in grass

and languages invented and songs sung than wars mongered—

that I am someone, well-meaning or not,

who wants to hold hands and sing Kumbaya in a circle—

that singing anything in a circle of folks, really, as a group, is all
I want from this life—

Arielle Greenberg’s poetry collections are _Come Along with Me to
the Pasture Now_ (in which this poem will appear; forthcoming
2019), _Slice_, _My Kafka Century_ and _Given_. She’s also the
writer of the creative nonfiction book _Locally Made Panties_, the
transgenre chapbooks _Shake Her_ and _Fa(r)ther Down_, and
co-author, with Rachel Zucker, of _Home/Birth: A Poemic_. She has
co-edited three anthologies, including _Gurlesque_, forthcoming in an
expanded digital edition co-edited with Becca Klaver_. _Arielle’s
poems and essays have been featured in _Best American Poetry, Labor
Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers _and _The
Racial Imaginary_, among other anthologies; she_ _wrote a column on
contemporary poetics for the _American Poetry Review_, and edits a
series of essays called _(K)ink: Writing While Deviant_ for The
Rumpus. A former tenured professor in poetry at Columbia College
Chicago, she lives in Maine, where she works and teaches in the
community.

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