kumbaya

We all know the song Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya, to the point where we probably wish we had never heard it.  This is an African-American spiritual, collected from the South Carolina and Georgia coast,  in which kumbaya is Black American pidgin for ‘come by me’.  The song was accepted as a wish for harmony and peaceful unity although it was then picked up (sometimes with altered lyrics) in various protest marches and demonstrations as a song of togetherness and peaceful solidarity.

Now kumbaya has taken on a life of its own as a smear word in politics. It began in American politics a decade ago where singing Kumbaya was equated to sentimental wishful thinking and put in opposition to hardheaded and realistic pragmatism.  A former presidential candidate, Herman Cain, told a Chicago Tea Party rally in 2011 that singing Kumbaya was not a policy strategy.

This referencing of the song Kumbaya with all its associations is now entering Australian political discussions.  Andrew Bolt commented on Scot Morrison’s ‘coronavirus kumbaya talk’. He was referring to the initial line — we’re all in this together.  Meredith Burgmann commented that ‘Women should not feel obliged to unite in a “kumbaya” effort to claim seats in Parliament’.  Councillor Ken Dorsey told the citizens of Burnie that it was time that their Council became seriously competitive about getting funding for Burnie, even at the expense of other municipalities, and stopped singing Kumbaya with them.  An artist creating a work that invites non-Indigenous people to enter an Indigenous space also encourages the audience not to pick off the kumbaya moments but to come closer to the pain.

So now, with the flick of an adjective, we can dismiss something as foolish and sentimental, a kumbaya initiative that any sensible person would oppose.