Translation: “Come by me (my Lord)”
Readership: All;
Theme: Giving the gift of yourself to others.
Length: 650 words
Reading Time: 2 minutes + 3:34 minute video
Pete Seeger sings Kumbaya in Australia (1963-10-24)
This year, I’ve seen Kumbaya mentioned a few times in the comments and elsewhere around the sphere. The majority of them are mocking or dismissive in tone. I need to say something about this.
Singing Kumbaya (e.g. around a campfire at night) is a powerful experience which draws participants into a spirit of worship characterized by a subjective mood of humility, faith, and hope in a small group setting. It is this feature of the music that makes it deeply moving. This spirit of worship is the backbone of gospel music, and this aspect of gospel music has been a major influence on several other genres of music, including Bluegrass, Country, Folk, Pop, Soul, and the early formations of R+B and Rock-and-Roll.
In fact, within the music profession, it is well known that a person cannot sing well, unless he/she is in a worshipful mood, whether they care to admit that’s what it is or not. For instance, vocal students are taught to focus on their emotional energy and “think high” in order to gain an ear for producing the correct intonations.
Lately, this spirit of worship has fallen out of fashion within the music industry, and this is the main reason why a lot of modern music is trash, and also why most music doesn’t stand the test of time.
Likewise, this spirit of humility and worship is the beauty and the value of Kumbaya and similar songs. However, in our current culture, only children are permitted this poignant experience, because their hearts have not yet been hardened by the idols of our age – feminism, individualism, materialism, liberal progressivism, and sexualism. As children grow older, they become accustomed to the ways of this world and gradually lose their appreciation for that small group sense of humility, faith, and hope that is manifested in the Kumbaya experience.
As adults, it is easy for us to dismiss Kumbaya as childish and naively idealistic. But we must not lose sight of the spiritual virtues that are manifested in this experience. We must remain aware that the reason why we lose this sensitivity is because our hearts have been hardened by being continually exposed to the norms of idolatry, and participating in those norms to varying degrees as a matter of living in this world.
Those who are hard of heart will fail to recognize this beauty. Their identification with the world and becoming well accustomed to worldly standards and appearances inevitably blinds them to the beauty of worship and humility. As a result, a song such as Kumbaya appears to be boring, laughable, naïve, ridiculous, simplistic, or “goody-two-shoes”.
The spiritual defilement that accompanies this kind of attitude is not limited to one’s tastes in music. Back in August, we had a few posts that described how women get sucked into secular standards of beauty and attractiveness. Women like this gain a disposition of scorning modest women with a quiet spirit. Our articles didn’t mention it, but the same is true for men too. The constant submersion in sex hardens men’s hearts and teaches them to only be attracted to bulbous butt bimbos. It is an identification with the world that produces a hardness of the heart, and a blindness to true relationship potential. (I know, because I was like this years ago.)
If you want to be close to God, it is imperative that you soften your heart. One fair litmus test of knowing how soft your heart is, is how you perceive the glorious humility conveyed in songs like Kumbaya.
Lest we forget.
Related
- Σ Frame: Censorship of Praise is the Thief of Joy (2018-04-11)
- Σ Frame: Mount Moriah – The Place Where You Meet God (2019-02-15)
- Σ Frame: Having an Attractive Attitude in Serving (2020-06-29)
Σ Frame 
FYI, the phrase is “Come By Here”. Pronounced “Coom By Hee-ah”.
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Jack, your inclusion of the Pete Seeger video serves as another piece of evidence for why this song is so despised by so many. Seeger’s openly Marxist leanings (he even sang Stalin’s praises) gave American folk music a very bad name among much of the population, and Kumbaya is inextricably linked with Seeger and the rest of his generation of folk artists (e.g., The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary), none of whose works have aged well. Indeed, listening to any of it today provokes a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard reaction.
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A lot of people will reject the truth simply because they don’t like the package it comes in. But it is still the truth.
A lot of people will reject Christ and the Gospel because it involves suffering and sacrifice. But Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
A lot of people will reject Headship and Patriarchy because it is unpopular with women and difficult to establish. But this is the only way to achieve sanctification and glorify God in marriage.
A lot of people will reject the Red Pill because some of the basic concepts came out of the lewd and detestable PUA industry. But AWALT. Ignore it at your own peril.
A lot of people will reject the main point of this post (the importance of humility, worship, passion, and music in a small group setting) because they snigger at Kumbaya, or because they despise Hippies, Boomers, and/or their music and political stances. But a spirit of humility and worship will always be central to human flourishing, and one will miss out on the most memorable moments of life — and love itself — if one rejects this.
Music is definitely one thing the Silents and Boomers did well and got right — because they appreciated this aspect of music. All Classic Rock artists cite folk music as their major influence, which is telling. That’s why we’re still listening to some classic rock tunes after 40 odd years, while a lot of newer music has since faded away. Many members of the younger generations even prefer classic rock, although they can’t relate to the folk genre.
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I wrote something in the post that I’ll unpack a little more.
The music that appeals to the heart and soul, to the living passions of the day, hardly ever ages well. This is because humility, passion, and worship is something that must be experienced in the present moment to be fully appreciated.
I’ll draw a comparison here to illustrate my point.
Music that is angsty, cynical, political, romantic, and sexual in nature continues to be popular for decades — because these themes endure. This is why music companies rearrange, remix, remaster and rerelease 50+ year old soundtracks from time to time (e.g. the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, U2).
Whereas, music that relies solely on humble folk-style passion and cultural inspiration will become severely démodé after a few years at most. For example, The Kingston Trio (19 top 100 albums, 14 top 10 albums, and 5 number one albums), Herb Alpert (14 platinum albums and 15 gold albums), and Styx (four straight triple-platinum albums), were red hot bands of their time. But we never hear these artists anymore because their songs are now revered by their generation and according to their generation. IOW, they’re dated out the wazoo. The particular nerve they struck in their day and age is no longer sensitive. The songs themselves might be covered by a newer band, but the passionate vibe they aroused in their generation can never be remixed and fed to a younger generation. They were a phenomenon unique to their time precisely because they appealed specifically to the then-current mood and tone that was present in society.
Artists like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty were among the select few artists that could straddle this fence between authentic humility and political cynicism/sexuality, respectively.
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