"... What is this symbol of sweetness and light, of warmth and goodness, that has been seized upon as an object of scorn?
The word is Creole for "come by here." According to Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, it is the title of a spiritual sung in the dialect of Gullah (that word possibly a variant of Angola, where the song may have originated about a century ago). It was revived in the folk-singing 50's and 60's, popularized by groups like Peter, Paul and Mary, and epitomizes the gentle, peace-yearning spirituality (often derided as pot-smoking narcissism by hardhearted elders) of some of the hirsute youth of that generation. Typical English-language lines of one version of the song are "Sinners need you, Lord, kumbaya . . . Come by here, my Lord, kumbaya."
Evidently the word has now come to mean ''excessively idealistic.'' Its earnest innocence is usually regarded by today's realists with varying degrees of disdain, and the dreamy mood of the era that it evokes is far from the grounded, centered rationality of today. But nobody can say the song's lyrics are not faith-based. "
--William Safire, "On Language,"
NY Times Magazine,
November
21, 2004