Mandel Ngan/AP (The best known Sea Island is Hilton Head, the resort area.) The word "kumbaya" is believed by many music historians to be pidgin English - and a transliteration - for the prayerful plea to God: "Come By Here."News. If this nation is not about everyone getting along, what is it about? Kumbaya apparently originated with the Gullah, an African-American people living on the Sea Islands and adjacent coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. Rick Santorum jumped on the anti-"Kumbaya" wagon in 1994. "Pete Seeger sings "Kumbaya" and talks about the song's history in 1963.In current political parlance, Vatz says, a reference to the song is used to sarcastically disparage consensus "that allegedly does not examine the issues or is revelatory of cockeyed optimism. "The exact evolution of the song is somewhat mysterious, but Samuel G. Freedman of Columbia University traced what may be the earliest recording of the song back to 1926 when a folklorist — using a primitive wax-cylinder recording device — captured the voice of a Georgia man singing it.By the late 1930s, Freedman discovered, "folklorists had made recordings as far afield as Lubbock, Texas, and the Florida women's penitentiary." Rather than kumbaya representing strength and power in togetherness and harmony as it once did, the word has come to reflect weakness and wimpiness.And as the American political flock moves from the high peaks of New Hampshire to the South Carolina low country — the home of "Kumbaya" — this week, we are liable to hear it brought up time and again by people trying to disparage others.A previous version of this story stated that the first known recording of "Kumbaya" was made in South Carolina. Why are these politicos invoking a sincere, melodic popular American folk song in a disparaging manner?

Speaking out against a program that would pay students for national service, Santorum said, "Someone's going to pick up trash in a park and sing 'Kumbaya' around a campfire, and you're going to give them 90 percent of the benefits of the GI Bill! Regarding the rancor among the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls as they migrate from New Hampshire to South Carolina, Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and erstwhile candidate himself, Singing "Kumbaya," former presidential candidate Herman Cain "Kumbaya"? Kumbaya Research From The Library of Congress. The song has experienced a rebirth at Occupy spots here and there. It wasn't kumbaya, but the GOP presidential hopefuls found harmony in the national anthem before a debate in November. “Kumbaya,” once one of the most popular songs in the folk revival, has more recently fallen on hard times. Snarkiness swept across the land, and "Kumbaya…

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Having lived in isolation for hundreds of years, the Gullah speak a dialect that most native speakers of English find unintelligible on first hearing but that turns out to be heavily accented English with other stuff mixed in. It wasn't kumbaya, but the GOP presidential hopefuls found harmony in the national anthem before a debate in November. Right there on the cover is a Hebrew newspaper with Hebrew writing on it. (It's taking longer than we thought.) Few may know, however, that the song was first recorded by descendants of slaves in the Gullah Geechee community of Darien in Southeastern Georgia. According to Stephen D. Winick of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, it was made in Georgia. "It works. "In 1963 about two dozen employees of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations in Manhattan held a sit-in — complete with choruses of "Kumbaya" — to protest the closing of 18 Jewish community centers.In 1966, student protesters in Gary, Ind., reacting to the city's corruption and crime, altered the usual lyrics to fit their concerns: "Kumbaya" became a staple in the American songbook, a tune floating on the winds of change. ... That's not what America is all about. The song became sneering shorthand for blissful agreement.The word "kumbaya" is believed by many music historians to be pidgin English — and a transliteration — for the prayerful plea to God: "Come By Here. And then, the winds changed for "Kumbaya." In the 1940s the pioneering linguist Lorenzo Turner showed that the Gullah language was actually a creole consisting of English plus a lot of words and constructions from the languages of west Africa, the Gullahs’ homeland. "Politicians who want to be cynical," he says, "bring it up. The dialect appears in Joel Chandler Harris’s “Uncle Remus” stories, to give you an idea what it sounds like. "The song is an African-American spiritual "that was collected in the 1920s from the Gullah — or Geechee — people of the South Carolina and Georgia coast," says Jeff Place of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 1989 humorist Joe Queenan, in a mean-spirited essay titled "If I Had a Hammer...I'd Smash Their Guitars," said that hearing "Kumbaya" sent shivers down his spine.In the mid-1990s, the Capitol Steps, a satirical singing group from Washington, mocked the song. "The Gullah have always fascinated folklorists because they have kept major parts of their African language and speak in a unique English dialect to this day. Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya. But you are just as liable to stumble on a mashup featuring Ozzy Osbourne, a heavy metal "Kumbaya," and an extremely crude parody by a group called the Cheese Tapes.And across the Internet, you will find countless references to it by politicians of all stripes.But according to Smithsonian's Place, there is nothing inherently political about the song.