30 October 2020 — 0622 mdt

An anthem of hope

A rare performance of Kumbaya by The Seekers

Karen Knowles sang lead for the Australian folk group The Seekers during a period when Judith Durham, the group’s original lead singer, was pursuing a solo career. Here, in 1990, in Melbourne at the Meyer Music Bowl, at “Caroles by Candlelight,” she leads The Seekers’ soul soothing performance of Kumbaya.

Kumbaya may have originated in the American southeast, perhaps in the Carolinas or Georgia, according to Steven Winick’s article in the Fall, 2020, issue of the Folklife Center News. The Smithsonian has a version of the song on a cylinder recording made in the mid-1920s and listened to in the 1930s by Pete Seeger. In 1959, The Weavers, of which Seeger was a member, released a recording of Kumbaya.

The Seekers helped popularize the song in English speaking countries around the world. This performance uses an arrangement I’ve not heard before. Many folk groups and solo artists, as I noted in a January, 2017 post, have recorded the song. It remains a powerful anthem of hope that I find steadying and uplifting in these troubled Covid times.