"Kumbaya" (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) is a song claimed to have been composed by Reverend Marvin V. Frey (1918–1992) in the 1930s in Portland, Oregon.
Originally titled "Come By Here", it first appear in "Revival Choruses of Marvin V. Frey", a lyric sheet printed in Portland in 1939. In 1946, the song returned from Africa with a missionary family, who toured America singing the song with its now world famous Angolan text "Kum Ba Yah".