The Kumbaya
Kount
The word "kumbaya" comes from the West Indies. It is "pidgin-English"
for "come by here" which were lyrics in an old African-American gospel song
called "Come By Here, Lord" which in turn is the song we know today as
"Kumbaya".
In all, if I counted right, Eek! says "Kumbaya!" a total of 284 times in
the course of the entire five seasons. Also, Elmo says it one time in the
episode "Chariots of Fur" while he is impersonating Eek!. In the episode
"Mountain Groan", Annabelle, the Squishy Bearz, Bigfoot, Sharky and Eek!
sing the song "Kumbaya" and the word "kumbaya" is heard 14 times during the
song. This make a total of 299 kumbayas in all five seasons. The episode
"Bearz 'n the Hood" (first season, episode 2) is the only Eek! episode in
which the word "kumbaya" is not spoken. The episode with the greatest number
of kumbayas is "Mountain Groan" (second season, episode 25a) where Eek! says
kumbaya 3 times and the song is sung for another 14 kumbayas making a total
of 17 kumbayas. Eek! actually sings during the first verse of the song, so
the count could be revised to a total of 291 times for Eek! and 15 other
kumbayas. It could also be argued that since Annabelle and the Squishy Bearz
and Bigfoot sing the song you could multiply the kumbays by the number of
singers. However, this could become too complex because Sharky is shown singing
but you can't actually hear him, so do you count that? I'd rather not! If
you did, that would be 7 times 14 kumbayas (plus 7 kumbayas from Eek! in
the first verse) making a total of 105 kumbayas in the song! If you
don't count Sharky that works out to 91 kumbayas in the song.
In another episode Sharky is playing a video game and at one point there
are 3 Eek-like robots on the screen that say kumbaya in unison. I counted
that as just one kumbaya. So if you wanted to, you could say that kumbaya
was uttered a total of 378 times or 392 times if you count Sharky in the
song. Then again, if you just count the number of times it is heard and not
the multiple voices the total is 299 kumbayas.
The episode in which Eek! himself says "kumbaya" the most times is the Christmas
Special from the second season, "It's a Very Merry Eek's-mas" with 12 kumbayas.
All the other episodes range from 1 to 9 kumbayas with the extremely notable
exception of the second episode in the first season, "Bearz 'n the Hood".
This is the only episode without the word kumbaya in it.
There were some Eek! promos in which Eek! says kumbaya, but we will never
know how many different ones there were or how many kumbayas were
uttered.
If you have additional information regarding the occurences of "Kumbaya!"
in Eek! the Cat episodes please email me at
and let me know!
Right now I'm going to go watch my videos and see how many times someone
says "When does the hurting stop?" in all the Terrible Thunderlizards episodes.
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