In 2006, Three South African women whose father, Solomon Linda, wrote ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ in 1939, won a six-year court battle that gave them 25 percent of all past and future royalties from the song. Linda, who was a cleaner at a Johannesburg record company when he wrote the song, received virtually nothing for his work and died in 1962 with $25 in his bank account. The song had been recorded by Pete Seeger (as ‘Wimoweh’), The Kingston Trio, The Tokens, Karl Denver and R.E.M. and was featured in the Disney film The Lion King. It was estimated that the song had earned $15 million for its use in The Lion King alone.
As an added note from Ben Blackwell, "If you want to get DEEEEEP, check out the article that lays out the whole damn history on this…one of the best things Rolling Stone magazine has ever published: http://reprints.longform.org/in-the-jungle"
nice
Thanks for sharing.
Very cool!
yes … the chant is the song… those are the lyrics… the variation in that Uyi mbube (you’re a lion) is likely tonal as might be experienced with inflection that might cnhange the meaning to (mama lion) as it reads at songs for teaching website …. thats the cool thing about some languages is that inflection or tone actually can change the entire word …. yes its wonderful as a song with a living history but you and i got got the jungle and the hush my darling interpretation because out tribe is to diverse and needs legal and grammatical indicators of value to appreciate the meaning and subtle word changes because we might not pick up on a tonal indicator that would be a lyric shift from humans talking to other himans as opposed to humans talking to lions hoping to get home safely with friends and livestock intact
After the invocation it seems to me to settle into a chant rather than conventional lyrics, but what matters is it’s awesome.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!
Seriously…. not meaning to sound naive but i do believe there are a scant few lyrics …. quoting the article … Mbube,” Zulu for “the lion,” recorded at their second session, in 1939. It was a simple three-chord ditty with lyrics something along the lines of, “Lion! Ha! You’re a lion!” inspired by an incident in the Evening Birds’ collective Zulu boyhood …. Solomon didnt just kick down a melody… its a love song to a lion that might have been how the cattle herding boys in the jungle subdued those ferocious mama lions trying to feed their cubs!!! Check out the full translation of Zulu here ….. http://www.songsforteaching.com/PWMMbube.html Honestly… when i heard the lead invocation i knew it had meaning to the chanting, “Uyimbube, uyimbube,” …. i think the cultural relativism in this situation is at the heart of doing justice to the translation of the Zulu version really gets to the heart of Mr. Linda and his melodic wails as a soloist after reading this …
This song was on the charts when I was a kid, and constantly covered/performed on variety shows, but this is the first time I’ve heard the original. Fascinating that what I’d thought of as the main melody doesn’t appear till near the end, and that there are no lyrics.
Interesting stuff. Also of similar interest is the saga of finding Robert Johnson’s long lost heir. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-06-17/news/0006170101_1_robert-johnson-devil-blues-claud-johnson
TB
PS—I have always been a fan of They Might Be Giant’s “The Guitar,” which also used this tune as its basis.
South African Indigenous folks often had to live in Bantustans which separated families from mothers/fathers for 9-11 months out of they year as a means of controlling the labor force and addressing transportation issues associated with the impoverished portions of the community from their more wealthier country folk…. its likely that Mr. Linda did not have access to legal services as a means of claiming his mechanical and publishing rihts for the majority of his life …. What a wonderful victory for his family when apartied ended and reparations were served…. Thanks for the update TMR