"Mbube" is a popular song written and composed by South African musician Solomon Linda in 1939. It was first published in South Africa and made its way to the United States a decade later. In 1961, the Tokens adapted the melody and added English lyrics to create "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", lending the song the name by which it is best known today.
Linda, a migrant worker, led the a cappella group the Evening Birds. In 1939, they improvised a retelling of a lion-hunting incident in Zulu that melded regional music with Western influences. The recording, "Mbube", brought Linda much fame across South Africa and steered the development of isicathamiya music. However, he had sold his rights to "Mbube" to the owner of his parent record company, Eric Gallo, for ten shillings, unaware of what the transaction entailed. This kept him from earning royalties. The recording was then sent to a record label in the US and eventually landed in Pete Seeger's hands; his folk quartet, the Weavers, covered the song in 1951 as "Wimoweh". Ten years later, the Tokens, a doo-wop group, encountered "Wimoweh". After changing the melody and adding English lyrics, they released their version as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". It topped the US charts.
By the mid-2000s, some 150 artists around the world had covered the song. Its inclusion in Disney's The Lion King (1994) earned the songwriters an estimated $15 million in royalties. But Linda, then long deceased, was yet to reap recognition for his contribution to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" or receive songwriting credits. His descendants had earned very little and remained destitute. Emboldened, they filed a lawsuit against Disney for copyright violation in 2004. Within two years, they reached an out-of-court settlement with Abilene Music, in which the firm agreed to pay the family a lump sum for past royalties and offer them a share of future revenue. The case drew international attention and bore wide legal effects, such as those on British copyright law.
Though global success has made "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" an iconic pop song, some have associated it with racial exploitation. The song and Linda's history have been analysed in several documentaries and were part of the inspiration for the 2020 film Black Is King.
Background and release Solomon Linda was born in rural Natal, southern Africa. During his childhood, he followed the minstrel Virginia Jubilee Singers' events as they toured South Africa and performed spirituals. A migrant worker and beer hall singer,migrant worker: ; ; ; beer hall singer: ; he sang in a short-lived choir named the Evening Birds and founded another under the same name after the former dissolved in 1933. The new group, comprising himself as soprano, Gilbert Madondo as alto, Boy Sibiya as tenor, and Samuel Mlangeni, Gideon Mkhize, and Owen Sikhakhane as basses, performed a cappella on the weekends and quickly built a local following. Working-class culture in South Africa flourished around this time as the nation's manufacturing industry grew. After moving to Johannesburg, Linda started work as a packer at Eric Gallo's local record-pressing plant, the only one in black Africa.; ; ; moving to Johannesburg: ; only one in black Africa: It was not long before the firm's talent scout noticed the Evening Birds and invited them to the recording studio.; ; Such firms sought out Zulu close-harmony vocal music back then to appeal to migrant mineworkers.
During their second session at Gallo's studio, in 1939, they attempted "Mbube", accompanied by Peter Rezant on guitar, Emily Motsieloa on piano, and possibly Willie Gumede on banjo. They finished it without rehearsal after three takes. Impressed by the song, Gallo had it made into 78 rpm records. It then aired on the rediffusion, a landline that broadcast music and news across black neighbourhoods.
Composition
Performed in four-part harmony with Mlangeni, Mkhize, and Sikhakhane on bass, Madondo and Sibiya on middle tones, and Linda on soprano,four-part harmony: ; vocals: "Mbube" is sung in a call and response format: the phrases of each section overlap. It follows a cyclical structure. The melody is built over three chords, and the progression borrows from the marabi harmonic cycle common in twentieth-century South African music (I-IV-I6/4-V7-I).three chords: ; chord progression:
Journalist Sharon LaFraniere describes the melody as "tender ... almost childish in its simplicity". In the opinion of South African author Rian Malan, Mbube' wasn't the most remarkable tune, but there was something terribly compelling about the underlying chant, a dense meshing of low male voices above which Linda yodeled and howled for two minutes, mostly making it up as he went along." Of special interest to commentators are the song's final few seconds, where Linda breaks into a brief howl that Malan describes as "a haunting skein of fifteen notes".; ; howl: This became the melodic basis for the Tokens' cover.; In a Freaky Trigger review of another cover, Tom Ewing considers "Mbube" and all versions derived from it pleasant songs to sing along to.
The lyrics, written in Zulu,; are said to document an episode of Linda's childhood when he chased a lion while herding cattle.;
The chorus "wembube" repeats throughout.; "Mbube" draws heavily from Western influences introduced by missionaries and white singing troupes, such as four-part harmony; as music historian Veit Erlmann asserts, the main body "displays only a few features which can be said to be rooted in traditional performance practice".influences: ; quote: These Western elements, argues journalist Lior Phillips, enabled "Mbube" to later bear fruit globally. Erlmann notes that the song's triadic structure and harmonic progression resemble urban, Western genres and that by contrast, the metrically free introduction mirrors traditional dance music.structure & progression: ; ; introduction: ; The vocal lines are meant to evoke tin whistles typical of South African street music.
Release and effect on Linda and South African music
"Mbube" achieved widespread success. With over 100,000 copies of the song sold in Africa over the next nine years, Erlmann considers it the first South African "hit".copies sold: ; ; ; hit: According to Malan, Linda became "a legend in the Zulu subculture", and his band went on to dominate all-night song competitions. But he did not profit; he sold his rights to "Mbube" to Eric Gallo for ten shillings just after the recording session.did not profit: ; ; ; sold his rights: ; ; after the recording session: Gallo also paid him the equivalent of $2 for the first run of a few hundred records. Seeing that Linda could not read and did not understand royalties, a South African court would deem this deal unfair by 2006.could not read: ; no understanding of royalties: ; deem the deal: The Evening Birds remained prominent performers until their disbanding in 1948.continued performing: ; disbanding: But Linda never attained wealth or fortune; he lived in a house with a dirt floor coated in cow manure and suffered the death of one of his children from malnutrition. In 1959, he collapsed onstage, which doctors ruled a result of kidney failure, and died three years later aged 53.; ; At the time of his death, his bank account held roughly $40 in today's money.; His family could not afford a tombstone.;
"Mbube" defined contemporary South African music and the isicathamiya genre;; isicathamiya is a form of a cappella choral song stemming from traditional Zulu music "rehearsed and performed after hours in migrant workers' hostels" along with Western, Christian influences, writes Gwen Ansell.a cappella choral song; ; ; quote: ; influences: The word mbube, now shorthand for male a cappella choral singing in South Africa,; ; lent its name to a distinct music style, a style that anthropologist David B. Coplan argues "appealed across the class spectrum, melodised a growing African nationalism, created nostalgia for a lost society, and fused urban and rural values". In Erlmann's words, "Mbube" was "canonic for an entire generation of performers". For instance, all subsequent South African music styles adopted its booming I-IV-V bass patterns.
The Weavers version
Some years later, Gallo sent a bundle of records to Decca Records in the United States.; They were about to be discarded before Decca employee and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax salvaged them; among these records was "Mbube". He handed the box over to folk singer Pete Seeger of the Weavers. A penniless banjo player, Seeger became a musician after quitting university and acquainting himself with popular songs of the Great Depression. "Mbube" intrigued him; he promptly transcribed it word for word but misheard the chorus as wimoweh.fascinated: ; transcribed: ; misheard: ; ; "What really grabbed Pete ... was the high, wordless falsetto that floated on top and—most especially—where it landed, in a secondary melody, sad and sweet", writes Jesse Jarnow in his Weavers biography.
Seeger convened the Weavers at the Village Vanguard to record it. He tried to describe the vocal parts as he heard them, and they eventually settled on a repeated chant of "wimoweh, a-wimoweh" with Seeger performing falsettos.; falsettos: As Malan argues, their recording "was faithful to the Zulu original in almost all respects save for the finger-popping rhythm". To broaden its appeal, bandleader Gordon Jenkins composed a brass accompaniment that stressed Linda's brief howl towards the end of "Mbube".
The Weavers released "Wimoweh" in December 1951;; date: Seeger later said it was "just about my favorite song to sing for the next forty years". Shortly after its release, Gallo sold "Mbube" to the American Richmond Organization in exchange for the rights to administer "Wimoweh" in some bush territories. Even though records of Linda's work contained the words African Music Research Copyright Control, Richmond claimed it was a folk song. All songwriting credits were thus given to the fictitious Paul Campbell, a tactic allowing the Weavers to claim royalties on songs from the public domain even if "Mbube" was copyrighted.; Such a practice was common then. Royalties for "Wimoweh" were split two ways: half went to the Weavers' publishers—Howard Richmond (of The Richmond Organization) and Albert Brackman—and their manager Pete Kameron, and the other half to the Weavers. None went to Linda.
The song reached No. 6 on the US charts, but this success briefly crashed when Harvey Matusow, a prolific informer of the McCarthy era, accused three of the Weavers of being affiliated with the Communist Party.charts: ; ; ; derailed: Nonetheless, it grew into a Weavers standard. The song's profile rose when they performed it at Carnegie Hall in 1957. Jimmy Dorsey and the Kingston Trio recorded covers around this time.Dorsey: ; Kingston Trio:
Charts +Weekly chart performanceChart (1952)PeakpositionUS Billboard chart; ; ; year: 6US Cash Box Top 100 13
The Tokens version
Malan writes that by the end of the 1950s, "almost everyone in America knew the basic refrain" of "Wimoweh". After hearing a live Weavers performance of the song, the Tokens, a teen doo-wop group from Brooklyn, decided to record their version.hearing: ; record: They had already attained a hit, "Tonight I Fell in Love", and signed up with RCA for a three-record contract commencing in 1961.; Their first two records, "When I Go to Sleep at Night/Dry Your Eyes" and "Sincerely", struggled commercially, but their third would fare better.