The Sad Story Behind "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"

​BOOKS BY PATTI LISZKAY
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​THE SAD STORY BEHIND "THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT"

       It was just a little over two months ago that I discovered the joy of playing the ukulele (see post from 5/9/2023, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/i-ukulelist). ​

    Since then I've further discovered that here in Columbus, Ohio, ukulele players abound and there are a number of ukulele clubs and societies. I've joined a couple of these groups, including the Buckeye Ukulele Society,

...a friendly group of seasoned virtuoso ukulelists (except for me - I'm a lowly novice greenhorn, though I've been nonetheless warmly welcomed into the fold) who meet once a month to jam for two sublime hours. 
         Last Tuesday evening we Buckeye ukulelists were happily strumming and singing through our repertory, immersed in the sweet, bouyant music that can only be created by a room full of ukuleles. About halfway through our list of songs we came to one of the happiest, liveliest, most well-known, well-loved and accommodating of tunes, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."  And as we strummed, sang, swayed  and a-wim-o-weh'd along to the irresistible beat, I felt in the midst of our joyful noise the same pang of sadness that this song always triggers in me; because I can never hear "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" without  thinking of the sadness of  its origins. 
         Sometime in the 1930's a young Black South African man named Solomon Linda living in Johannesburg who could neither read nor write but possessed a gift for composing music, wrote a song about his childhood in Zulu country where his job was to chase the lions away from the herds of cattle. He called the song "Mbube," Zulu for "lion." and it consisted of several voices chanting "mbube" (pronounced EEM-boo-beh) over and over while above the chant a soloist alternated between singing for the lion to stop and vocalizing without words. 
​           Solomon Linda and some of his friends had formed a singing group they called The Original Evening Birds, and, dressed in sharp pin stripe suits, they would sing Solomon's songs a cappella in the bars on the outskirts of town where Blacks were required to live and permitted to congregate.      
       The Evening Birds. Solomon Linda, first on the left.

     In 1939 a promoter for the South African record company Gallo discovered The Evening Birds and made a recording of them singing "Mbube."  The song took off, selling 100,00 copies in South Africa.

    However at that time in South Africa Blacks lived under the oppression of Apartheid and their rights were not protected under the law. Gallo Studios paid Solomon Linda ten shillings - about 87 cents - for the rights to "Mbube." And as a bonus Solomon was given a job sweeping the floor and serving tea in the Gallo warehouse. There's no documentation of the other members of the Evening Birds receiving any compensation for the record. 
        In the 1950's Pete Seeger, the American folk singing icon who stood for justice and civil rights, was introduced to "Mbube" through a friend, and he recorded the song with his group, the Weavers.  However Pete Seeger misheard "mbube" as "wimoweh," and so the song became "Wimoweh." 
        "Wimoweh" became a world wide hit, and when Pete Seeger sang the popular song live in concert he called it merely a song from South Africa. Over time "Wimoweh" made millions for those who followed Pete Seeger in recording, singing, and producing other versions of Solomon Linda's song.

         Furthermore, the singing style Solomon Linda and his songbirds created in "Mbube" was being copied by other musicians in their songs and became a designated South African folk genre unto itself that was given the name "mbube."       
         Meanwhile Solomon, who should have been a rich man from all the money his song made, lived in abject poverty with his wife and eight children in Soweto, the notorious Black-designated Johannesburg slum in a dirt-floored shack where they survived on corn porridge and chicken feet. Two of his children died as babies of malnutrition. 
        In 1961 an American songwriter reworked "Wimoweh," playing with the melody, adding some English lyrics and changing the title to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The song was recorded by a teen  group called "The Tokens."   

         And the rest is history.
     Solomon Linda died of kidney failure at age 53 a year after "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was released. His wife could not afford a gravestone. It wasn't until 45 years after his death that his descendants won a lawsuit that awarded them a portion of the royalties to which Solomon Linda should have been entitled for his work.
        Here's what I wonder: How did Solomon Linda feel all those times the when he  heard his hit song playing on the radio, the song he wrote and for which he received neither attribution nor compensation? Did it torment him they way it would torment me, a writer, if my work was stolen from me and made hundreds of millions of dollars for others? Or was Solomon Linda entirely unaware that he was entitled to anything more than the 10 shillings he received for his music? 
         These are the questions that vex and sadden me whenever I hear that song. 

References:
Solomon Linda - Wikipedia

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/world/africa/in-the-jungle-the-unjust-jungle-a-small-victory.html

​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_Sleeps_Tonight

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5300359