The history of this song has provided me with as much fascination as the story of The Beach Boys. In 1939, Solomon Linda, a Zulu musician, gathered his group The Evening Birds into a simple Johannesburg recording studio and laid down his song Mbube ("The Lion") which they sang often in live venues around South Africa. The term "Wimoweh" is a mutation of the original word, uyimbube when Pete Seeger brought the song stateside in 1952 - and the Tokens did nothing to reverse that in 1961. Here's the current story:
Lawyers for the family of Solomon Linda, a migrant Zulu worker whose 1939 composition formed the basis for Wimoweh and The Lion Sleeps Tonight, announced the first of what are promised to be many lawsuits against the entertainment industry.A great online history of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Mbube)" is at 3rd Ear Music.
Under an arcane piece of colonial-era copyright law, the lawyers will next week sue Disney for using the song without permission in the film and stage show The Lion King.
Mr Linda died penniless and was buried without a headstone in 1962 but his descendants, not much better off, hope to earn millions in damages and royalties for a tune so catchy that even those who loathe it hum along.
Sadly, very few people have heard the original recording which - even though the equipment was primitive - captures the energy of Linda and his fellows very nicely. Here's a low-sampled file of that recording which fathered a musical phenomenon. You'll hear the melody of what you now know as "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" only once - toward the end. If we owe the Linda family royalties for this, let us know.
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