"Mbube" is a popular song written and composed by the 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 produce "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", lending the song the name by which it is best known today.
Linda, a Zulu migrant worker, led the a capella group the Evening Birds. In 1939 without rehearsal, they recorded "Mbube", which fused traditional Zulu musical elements with Western influences. The recording was released in South Africa to widespread popularity. It made Linda a local celebrity and steered the development of the isicathamiya genre. 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 did. Thus Linda could not earn royalties. The recording of "Mbube" was then sent to a record label in the US, and upon being unearthed, it passed onto Pete Seeger of the folk group the Weavers. They covered the song in 1951 as "Wimoweh". A decade later, the Tokens, a doo-wop group, encountered "Wimoweh" and decided to record their version. After adapting the melody and adding English lyrics, they released "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", although Linda did not receive credit. It topped the US charts.
By the mid 2000s, around 150 artists across the world had covered the song, and it had been included in the 1994 Disney film The Lion King, earning an estimated $15 million in royalties. Linda, who had died three decades earlier, was yet to be recognised for his contributions to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". 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 wider legal effects, such as on British copyright law.
While global success transformed "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" into an iconic pop song, the song is now associated with long-running racial exploitation. The song and Linda's history has been probed in numerous documentaries and is the part-inspiration of the 2020 film Black Is King.
Background and release
thumb||alt=Photo of the Evening Birds taken in 1941 with Linda at the far left, shown standing in a straight line wearing matching striped suits, looking directly at the cameraSolomon Linda was born in a rural part of the Colony of Natal in southern Africa. During his childhood, he followed the Virginia Jubilee Singers, an American minstrel group that toured South Africa and performed spirituals. A migrant worker and beer hall singer, he sang in a short-lived choir named the Evening Birds, which dissolved in 1933. Linda founded a new group under the same name soon after. The 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 in the weekends and quickly grew a local following. Working-class culture in South Africa flourished around this time as the nation's manufacturing industry grew.|group=lower-alpha the 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. Back then, record firms eyed Zulu close-harmony vocal music since it appealed to migrant mineworkers.
The Evening Birds recorded multiple songs at Gallo's studio, and during their second session, in 1939, they recorded "Mbube". It was finished without rehearsal after three takes. Also featured in the recording are Peter Rezant on guitar, Emily Motsieloa on piano, and possibly Willie Gumede on banjo. "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 chord progression borrows from the marabi harmonic cycle common in twentieth-century South African music (I-IV-I<sup>6/4</sup>-V<sup>7</sup>-I).
Journalist Sharon LaFraniere describes the melody as "tender ... almost childish in its simplicity". In South African author Rian Malan's view, "'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." This would be the melodic basis for the Tokens' cover.
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" is repeated throughout. "Mbube" borrows strongly from Western influences raised by missionaries and white singing troupes, among which is the four-part harmony, with music historian Veit Erlmann asserting that the main body "displays only a few features which can be said to be rooted in traditional performance practice". These Western elements, argues journalist Lior Phillips, "gave 'Mbube' a chance globally". Erlmann notes that the song's triadic structure and harmonic progression resemble urban, Westernised genres and that by contrast, the metrically-free introduction mirrors traditional dance music. The vocal lines are meant to evoke tin whistles typical of South African street music. It made Linda "a legend in the Zulu subculture", and his band went on to dominate all-night song competitions, according to Malan. Still, he did not profit, as he had sold his rights to "Mbube" to Eric Gallo for ten shillings just after the recording session. Seeing that Linda could not read and had no understanding of royalties, a South African court would by 2006, deem this deal unfair. Gallo also paid Linda the equivalent of $2 for the first run of a few hundred records. But Linda never attained wealth or fortune. He lived in a household with a dirt floor coated in cow manure, and malnutrition took the life of one of his children. He died three years later aged 53. At the time of his death, his bank account contained roughly $40 in today's money.