The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” has a special place in the history of South African music. As often happens, the original version, and its performer, remained little known to the general public, while the numerous alterations received glory and reward. For 70 years of existence, this song has more than 160 versions and the total time of its sound on the radio has passed for three hundred years. Song led a variety of charts and according to estimates it collected over $15 million (LaFraniere, 2006). Still, the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonigh” is mostly famous for its use in the Walt Disney cartoon “The Lion King” released in 1994. However, this song actually has an almost one hundred year history and a huge number of different adaptations and covers.
It all started in 1920s when South African musician Solomon Linda realized himself as a songwriter. Linda founded the "Evening Birds" band that quickly became popular. In 1938 they recorded the first few songs in the only recording studio in South Africa Gallo Records. In 1939, during the second recording session, Linda suddenly occurred to simple tunes and childhood memories of the protection of livestock from lions. It actually resulted in the song named Mbube (from the Zulu language, it translates as "lion"). Linda and his band got about 10 shillings for this song, and nothing else; Galla Records received all proceeds from the sale of records. The song became very popular, and by 1948 over 100,000 copies were sold only in South Africa (LaFraniere, 2006).
At the time of the death of Solomon Linda, the song in two alternative versions became well known in the US and reached high ranks in the charts. This happened thanks to Pete Seeger and his friend Alan Lomax. Alan once came across a stack of 78-revolving plates from Africa and he decided that Pete is just that kind of a person who is able and willing to help (Dunaway, 2008). Pete and Alan liked the sound, and they remade the song in their own way. Of course they did not know the Zulu language so they rewrote the words in their own way. Yet, the Zulu phrase Uyimbube, which means "You are the lion", turned into "Wimmoweh". The song "Wimmoweh" was recorded by Seeger and his Weavers band in 1951 (Dunaway, 2008). Except for the lyrics, the song was rather similar with the original.
Unfortunately, Seeger had a reputation of a radical, socialist and a pacifist; he was called "proto-hippie". The time for that was not quite right, and at last Seeger came to the attention of the committee on anti-American activities led by Senator McCarthy (this happened in 1952, when the former Seeger friend named Harvey Matusow denounced on him). The public reaction was as immediate as possible: it followed by quite a wild campaign in the press, concerts and television appearances were canceled, the station ceased to broadcast recordings of the band, the song disappeared from the charts (Dunaway, 2008).
Thanks to Miriam Makeba, the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" became a hit once again and led the American charts in November 1961 and parades around the world in April 1962. She sang her last birthday party of President Kennedy, US astronauts listened to it on Musa Kanaverell and so on (LaFraniere, 2006). Since then, the song has had a lot of performances, including in the musical "The Lion King".
References
Dunaway, D. (2008). How can I keep from singing?. New York: Villard.
LaFraniere, S. (2006). In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/international/africa/22lion.html?_r=1&
