Solomon Linda
Encyclopedia
Solomon Popoli Linda also known as Solomon Ntsele ("Linda" was his clan name), was a South Africa
n Zulu musician, singer and composer who wrote the song "Mbube" which later became the popular music success "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
", and gave its name to the Mbube style
of isicathamiya
a cappella
popularized later by Ladysmith Black Mambazo
.
, on the labor reserve Msinga, Umzinyathi District Municipality
in Ladysmith
in Natal, where he was familiar with the traditions of amahubo and izingoma zomtshado (wedding songs) music. He attended the Gordon Memorial mission school where he learned somewhat about Western musical culture, hymns, and choir contests in which he participated. Influenced by the new syncopated
music that had been introduced into South Africa from the US during the 1880s, he included it in the Zulu songs he and his friends sang at weddings and feasts.
In 1931, Linda, like many other young African men of those times, left his homestead to find menial work in Johannesburg
, by then a sprawling gold-mining town with a great demand for cheap labour.
He worked in the Mayi Mayi Furniture Shop on Small Street and sang in a choir, known as the Evening Birds, managed by his uncles, Solomon and Amon Madondo, and which disbanded in 1933.
Linda found employment at Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel and started a new group that retained the Evening Birds name. The members of the group were Solomon Linda (soprano), Gilbert Madondo (alto), Boy Sibiya (tenor), with Gideon Mkhize, Samuel Mlangeni, and Owen Sikhakhane as basses. They were all Linda's friends from Pomeroy.
The group evolved from performances at weddings to choir competitions. Linda's musical popularity grew with the Evening Birds, who presented "a very cool urban act that wears pinstriped suits, bowler hats and dandy two-tone shoes".
's Roodepoort plant in 1939 as a record packer, the Evening Birds were witnessed by company talent scout Griffith Motsieloa. Italian immigrant Eric Gallo owned what at that time was sub-Saharan Africa's only recording studio. In 1939, while recording a number of songs in the studio, Linda improvised the song "Mbube" (Lion). "Mbube" was a major success for Linda and the Evening Birds, reportedly selling more than 100,000 copies in South Africa
by 1949. The recording was produced by Motsieloa at the Gallo Recording Studios, in Johannesburg. Linda sold the rights to Gallo Record Company for 10 shillings (less than $US 2) soon after the recording was made. However, it is alleged that, by British laws then in effect, those rights should have reverted to Linda's heirs 25 years after his death in 1962.
In 1948, the Evening Birds disbanded, and a year later Linda married Regina. While raising a family he continued to perform. His song "Mbube" had made him well-known in South Africa.
Linda is credited with a number of musical innovations that came to dominate the isicathamiya
style. Instead of using one singer per voice part, the Evening Birds used a number of bass singers. He introduced the falsetto main voice which incorporated female vocal texture into male singing. His group was the first known to use striped suits to indicate that they were urban sophisticates. At the same time, their bass singing retained some musical elements that indicated traditional choral music.
Some of Linda's music can be interpreted as expressing political dissent. For example, "Yetulisgqoko" ("Take off your hat", Gallo GE 887) recalls treatment by Pass Office officials, and ends with the words "Sikhalela izwe lakithi" ("We mourn for our country.") Such expressions were an occasional feature of mbube songs. Groups like The Alexandrians were associated with the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union in Johannesburg.
The original South African recording was discovered during the early 1950s by American musicologist Alan Lomax
, who gave it to his friend, folk musician Pete Seeger
of The Weavers
. Seeger retitled it "Wimoweh" (an approximate phonetic rendering of the song's Zulu language
refrain, "uyembube") and it was popularized by The Weavers
; they recorded a studio version in 1952 which became a Top 20 hit in the USA, as well as an influential live version recorded at Carnegie Hall
in 1955 and released in April, 1957. The Weavers' version was subsequently cover-versioned by The Kingston Trio
in 1959.
The Weavers' Carnegie Hall version was also the inspiration for the 1961 version recorded by popular music group The Tokens
, for whom it was re-written extensively by George David Weiss
and retitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
"; this is the version with which most people are now familiar. (However, at the time, 1961–1962, a fast-tempo version by the Karl Denver
Trio was the more successful in the UK
).
wrote a feature article for the magazine Rolling Stone
, describing Linda's story and estimating that the song had earned US $15 million for its use in The Lion King
alone. Malan and the South African filmmaker François Verster
cooperated to make a television documentary named The Lion's Trail which tells Solomon Linda's story and was screened by PBS
. In 2004, with the backing of the South African government and Gallo Records, Linda's descendants in South Africa sued the US company The Walt Disney Company
for its use in The Lion King movie and stage musical without paying royalties
to them.
The primary outcomes of the settlement of February 2006 were:
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n Zulu musician, singer and composer who wrote the song "Mbube" which later became the popular music success "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight", also known as "Wimoweh" and originally as "Mbube", is a song recorded by Solomon Linda and his group The Evening Birds for the South African Gallo Record Company in 1939. It was covered internationally by many 1950s pop and folk revival artists, including The Weavers,...
", and gave its name to the Mbube style
Mbube (genre)
Mbube is a form of South African vocal music, made famous by the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The word mbube means "lion" in Zulu. Traditionally performed a cappella, the members of the group are male although a few groups have a female singer...
of isicathamiya
Isicathamiya
Isicathamiya is a singing style that originated from the South African Zulus. In European understanding, a cappella is also used to describe this form of singing.-Background:...
a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
popularized later by Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a male choral group from South Africa that sings in the vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They rose to worldwide prominence as a result of singing with Paul Simon on his album, Graceland and have won multiple awards, including three Grammy Awards...
.
Early years
Solomon Popoli Linda was born near PomeroyPomeroy, KwaZulu-Natal
Pomeroy a small town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was established as the Gordon Memorial Mission in 1867 in memory of James Henry Hamilton-Gordon, the son of George Hamilton-Gordon, 5th Earl of Aberdeen. The mission worked with the Zulus....
, on the labor reserve Msinga, Umzinyathi District Municipality
Umzinyathi District Municipality
Umzinyathi is one of the 11 district municipalities of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. The seat of Umzinyathi is Dundee. The majority of its 456 452 people speak IsiZulu...
in Ladysmith
Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal
Ladysmith is a city in the Uthukela District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is north-west of Durban and south of Johannesburg. Important industries in the area include food processing, textile and tyre production...
in Natal, where he was familiar with the traditions of amahubo and izingoma zomtshado (wedding songs) music. He attended the Gordon Memorial mission school where he learned somewhat about Western musical culture, hymns, and choir contests in which he participated. Influenced by the new syncopated
Syncopation
In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...
music that had been introduced into South Africa from the US during the 1880s, he included it in the Zulu songs he and his friends sang at weddings and feasts.
In 1931, Linda, like many other young African men of those times, left his homestead to find menial work in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, by then a sprawling gold-mining town with a great demand for cheap labour.
He worked in the Mayi Mayi Furniture Shop on Small Street and sang in a choir, known as the Evening Birds, managed by his uncles, Solomon and Amon Madondo, and which disbanded in 1933.
Linda found employment at Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel and started a new group that retained the Evening Birds name. The members of the group were Solomon Linda (soprano), Gilbert Madondo (alto), Boy Sibiya (tenor), with Gideon Mkhize, Samuel Mlangeni, and Owen Sikhakhane as basses. They were all Linda's friends from Pomeroy.
The group evolved from performances at weddings to choir competitions. Linda's musical popularity grew with the Evening Birds, who presented "a very cool urban act that wears pinstriped suits, bowler hats and dandy two-tone shoes".
Mbube
After Linda started working at the Gallo Record CompanyGallo Record Company
Gallo Record Company is the largest record label in Africa. It is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is owned by Avusa Limited . The current Gallo Record Company is a hybrid of two rival South African record labels between the '40s and '80s: the original Gallo Africa and G.R.C...
's Roodepoort plant in 1939 as a record packer, the Evening Birds were witnessed by company talent scout Griffith Motsieloa. Italian immigrant Eric Gallo owned what at that time was sub-Saharan Africa's only recording studio. In 1939, while recording a number of songs in the studio, Linda improvised the song "Mbube" (Lion). "Mbube" was a major success for Linda and the Evening Birds, reportedly selling more than 100,000 copies in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
by 1949. The recording was produced by Motsieloa at the Gallo Recording Studios, in Johannesburg. Linda sold the rights to Gallo Record Company for 10 shillings (less than $US 2) soon after the recording was made. However, it is alleged that, by British laws then in effect, those rights should have reverted to Linda's heirs 25 years after his death in 1962.
In 1948, the Evening Birds disbanded, and a year later Linda married Regina. While raising a family he continued to perform. His song "Mbube" had made him well-known in South Africa.
Linda is credited with a number of musical innovations that came to dominate the isicathamiya
Isicathamiya
Isicathamiya is a singing style that originated from the South African Zulus. In European understanding, a cappella is also used to describe this form of singing.-Background:...
style. Instead of using one singer per voice part, the Evening Birds used a number of bass singers. He introduced the falsetto main voice which incorporated female vocal texture into male singing. His group was the first known to use striped suits to indicate that they were urban sophisticates. At the same time, their bass singing retained some musical elements that indicated traditional choral music.
Some of Linda's music can be interpreted as expressing political dissent. For example, "Yetulisgqoko" ("Take off your hat", Gallo GE 887) recalls treatment by Pass Office officials, and ends with the words "Sikhalela izwe lakithi" ("We mourn for our country.") Such expressions were an occasional feature of mbube songs. Groups like The Alexandrians were associated with the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union in Johannesburg.
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
, who gave it to his friend, folk musician Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
of The Weavers
The Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, and selling millions of records at the height of their...
. Seeger retitled it "Wimoweh" (an approximate phonetic rendering of the song's Zulu language
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
refrain, "uyembube") and it was popularized by The Weavers
The Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, and selling millions of records at the height of their...
; they recorded a studio version in 1952 which became a Top 20 hit in the USA, as well as an influential live version recorded at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in 1955 and released in April, 1957. The Weavers' version was subsequently cover-versioned by The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...
in 1959.
The Weavers' Carnegie Hall version was also the inspiration for the 1961 version recorded by popular music group The Tokens
The Tokens
The Tokens are an American male doo-wop-style vocal group from Brooklyn, New York. They are known best for their chart-scoring 1961 single, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" .-Career:...
, for whom it was re-written extensively by George David Weiss
George David Weiss
George David Weiss was an American songwriter and former President of the Songwriters Guild of America.-Career:...
and retitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight", also known as "Wimoweh" and originally as "Mbube", is a song recorded by Solomon Linda and his group The Evening Birds for the South African Gallo Record Company in 1939. It was covered internationally by many 1950s pop and folk revival artists, including The Weavers,...
"; this is the version with which most people are now familiar. (However, at the time, 1961–1962, a fast-tempo version by the Karl Denver
Karl Denver
Karl Denver was a Scottish singer, who, with his trio had a series of UK hit singles in the early 1960s. Most famous of these was a 1961 version of "Wimoweh", which showed off Denver's falsetto yodelling register...
Trio was the more successful in the UK
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
).
Death
Despite the popularity and wide use of the song, Linda died impoverished in 1962 of renal failure. It was not until 18 years later that a tombstone was constructed at his gravesite.Rediscovery
In 2000, South African journalist Rian MalanRian Malan
Rian Malan is a South African author, journalist, documentarist and songwriter of Afrikaner descent. He first rose to prominence as the author of the memoir My Traitor's Heart, which, like the bulk of his work, deals with South African society in a historical and contemporary perspective and...
wrote a feature article for the magazine Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, describing Linda's story and estimating that the song had earned US $15 million for its use in The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
alone. Malan and the South African filmmaker François Verster
François Verster
François Verster is a South African film director and documentary maker.He has a wide background in writing, music, academia and film. After completing an MA degree with distinction under literature Nobel Prize laureate JM Coetzee at the University of Cape Town, he worked with Barenholtz...
cooperated to make a television documentary named The Lion's Trail which tells Solomon Linda's story and was screened by PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
. In 2004, with the backing of the South African government and Gallo Records, Linda's descendants in South Africa sued the US company The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
for its use in The Lion King movie and stage musical without paying royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
to them.
Settlement
In February 2006, Linda's heirs attained a legal settlement with Abilene Music company, which had the worldwide rights and had licensed the song to Disney. This settlement applies to worldwide rights, not just South African, since 1987. The money will go to a trust, to be administered by SA Music Rights CEO Nick Motsatsi.The primary outcomes of the settlement of February 2006 were:
The action was scheduled for trial commencing on February 21, 2006. Soon before the trial date a settlement was attained between the parties to the litigation, as well as with Abilene Music company, the true defendant of the litigation, which had granted an indemnity to the Disney company when it had licensed the use of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The settlement, which operates worldwide and in settlement of all claims, encompasses the following:
• The Linda heirs will receive payment for past uses of The Lion Sleeps Tonight and an entitlement to future royalties from its worldwide use.
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight is acknowledged as derived from Mbube.
• Solomon Linda is acknowledged as a co-composer of The Lion Sleeps Tonight and will be designated as such in the future.
• A trust will be formed to administer the heirs’ copyright in Mbube and to receive on their behalf the payments due from the use of The Lion Sleeps Tonight
-- WIPOWorld Intellectual Property OrganizationThe World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations. WIPO was created in 1967 "to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world"....
Magazine
External links
- PBS: The Lion's Trail
- The World: Global Hit: Solomon Linda
- "Groundbreaking SA lawsuit sends a message to the world’s cultural power-brokers", SA Music News, Thursday 16 February 2006.
- The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Mark SteynMark SteynMark Steyn is a Canadian-born writer, conservative-leaning political commentator, and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller...
Media
- Sample of Mbube performed by Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds (opens directly in Windows Media Player].
- Scanned image of Linda's original Gallotone recording http://www.3rdearmusic.com/forum/forumjan04/forumjan04img/05Mbube1938.jpg.
