Solomon Linda
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Solomon Linda (1909 - 8 October, 1962) was a South African Zulu musician, singer and composer who wrote the song "Mbube" which later became the pop hit "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", and gave its name to a style of isicathamiya a cappella popularized by Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Erlmann).
[edit] History
Solomon Popoli Linda was born near Pomeroy, in the impoverished Msinga rural area of Zululand and attended the Gordon Memorial mission school (Erlmann 1996:60). Influenced by the new syncopated music that had swept across South Africa from the US since the 1880s, he worked it into the Zulu songs he and his friends sang at weddings and feasts (reference?).
In 1931 Linda joined the stream of young African men who left their homesteads to find menial work in Johannesburg, by then a sprawling gold-mining town hungry for cheap labour. He worked in the furniture store of his uncles while singing in their choir, the Evening Birds, which disbanded in 1933. Linda started a new group that retained the Evening Birds name, and found employment at Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel (Erlmann 1996:61).
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" [1]. A photograph of the Evening Birds as they looked in about 1941 appears on page 62 of Erlmann's book.
After Linda started working at the Gallo Record Company's Roodepoort plant in 1939, the Evening Birds were spotted by company talent scout Griffith Motsieloa(Erlmann 1996:61). Italian immigrant Eric Gallo owned what at that time was sub-Saharan Africa's only recording studio. While recording a number of songs in the studio, Linda improvised "Mbube" (Lion).
"Mbube" was a major success for Linda and the Evening Birds, reportedly selling over 100,000 copies in South Africa by 1949. The recording was produced by Motsieloa at the Gallo studios. Linda sold the rights to Gallo Record Company for 10 shillings shortly after the recording was made, but under 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 a star 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 lead voice which incorporated female vocal texture into male singing. His group was the first to use striped suits to indicate that they urban sophisticates. At the same time, their bass singing retained musical elements that indicated an attachment to traditional ways of singing choral music (Erlmann 65-66).
Some of Linda's music reflects the increasing humiliation that black South Africans were experiencing. For example, Yetulisgqoko (Take off your hat, Gallo GE 887) recalls treatment meted out by Pass Office officials, and ends with the words Sikhalela izwe lakithi ("We mourn for our country.") Such expressions of political realities were not unheard of in mbube songs (Erlmann 1996:70). Groups like the Alexandrians were attached to the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union in Johannesburg (Erlmann 69).
The original South African recording was later "discovered" in the early 1950s by American musicologist Alan Lomax, who passed it on to his friend, folk musician Pete Seeger of The Weavers. Seeger retitled it "Wimoweh" (an inaccurate phonetic rendering of the song's Zulu 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 1957, which turned the song into a folk music staple. The Weavers' version was subsequently covered by The Kingston Trio in 1959.
The Weavers' Carnegie Hall version was also the inspiration for the 1961 version recorded by pop group The Tokens, for whom it was extensively re-written by George Weiss and retitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; this is the version most people are familiar with.
Despite the popularity and wide use of the song, Linda died in poverty in 1962 of renal failure. In 2000 South African journalist Rian Malan wrote a feature article for Rolling Stone magazine, highlighting 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 film maker Francois Verster cooperated to make a television documentary called "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 brought a lawsuit in South Africa against the US company The Walt Disney Company for its use in The Lion King movie and musical without paying royalties to them.
In February 2006 Linda's heirs reached a legal settlement with Abilene Music, who held 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 into a trust, to be administered by SA Music Rights CEO Nick Motsatsi.
[edit] References
- Elrmann, Veit. 1996. Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice in South Africa. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
- PBS documentary "The Lion's Trail" about Mbube
- Transcript and audio from The World, discussing copyright lawsuits
- Rian Malan's groundbreaking article from 2000
- February 2006 MSNBC article on settlement of lawsuit by Linda's heirs
- February 2006 article at Southafrica.info
- SA Music article with Legal details of lawsuit & settlement
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