Solomon Linda

Solomon Linda called Solomon Ntsele (* 1909 in South Africa , † 8. October 1962 in Soweto , South Africa) was a South African Zulu - musician , singer and composer . He wrote the song Mbube , which later became a pop hit under the music titles Wimoweh and The Lion Sleeps Tonight .

With Mbube, Linda coined the Isicathamiya ( a cappella ) style, popularized 30 years later by Ladysmith Black Mambazo .

Life

Linda discovered his enthusiasm for music when he met the Afro-American gospel singer Orpheus McAdoo during his tour of South Africa in his school in the Mzinga Valley, just 500 kilometers southeast of Johannesburg in the heart of the Zulu settlement area .

In the 1930s he went to Johannesburg and founded the group The Evening Birds with other Zulu , with whom he soon achieved a certain prominence. That's how they were discovered by Griffiths Motsieloa , South Africa's first black music producer. This ensured that the Evening Birds could record several records: the first in 1938, the second - with the song Mbube - a year later. The recordings took place in a recording studio that the Italian Eric Gallo - the founder of Gallo Records - had brought to South Africa from England. At that time it was the only recording studio south of the Sahara. Solomon Linda had a great success with Mbube , which made him one of the most popular black musicians in South Africa for years. Since he had sold the rights to the song for a one-time payment to the Gallo Studios in the amount of ten South African shillings, he could not benefit from the success of the song.

1962 Linda died impoverished in the township of Soweto to kidney failure . His descendants couldn't even pay for a tombstone for him. Solomon Linda left his widow Regina, whom he married in 1949, with three daughters and ten grandchildren.

Linda's hit Mbube

Linda became known mainly through the song Mbube (German "Löwe", better known as "Wimoweh" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), which he composed, and the resulting dispute over copyright and exploitation rights.

Linda wrote the song in 1939 for his appearances in Johannesburg bars and pubs. When the Evening Birds recorded the song in 1939, the first two attempts failed. It wasn't until the third attempt, and after Motsieloa had brought in a pianist, guitarist and banjo player, that the recording succeeded. The producer Motsieloa was so enthusiastic about the song that he sent the recording to England and had records produced. The song soon became extremely popular, especially among the impoverished Zulu in the townships. By 1948 around 100,000 records of the hit had already been sold, and Solomon Linda was a superstar by South African standards.

The song became known in Europe and the USA when folk musician Pete Seeger recorded it with his band The Weavers . Seeger had been made aware of the song by his friend, the musicologist Alan Lomax , after Lomax discovered a copy of the record in a recording studio. Seeger did not understand the text because it was written in isiZulu , so he changed the refrain from “uyembube” to “Wimoweh”. The 1952 recording by The Weavers made it into the American Top 20, and a live recording from Carnegie Hall in 1957 made the song one of the most iconic folk songs of the time. In 1959, an equally successful cover version of the group The Kingston Trio followed .

For a 1961 recording by the pop group The Tokens , the American composer George David Weiss rewrote the song to a separate English text. This is how the title The Lion Sleeps Tonight came about , under which the song became even better known. Numerous cover versions have ensured that Weiss' adaptation is now one of the ten most successful songs of all time, with total revenues estimated at 20 million US dollars . The song reached number 1 on the Billboard charts in 1961 . Overall, the song has been copied by over 150 performers since 1951, the lyrics changed and used in at least 15 films. Among other things, Disney used Mbube without the permission of Linda's heirs under the title The Lion Sleeps Tonight in the cartoon The Lion King .

An American arbitration tribunal awarded Weiss the rights to The Lion Sleeps Tonight in 1991 . He had argued that he had created a completely new song with the English lyrics and was thus the rightful author.

In 2000 the influential music magazine Rolling Stone published an article by the South African journalist Rian Malan about Linda, his song and its worldwide marketing. The marketing of the song in connection with the successful Disney film alone brought the company, according to him, a profit of 15 million US dollars. The TV documentary The Lion's Trail on the American network PBS also drew the attention of a wider public to the topic. Supported by the South African government and the record company Gallo Records, Linda's heirs then sued Disney in a South African court for the payment of royalties for the unauthorized use of Linda's composition in the film and the musical The Lion King based on it . In September 2004 the heirs were awarded a compensation of 10 million rand (about 1.25 million euros). The court threatened Disney to deprive him of the South African rights of use to his approximately 240 registered trademarks if the company did not pay this compensation.

In February 2006, the heirs reached an agreement with the publisher Abilene Music, which was now the owner of the rights to Mbube , to pay royalties for the worldwide use of the composition since 1987 (according to the British copyright laws in force in South Africa at the time of the transfer agreement, the Rights to the composition 25 years after the death of the author, i.e. 1987, returned to the heirs). The money will go to a foundation.

influence

Solomon Linda is considered to be the pioneer of the South African a cappella singing style Isicathamiya , as it also occurs in Mbube and later became known worldwide through Ladysmith Black Mambazo and her collaboration on Paul Simon's world music album Graceland . A dance style, the Cothoza bafana , was developed for this music .

In addition to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miriam Makeba is one of the artists influenced by Solomon Linda . In the eyes of some, Mbube has a similar status for black South Africa as the unofficial anthem Waltzing Mathilda for Australia .

In addition, the dispute over the rights to Mbube has made legal history around the world and set the standard for future cases.

Web links

• Rian Malan's article on Solomon Linda and the Mbube case
• Full list of Mbube covers
• PBS documentation on the Mbube case
• An article on Orpheus McAdoo and Solomon Linda and Mbube