On the trail of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' Composer died a pauper

September 25 2004--Sixty-four years ago in 1939, a Zulu migrant worker recorded the world famous ‘lion song' Mbube. It became the most popular song ever to come from Africa. The late Solomon Ntsele, also known as Solomon Linda, earned little credit for his creation, and today the lion song is haunting the world again.

This is the story chronicled in A Lion's Trail, a heart-wrenching documentary directed by award-winning Francois Verster, which recently premiered in Harare at the Zimbabwe International Film Festival (ZIFF) .The documentary, which received wide coverage from international cable and satellite stations, tells a story of the isicathamiya song that first evolved into Wimoweh transcribed by American folk singer Pete Seeger and The Weavers, and then into the universally popular The Lion Sleeps Tonight, a reworked arrangement of Seeger's version done by George David Weiss, a songsmith who co-wrote I Cant Help Falling In Love for Elvis Presley.

Ntsele composed mbube during the 1920s and recorded it with his Original Evening Birds band at Gallo Records in 1939. The record was a smash hit in South Africa and beyond, it stayed in the catalog for over 15 years, and sold nearly 100,000 copies in the 1940s. The South African record company then sent it along with some other 78 records to Decca Records in America.

In A Lion's Trail, the immoral and legal issues surrounding the theft and abuse of Ntsele's work are relayed to a saddening height. His mbube or ‘the lion' was transformed from a folk classic to pop hit for The Tokens in 1961. That same year the three transcribers who did the English version of the song, George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore were allegedly paid the bulk of the song's royalties.

Ntsele died a pauper in 1962, which prompted a bitter legal wrangle involving recording companies, backed by music lawyers, sympathizers and the South African government.As the battle for royalties deepened Gallo Records bowed in to a growing pressure and agreed to pay legal costs for the case to have royalties remitted to the family.

Ntsele's family lives in Soweto. Of his seven children only four remain: his three sons and wife have all passed away. One of Linda's sons is buried atop him because his family could not afford additional cemetery space.




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