OT: "Ai kama zimba zimba zayo"

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks, Mark, I read somewhere or other that Wimoweh was a corruption,
mishearing, whatever, of Mbube. Hard to feature that, but you never
know. However "uyimbube" takes the question to the HNL. "(A-)Wimoweh"
< "uyimbube" is a derivation that I can take at face value.

-Wilson



On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:03 AM, Mark Mandel<thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: OT: "Ai kama zimba zimba zayo"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Seeger wrote English lyrics for several South
>> African songs, but I think now I have conflated
>> "The Zulu Warrior" of Marais and Miranda with
>> "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (aka "Wimoweh"), also
>> about a Zulu warrior/chief. Â Too late at night
>> for me to start searching my LPs.
>>
>> Mark?
>
> You may have done so. But Wimoweh, né Mbabe or something similar IIRC,
> --- well, I should qualify this. *I believe that I have read* that it
> was written by a black / "Native" man in S.A. and recorded, and he
> never got anything from it. But that should be treated as qualified,
> and I'm too tired to check now.
>
> Oh, hell, couldn't resist, and it was pretty damn quick. Here it is
> from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_Sleeps_Tonight. An ugly
> story. (And it was indeed The Weavers that I learned it from.)
>
> --------------------
>
> History
>
> "Mbube" (Zulu for "lion") was first recorded by its writer, Solomon
> Linda, and his group, The Evening Birds, in 1939. Gallo Record Company
> paid Linda a single fee for the recording and no royalties. "Mbube"
> became a hit throughout South Africa and sold about 100,000 copies
> during the 1940s. The song became so popular that Mbube lent its name
> to a style of African a cappella music, though the style has since
> been mostly replaced by isicathamiya (a softer version).
>
> Alan Lomax brought the song to the attention of Pete Seeger of the
> folk group The Weavers. It was on one of several records Lomax lent to
> Seeger.[1] After having performed the song for at least a year in
> their concerts, in November, 1951, the Weavers recorded their version
> entitled "Wimoweh", a mishearing of the original song's chorus of
> 'uyimbube' (meaning "you're a lion"). Pete Seeger had made some of his
> own additions to the melody. The song was credited exclusively to Paul
> Campbell, a fictitious entity used by Harry Richmond to copyright
> material in the public domain.
>
> Pete Seeger explains in one recording, "it refers to an old legend
> down there, [about] their last king [of the Zulus], who was known as
> Shaka The Lion. Legend says, Shaka The Lion didn't die when Europeans
> took over our country; he simply went to sleep, and he'll wake up some
> day." (See "Senzenina / Wimoweh" on Seeger's With Voices Together We
> Sing (Live).) cf. sleeping hero
>
> It was published by Folkways, a subsidiary of Richmond/TRO. Their 1952
> version, arranged by Gordon Jenkins, became a top-twenty hit in the
> U.S., and their live 1957 recording turned it into a folk music
> staple. This version was covered in 1959 by The Kingston Trio.
>
> New lyrics to the song were written by George David Weiss, Luigi
> Creatore, and Hugo Peretti, based very loosely upon the meaning of the
> original song. The Tokens' 1961 cover of this version rose to number
> one on the Billboard Hot 100 and still receives fairly frequent replay
> on many American oldies radio stations. In the UK, an up-tempo,
> yodel-dominated rendering was a top-ten hit for Karl Denver and his
> Trio. In 1971, Robert John also recorded this version, and it reached
> #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Since then, "Wimoweh" / "The Lion
> Sleeps Tonight" has remained popular and frequently covered.
>
> Copyright issues
>
> Pete Seeger later said in the book A Lion's Trail, "The big mistake I
> made was not making sure that my publisher signed a regular
> songwriters’ contract with Linda. My publisher simply sent Linda some
> money and copyrighted The Weavers’ arrangement here and sent The
> Weavers some money."
>
> Seeger's publisher was The Richmond Organization (TRO), which also
> goes by a number of other names, including Ludlow, Cromwell, Essex,
> Hollis, Melody Trails, and Folkways Music Publishers. Since Solomon
> Linda's 1939 "Mbube" was apparently not under copyright protection,
> TRO founder Howard Richmond had himself claimed authorship to
> "Wimoweh" using a pseudonym, in this case "Paul Campbell".
>
> The songwriter and publisher customarily split the earnings of a song
> 50-50, and the performers, song pluggers', and agents' shares usually
> come out of the composer's half. By claiming authorship, TRO thus
> secured for itself a nice chunk of the songwriters' half as well as
> all of the publishers' share of the song's earnings.[2]
>
> 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 U.S. $15 million for its use in the movie The
> Lion King alone; this prompted the South African documentary "A Lion's
> Trail" by François Verster that documented the song's history.
> Screened by PBS, in September 2006, the documentary won an Emmy Award.
>
> In July 2004, the song became the subject of a lawsuit between the
> family of its writer Solomon Linda and Disney. The suit claimed that
> Disney owed $1.6 million in royalties for the use of "The Lion Sleeps
> Tonight" in the film and stage production of The Lion King. Meanwhile,
> publisher of The Weavers' "Wimoweh", TRO/Folkways, began to pay $3000
> annually to Linda's heirs.
>
> In February 2006, Linda's heirs reached a legal settlement for an
> undisclosed amount with Abilene Music, who held the worldwide rights
> and had licensed the song to Disney. This settlement has applied to
> worldwide rights, not just South Africa, since 1987.
>
> --------------------
>
> m a m
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org