In The Jungle, The Mighty Jungle
The other day I stumbled across a rather long and fascinating exposé called “Where does the lion sleep tonight?”
“Internationally renowned SAfrican author Rian Malan has researched & written a remarkable expose for Rolling Stone magazine in the USA, on the murky side of music’s international mainstream. It’s about SAfrican singer-songwriter Solomon Linda - The man who recorded & composed Mbube (aka - The Lion Sleeps Tonight / Whimaway / In the Jungle, etc.).”
I’ve always loved this song so after reading this article I was now obsessed with its evolution. I located the original Solomon Linda recording of Mbube - which I present to you, along with the various incarnations, for your earworm pleasure.
Mbube - SOLOMON LINDA’S ORIGINAL EVENING BIRDS
(Solomon Linda)
South Africa 1939
Wimoweh - THE WEAVERS (w/ Pete Seeger)
(’Paul Campbell’)
USA 1951
Seeger, who transcribed the lyrics from the original African recording, rendered the Zulu chant Uyimbube, uyimbube as “Wimoweh, wimoweh”.
Wimoweh - YMA SUMAC
(’Paul Campbell’)
USA 1952
The Lion Sleeps Tonight - THE TOKENS
(George Weiss - Hugo Peretti - Luigi Creatore - Albert Stanton)
USA 1961
May 5th, 2005 at 6:12 am
What a fascinating stumble! Love it!
May 8th, 2005 at 3:02 am
Thanks a lot for this. Truly a sad story about Solomon Linda. To see a song that has so much significance and meaning to a person/tribe be whored out the way it was with zero royalties going to the original composer is devestating. After watching PBS’s “A Lion’s Trail” I had to hear this original masterpiece again. You can just feel the passion in their voices…it brings a tear to my eye. What a beautiful song. Thanks again.
May 25th, 2005 at 10:00 am
Brilliant original version! Can you add some of the later versions - Andersons etc?
May 28th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Just found out about the Lion story today and found your page while looking for the original. Thanks.
Glad to see that at last the big boys are getting sued for ripping off the little guy.
July 11th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Have long been searching for the original version - thanks!
It’s great fun listenting!
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Thanks have been looking for this song for ages.
Thanks Again!
February 23rd, 2006 at 4:13 pm
“Paul Campbell” is credited as the writer of The Weavers version. This is a pseudonym for the 4 members of The Weavers.
February 27th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
A Truly magnificent Find!!
There is never anything quite like the original!!!
Its great to know who the true artist was, a real musician overshadowed by an oppressive society and robbed of his rights because of his colour.
Solomon Linda…. Your version is the most beautiful and soulful..
Thankyou
February 27th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Cool! Im a South African and have never heard the original before. Glad his family finally got sometrhing out.
Thanx
March 1st, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Thank you for providing these recordings. I did not think I would ever hear the original. I am very pleased that I know have. Toronto, Canada
God Bless
March 3rd, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Mercim pour avoir mis les anciens tracks en ligne. Je les ai cherché longtemps apres un documentaire sur ARTE TELEVISION, en mars 2006.
Thankyou very much for the tracks. I hope, God will really have mercy and bless Salomon´s family. He´s the defendor of the parentless children.
Blessings.
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Hey - for once I would really like to pay the artist’s family for this. Hopefully somebody going to rerelease this so I can buy it? I hear the family now gets 25% of royalties. Hope verybody who enjoys it here buys it when available. Meanwhile - great to hear original.
So is Tzena Tzena also a mangled transliteration? :>
Vancouver, British Columbia
March 24th, 2006 at 2:32 am
Thank you, it’s the first time that I’ve ever had the chance to hear Solomon Ntsele’s original version. Great!
March 24th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
The Tokens made so much improvement to song. It’s like comparing
apples to oranges. Mbube is like earlier Huyndai model ( the Excel)
and the Lion sleeps tonight is like 2006 Sonata . I doubt that the song has the same success in its original form.
March 26th, 2006 at 8:00 am
hearing the original after growing up with this song is like finding the tender quavering heart of all things past long ago and forever unreachable.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
The music makes our heart to bleed with happiness
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:30 am
Being a white child of the Apartheid Government, we often danced to the song “In the jungle”. My parents often traveled and we were left with our “black” mother, who taught us how to love Africa and African music. How sad for me to read the real story about Solomon Linda, what a gifted individual. I am sure that he is sleeping well tonight, knowing that justice has been done!
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
It is absolute bliss and joy listening to this Paul
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Thank you very much. It’s truly a beautiful song, with such a sad story
June 6th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Thank you!
Sparked by a simple google search for the lyrics of a unforgettable song and after a daylong quest - I ended up on your page.
Respect to composers in this world of mp3 - where it is always difficult to differentiate between copyright infringement and just listening …
May Solomon’s family be blessed with the wisdom needed to deal with this heritage of world music’s history.
Here’s a link to a more readble pdf-file of Rian’s story.
http://www.coldtype.net/Assets/pdfs/Jungle.pdf
Greets from Switzerland
August 27th, 2006 at 10:31 am
I must agree the best version and by a country mile is the original by Solomon Linda.
Lets hope his family get their just rewards and the ‘big corparations’ are maid to pay???
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm
This is truly amazing. I love this song so much, I was searching for the original. Once you here this tune, the music stays with you. Some of the best music are created by simple people.
Truly a nice peice of work, and thanks to publish it.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:00 am
The original is best, but we can’t get enough of any of them… Very. very nice!
November 16th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Hey, Thanks for posting this. I too have been searching for the original, and happened across your webpage. I can’t help but wonder how many other famous songs we listen to are the property of some forgotten soul who never recieved a dime. I am glad to hear the family is finally recieving their share of the bounty. As a teacher of music, I will always instill this fact into the children who cross my path, so they too can share the knowledge of injustice.
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:23 pm
It is with a very heartbraking and nostalgic emotion that i listen to this after having lived in South Africa for 17 years… during the screwed-up apartheid era till 1999. I once saw the end of the film on ‘arte’ in belgium where I now live, and since then it has been trotting in my mind for a while. Just goes to show that there are a whole bunch of commercially eager freaks out there, just in for the the profit, and others who understand the true meaning of fellowship and just plain soulful beauty. Thankyou Solomon Linda++, Rian Malan, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who initiated me to isicathamiya music) and all the others that make things happen. (ps not hyundai, please…)
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:30 pm
…oh yeah one more thing…
…no origin no sonata…
January 14th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I just red about that amazing history that ikon mbubu.I raise upp with this song ,my parents loved it,now my children sing it, its fantastic I had not any knowledge on salomin destiny.I’m very greatful taht u people did such a big job to get right ting in right place efter so many years that might looked very impossible like searching a needele in…..YOU DIT DIT!Euraka!!congratulation to all people involded in taht true history.Their are still good and great peaple out their I red some names like Rian,Hanro,Owen,Rob, and more.I also thank mr Disney” for at last “good actning.Thanks
January 14th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Tnaks to the two repporters Lars Nicklasson and Johan Wingborg from Göteborgsposten papper Två dagar.Jag är så glad att ni valde att skriva om detta,ni berikade mitt liv med ännu en fantastiskt upplevelse.Tack Marie.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:46 am
OH my GOD..that was a thrilling original by Solomon, and a nice version of it by the tokens. Thanks to the reseacher,Rian Malan you are are golden hearted person, for dedicating your time to find the true creator of the song. its just touching and thanks now the family can live happily after getting justice, solomon the mighty lion now will sleep peaceful. Thanks solomon wherever you are, and you Rian Malan…keep the work. God will reward you.
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for the info. I seem to remember a much “rougher” version, faster, and driven by penny whistles back in the 50’s.
Anyone out there any ideas?
A greying Englishman would be most grateful.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I was telling my son-in-law about the story. I mentioned I read an article about the song, with a link to a site where you could hear the evolution progress. It took a bit of searching, but here you are! And still the only place to hear them. I am very glad to find that this site still is online. I bookmarked it this time.
May 15th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
HELLOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nice songs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 28th, 2007 at 3:39 am
I Love Your Music
its the best ever
October 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
What a treat, I have loved this song (the pop version ) since childhood. Having just read all about this tonight and stumbling upon this page its wonderful to hear the original.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I am learning this at school so i knew how great it was and i think its fab how you’ve put it on this website and did you know that Solomon Linda sold it in the beginning for 10 shillings and it has made $15 million over the time it has evolved
November 9th, 2007 at 2:40 am
charming……………….!!!!?
December 9th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Im so glad i found this song im African and from Somalia. Solomon you..i dont know what to say .. GREAT MUSIC YOUR FAMILY GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED ..THANKS TO THIS SITE FOR MAKING THIS SO SIMPLE..
January 20th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Ages ago I did a post on Karl Denver’s ‘Wimoweh’ which has always intrigued me (It can by the way be found on UTUBE. Today while ‘tidying up’ my posts I have made reference to your site, ‘including this post’ on my site Karl Denver:Wimoweh in my archives.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
just listened to original version having found your website.wonderful to hear it. my 3 year old son adores it!
January 28th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Wow. You wouldn’t believe the string of events that led me to this site. Reading on my bed, with iTunes playing some MP3s. A song started really irritating me and finally I got up to change tracks. Then I ended up going through most of my library fixing MP3 tags, deleting crap songs, etc. I came across “Lion Sleeps Tonight” by “Beach Boys”. I’m no expert but I knew it wasn’t the Beach Boys, I don’t even know how this tune got into my library but whoever tagged it got it wrong. I did a Google search to find the answer to my question and I stumbled upon this site. Hours later I’ve read the PDF version of the story and I’m absolutely stunned by it all. What a beautiful story - the fact that this man’s simple miracle song has brought so much joy to the world for decade after decade - I’m glad he got to hear it shortly before he died, it must have felt amazing and if I was on my deathbed that would mean more to me than being handed a cheque. But I hope the money helps his surviving children. I had never heard the original until now and it is so vastly different to the Tight Fit version (UK) I heard in the 80s as a kid. Very haunting, and I prefer the way the bassline singers’ (I-IV-V-V) diverts from the I-IV-I-V chord progression making an interesting inversion out of the third chord, as opposed to the more pop-oriented versions. It sounds much more African sounding (duh) this way.
Thanks so much for posting this.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Hey Ash, thanks for sharing this link with us - and for any of you fans with iPods - you can get this on iTunes!
I just did a search on “solomon linda”, and there are 2 versions of the original - one all crackly, and one cleaned up. The Miriam Makeba version is BEAUTIFUL - she’s one of South Africa’s leading black singers, and on this you can hear why!!
What an interesting mystery this all was!
Tracey
February 25th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Hey everyone, I just watched the movie The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Great film but in the credits they listed “Lion Sleeps Tonight”, as it was played during a safari scene in the film. They did not credit Solomon Linda, they credited the writers of the song as George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore (it was the The Tokens version).
It was really disappointing in 2008 to see that this is still happening, although I suppose technically speaking the Tokens version was written by those three people, just that they stole 90% of the idea from Solomon Linda.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 am
Such a wonderful song and thanks for posting it. I actually came across this page by accident or coincidence since I recently watched the Bucket List similar to Ash. I listened to that unforgettable tune that had my thoughts of Solomon Linda. God bless Solomon Linda and his family. This is one site I’ll be sure to pass on to my friends!
All the best to everyone and god bless!
Richard =^.^=
April 4th, 2008 at 1:30 am
love it. Thx.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:51 am
The first time I heard this song … its naiveness just captured my heart… I searched for it so much and was very glad to find this here…Thanks so much for all the effort my friend!
April 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Well I have loved this song ever since shuffling through the records in my parents singles, 30(ish) years ago. I have always loved singing and been in choirs since 10yr old, leading to now being in an acapella one - ideal for singing this, and me having the solo part! Never as good as the pro’s though!!!!!!!!
April 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
DJ exclusive soundset & demo release…
DJ exclusive soundset & demo release…
May 11th, 2008 at 3:51 am
The original has a far more authentic African sound. There are a lot of other great South African songs..
Shosholoza (Traditional, author unknown, meaning To Push Forward)
http://www.amazon.com/Shosholoza/dp/B000QZFXBU
Weeping (Bright Blue)
http://web.uct.ac.za/org/cama/CAMA/countries/southafr/Makers/General/Audio/weeping.mp3
Nkosi Sikilele Afrika (God Bless Africa, Enoch Sontonga, current National Anthem)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NsWwz9UmjVk&feature=related
June 1st, 2008 at 7:34 am
haha wot a rubbish song but i like the latest one haha hehe lol lyl xxxx
January 16th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I know this song from old records of my parents. Tomorrow I will sing it with my vocal ensemble in a concert in Germany. I love this song and I will tell Solomon’s story. Great to here the original tracks you listed here
April 14th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Excellent article and examples of the historical music involved.
April 25th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Just amazing
May 1st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Thanks for having the opportunity to listen to those different versions, which suggest different interpretations, different cultures and values. I suggest the French version too. Its lyrics is complete amazing!
May 19th, 2009 at 5:00 am
i’m glad i stumbled on your page. i already find “mbube” or “the lion sleeps tonight” interesting for the children. it’s even more interesting to know related stuff about the music. thanks!
May 30th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
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June 25th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
what a treasure-thanks!
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
check this out…
this is mine…
October 15th, 2009 at 8:37 am
POOO!!!!!!!!!
October 15th, 2009 at 8:39 am
hi that is mint style sick
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
what a song 10/10 woo should be at number 1
November 5th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Great to hear the original version and subsequent copies. Thank you very much!
There is also a version by the wonderful Miriam Makeba that is well worth listening to.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Joe…
Check out my domain sometime….