Medress, in fact, says he never even heard of Linda. The Tokens, of course, were oblivious to all that. The song, he said, thus served as an expression of hope for oppressed South African blacks. He later learned the right ones - and that "Mbube," which translates as "Lion," contained a hidden political message, including illusions to the great 19th-century Zulu king Chaka (also known as `the lion'). In an amusing anecdote, Seeger admits that he initially sang the wrong Zulu words to the song (making the Tokens' chanting, presumably, gibberish). "Don't send it to Gallo Records," Seeger told Folkways. Seeger, in his autobiography, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, explains the intriguing political background to "Mbube/Wimoweh/Lion Sleeps Tonight." First, because of apartheid, he wanted to ensure that royalty money went straight to Linda rather than his Johannesburg label. (Linda died about 10 years ago, but his family continued to receive Folkways royalties until 1992, when Token producer George Weiss won a court action giving him the right to collect all royalties for the song when the recording uses his words.) He did, however, receive royalties from Folkways Records, home of Seeger and Woody Guthrie, which owned the music copyright to "Mbube/Wimoweh" outside of South Africa. The song, which topped the Billboard singles charts for three weeks in 1961, sold over two million copies and has earned millions more since. But they obviously knew what they were doing." "Our producers wrote the English lyrics, which I was frankly embarrassed by. "We thought it was cool," recalls Medress. According to former Token Hank Medress, a former executive of EMI Publishing Canada and now a 56-year- old aspiring physical fitness director in New York, it was the Weavers' version of "Wimoweh" that first inspired his group.
The song then came to be known as "Wimoweh," made famous by Miriam Makeba and later by Pete Seeger and The Weavers. Those parts were taken from "Mbube," a Zulu hunting song written in 1939 by black South African choir leader Solomon Linda. The song owes its success to the stirring vocal parts, a chanting chorus and a keening falsetto, that have helped to make it a campfire favorite the world over. Which is why BMG has rushed out a Tokens collection titled - you guessed it, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Now, due to its inclusion in Disney's The Lion King, the song has become a hit all over again. More than 80 versions have been recorded to date, by everyone from Canadian a cappella guys the Nylons to British ambient guru Brian Eno.
#WIMOWEH ORIGINAL HOW TO#
So how to explain the longevity of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which made Brooklyn's The Tokens a one-hit wonder in the '60s? Despite its trite lyrics ("In the jungle, the mighty jungle," etc.) the song simply refuses to die.
Goode," now hurtling somewhere out in space aboard the Voyager II, will become a hit on Neptune when it reaches the planet sometime in the next millennium. For all we know, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. And the raunchy Latino standard "La Bamba" has been sanctified by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, no less. The Gipsy Kings, for instance, do Sinatra's signature tune "My Way" their way. Infused with musical elixir, they transcend time and space and even their original language.
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