Much of the discussion around the Mbube case, in order to make a strong case of misappropriation both emphasized the original contribution made by Solomon Linda and the unique circumstances of the song’s creation. Owen Dean, the lawyer for the family, states in his account of the lawsuit and its settlement:
“in 1939 Linda found himself before a microphone in the Gallo studio, improvising falsetto vocal lines against a rolling, driving vocal chant. He called the song, “MBUBE” or “lion” in Zulu. On the third take, Linda came up with a haunting skein of notes that went on to become the most famous melody every to emerge from Africa.”
Note how Dean emphasizes the unique original contribution made by Linda. Linda is seen to have created out of whole cloth, the falsetto vocal line and he “came up’ with the core melody. It is also interesting to see how Dean, at least in introduction, describes Linda:
“Solomon Linda was an uneducated Zulu tribesman and a gifted composer and performer of music. He migrated to Johannesburg and took up a job as the cleaner in a storeroom at Gallo Records, Johannesburg’s first recording studio in the 1930s. By night, he performed at the local shebeens and gathering places together with a group called “The Evening Birds”.
Linda was already performing with a group. In some stories it is HIS group “Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds”, in others he is simply a member of the group. Dean’s account does not mention the other members of the group but it is difficult to avoid the sense that they were there in the room as Linda did not himself do the background vocals, nor did Gallo provide session musicians at that time. Which begs the question. How did Solomon Linda end up in that recording studio? How did he and his “Evening Birds” band mates end up there? Why does Solomon Linda get sole composer credit?
Dean states that Linda “called’ or named the song Mbube. But, there is at least one article that notes that the song was a traditional piece of music sung by the young women in Linda’s rural home village of Msinga, commemorating the killing of a lion. Gunner notes that Linda was brought in by a Gallo records talent scout, while he was working as a packer at Gallo records.
Importantly, Dean emphasizes the authenticity of Linda by making it clear that he is a Zulu tribesman, suggesting that at least some of his claim to justice comes from his status as a Zulu, who was less sophisticated and less educated than his interlocutors in the recording industry. What Dean also notes, and is important for us to keep in mind, is that he (Dean) was primarily retained by Gallo records and so his story does not discus whether Gallo records itself behaved in any manner that was unfair to Linda himself or to the Zulu community writ large. His brief did not extend to questioning whether Gallo had a right to record the music in the first place. As he notes, his mandate was limited to the following:
“to find a way, and to do everything possible, to enable the children of Solomon Linda, the composer of a song called MBUBE, which later evolved into the international hit song THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT, to derive some financial benefit from the considerable revenues generated by the popularity of THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT. You should recommend any reasonable course of action which you can conceive and we are willing to finance it even if it means conducting litigation abroad.”
Why did Gallo take up this case on behalf of the family? It turns out that they initially planned to support the litigation, in partnership with Mala and the family after a concerted publicity campaign, but partway through the process, essentially when Disney was joined as a defendant, Gallo withdrew its financial support for the case, because its partnership with a South African film distributor linked to Disney was under threat.
Solomon Linda was one of the first practitioners of a South African urban musical genre known as isicathamiya, which had both a physical dance and musical thematic component. Primarily an urban phenomenon it was performed by, largely, men who had migrated to Johannesburg for work from the rural areas. Malan’s story talks about how the roots of isicathamiya are drawn from encounters between Black American touring groups brought to late 1880’s and pre – WWI South Africa and other parts of Africa by groups such as the Virginia Jubilee Singers. This style was adopted and adapted by the young rural and rapidly urbanizing population into what was to become isicathamiya. Malan’s story suggests that Linda and his young friends in the rural village were already performing at weddings and feasts and incorporating the style into their renditions of traditional Zulu songs. If true, this suggests that traditional songs were core to the creation of the style but also to the content and structure of the songs. The story from Malan also emphasizes however, how much composing Linda did, drawing on his experiences of life in the new townships, writing original songs that became the basis for his own growing fame and that of his group, the “Evening Birds.” Gunner also notes that Linda did a lot of composing subsequent to this of songs of his own that were not traditional songs and that focused on the urban experience in the township and the relation to the ‘system’. Malan emphasizes Linda’s fame, the idea that he was the “Elvis Presley” of the style and the township scene. It therefore makes sense that they were found and brought into Gallo by a talent scout rather than the somewhat apocryphal story that he was working as a janitor at Gallo records and was overheard singing and then brought upstairs to record. Malan also makes clear that there were several sessions of recording with Griffiths Motsiela, the Gallo producer, and that Mbube was recorded in the second session. The process of recording is something heard from both Malan’s and Dean’s accounts: there were two bad takes and then a third one in which Linda’s genius came to the fore where he ‘created’ the unique elements of the song. Malan does not tell us whether the song was one that the Evening Birds had already been singing or whether it was created bespoke, in the studio. Dean believes it was created spontaneously in the studio.
Gallo Records is an interesting participant in the development of isicathamiya music and urban black South African Music in general. It is an early participant in the translation process and in providing a revenue stream and exposure for black South African musicians. It is a company remembered fondly by many artists for helping them get their start. The role of the company in providing a means and a way to record the song and the supposed alchemy of the record studio almost makes Gallo records, or the producer in question, almost a co-creator of the song. The back and forth between Linda and the producer Motsiela, who Malan notes is the one who brought in additional musicians after his assessment that the first two tries ‘did not work’, and the eureka moment when the third finally did. The story brought by Malan begs the question: how much of the key components of the song existed before Linda walked into that recording studio? Do we know what version of the song Linda and the Evening Birds, his band were singing in the shebeens of the township? At least one author claims that the song was indeed a Traditional Zulu wedding song sung by the girls in the village of Msinga, where Linda came from. Gunner, citing to Erlmann, also states that there was a traditional song composed by the girls in Linda’s home village and that what he recorded was an inspired “cross-over” rendering. Gunner’s statement suggests that while Linda’s rendering would, under modern analyses, qualify as a ‘cover’ of the original, it might not in and of itself have been ‘original in the copyright sense.
Recommended Citation: Dalindyebo Shabalala, “Solomon Linda, Cultural Pirate? – The Origin Myth of Mbube”, IP& (Aug 5, 2019)
Sources
Owen Dean, Awakening the Lion in the Jungle – The story of the Lion Sleeps Tonight Case, Spoor&Fisher:Latest News (2019), https://www.spoor.co.za/en/News/awakening-the-lion-in-the-jungle/ (last visited Jun 27, 2019).
Rian Malan, In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ Rolling Stone, 2000, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/in-the-jungle-inside-the-long-hidden-genealogy-of-the-lion-sleeps-tonight-108274/.
Matome Ratiba, “The sleeping lion needed protection” – lessons from the Mbube (Lion King) debacle, 7 J. Int. Commer. Law Technol. 1–10 (2012).
Liz Gunner, Zulu Choral Music—Performing Identities in a New State, 37 Res. Afr. Lit. 83–97 (2006) at 86.
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