Unsolved journalistic stories, historical conundrums and nagging questions surround America like dead satellites orbiting the earth like galactic garbage and every few years making a beep or a sign of life indicating their existence; Like the compulsive seasonal return to the question of what became of the Skyscraper Dee. Me. Cooper, who fell from a passenger plane with 200 thousand dollars and since then his traces have disappeared.
I watched three documentary series about him, all without an answer; Where is Jimmy Hoppe buried is such a question. The FBI dug for him wherever the rumor ran him; The story of the boy Emmett Till, who was brutally lynched, has been updated twice this year, all to clear his name, but the legal system has not allowed it to be read; Who killed Jonna Ramsey? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone or in the company of other assassins? Did Stanley Kubrick produce The Moon Landing in a studio? And what is really hidden in area 51?
I have already written the story of Solomon Linda, the author of the song “The Lion Sleeps at Night”. In 2014, the lawyers of his heirs reached an understanding with the many copyright robbers and arranged a modest rent for the family. Nothing close to the millions the song brought in for the Disney company alone, before counting 150 additional promotions. There was a retroactive sense of justice knowing that the family had left the dusty clay hut in the Soweto ghetto for a better life. But the breach calls for a thief, and based on expired agreements and copyrights drafted in favor of those who abuse them, the story has been updated again.
In 2019, the Linda family discovered that in a new film version of “The Lion King”, which has always been a work with “The Lion Sleeps at Night” as its central axis, Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner sing the song. Apparently good news based on the fact that the lion bit Disney in the butt. Featuring Beyoncé and Danny Glover, The Lion King was supposed to be a huge hit. Despite mixed reviews, the film grossed $500 million in America and $1 billion worldwide. The soundtrack reached number 20 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 200 best albums.
In 1939, a worker from the Zulu tribe named Solomon Linda stood in front of a microphone in the first recording studio in Johannesburg, and improvised in a melodically pleasant high falsetto voice against a mesmerizing vocal anthem. The melody was enchanting, childish in its simplicity, three basic chords and few words. As a background to his pleasant soprano, Linda’s band, the evening birds, sang four-part harmony. Linda called the song “Mbube”, an aria in the Zulu language. Elizabeth Nesla, Linda’s youngest daughter, said that the inspiration for the song came from her father’s childhood, when he worked as a shepherd of a herd of cattle and was tasked with guarding lions that were hunting the cows.
In the third take, Melinda released sounds that over the years have become the most famous song in Africa. The Western world became familiar with the song called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. It has been translated into many languages, recorded by 150 different artists and used in 15 films and musical plays. At a conservative estimate, the song generated $15 million in royalties. Navajo Indians sing the song at gatherings; The French prefer a version sung in Congolese; Phish performed it live; It was recorded by artists such as REM, Glen Campbell, Brian Eno and Chet Atkins; The New Zealand Army Band turned it into a march.
Linda wrote one of the most famous songs in the world, but he died poor and broke, leaving a family that didn’t have the money to put up a tombstone for him. As with songs whose copyrights are not registered by law, the song evolved as an orphan that can be borrowed without asking the author’s permission and without paying him royalties.
“Mbube” works in a jazz version in America and as a catchy night club chorus, but its main publication as a song was performed by the Kingston Trio and another version in 1961; Composer George Weiss took the last 20 seconds of the original song and turned them into the main tune. Weiss added the words so recognizable, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight”; A boy band called The Tokens catapulted him to the top of the world charts.
All this time Solomon Linda and his family lived in Soweto, in a hut with a sand floor covered with cow dung. In the early 1950s, “Mbube” was printed and became a bestseller in South Africa. For the rights to use the song, Linda received one shilling.
The song caught the attention of folk singer Pete Seeger. Seeger liked the song, recognized its potential and added a few English words to it – mainly a repeating chorus – and named it “Wimoweh”, a Zulu corruption of Uyimbube meaning “this is the lion”. In its western version, the song became a huge hit and remained popular for 40 years. In the 90’s the song was included in the musical “The Lion King”. The origin of the song (“Mbube”) and the name of its author (Solomon Linda) were not mentioned anywhere.
Linda’s eight children ate corn porridge called Pap. Two of the children died of malnutrition. In addition to the single shilling he was paid, the owner of the rights in South Africa showed generosity and employed Linda as a floor sweeper and tea server in the company’s warehouse. Solomon Linda got to see and hear “The Lion Sleeps at Night” reach number one on the charts in America at Christmas. He fell ill and was about to die. The doctors diagnosed kidney disease, but his family members claimed he was actually a sorcerer. Linda died at the age of 53 in 1962. He had $22 in his bank account, and he left behind a wife and four children.
In 1983, the American music company Folkways paid one dollar to Regina Solomon, her husband’s legal heir, for the right to register the song under the company’s name in America and also purchased the worldwide copyright to the song with the same dollar. In the midst of a legal battle over the song’s copyright in America, Folkways paid an extra dollar to Linda’s daughters before selling the rights to Abilene Music. So all available legal measures were taken to prevent the Linda family from any way to claim copyright.
The agreement with Disney expired in 2017, a year and a half before the premiere of the film. In the reality that was created, the Linda family was not entitled to a penny spent from the use of the song in the film. It was legal, because the contract had expired, and the family had no legal case against Disney. When the original contract was signed, no one foresaw the day when Disney would have sophisticated and realistic animation capability. Acknowledging that the Linda family would once again be left out of the ballroom was legal but ugly, exploitative and twisted. It was another turn of the knife in the lion’s belly.
One of the grandchildren, Temba Daldia, said: “The family demands to know the consequences of the use of the song in the new film on Solomon Linda’s historical rights. The family wants to know who owns the copyrights and demands that they be returned to them.” The bright grandson who does not foresee a happy ending.
A documentary called “The Biggest Thing” meticulously follows the song’s journey and is based on the first major investigation by Ryan Malan published in 2000 in “Rolling Stone”. The film exposed the copyright expiration in 2017 and picks up where Malan left off. Everything in the film: the first legal battle of the Linda family, the lawsuit against Disney in 2004 and more.
Pete Seeger was persecuted for most of his life due to his political and social beliefs by the forces that persecuted communists, especially in the 1950s during the time of the committee established by Senator Joe McCarthy. Seeger, who should have been aware of the song’s history and researched its history by the time he got to the dusty cabin in the ghetto, didn’t make the effort. This was an embarrassing stumbling block and a blatant deviation from his political and class beliefs.
Seeger started out as a banjo player living in an apartment with cold water on MacDougall Street in Greenwich Village with his wife and two children when his friend Alan Lomax knocked on the door. Lomax was a compulsive documenter of music and recorded die-hard blues players in America’s deep south.
When the song came to him, Lomax thought Seger was the man to sing it in English. With the Weavers he recorded “Goodnight Irene” by Ledby. On the other side of the floppy disk was printed the English version of “Tsana, Tsana, Tsana”, the Israeli. Both songs were picked up immediately. Seeger changed the unintelligible Zulu phrase to wimoweh, which he repeatedly repeated. At the end of the 1950s, the song appeared on the album of the “Kingston Trio”, remained on the charts for three years (178 weeks) and reached the second place.
Solomon Linda’s song was so captivating that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had to pull over on the side of the road when he first heard it on the radio. Singer and songwriter Carole King’s response was “Motherfucker” in the sense of exclamation. Miriam McCabe sang it on JFK’s last birthday, before Marilyn Monroe, in a cast silver dress, whispered “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to him. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the ears of the Apollo astronauts as they waited for the countdown on the launch pad.
Seeger expressed remorse for the theft, and the copyright infringement bothered him. “I didn’t know what the background of the song was, and I’m sorry for that,” the 86-year-old Seeger said in 2006, adding that he thought Linda received less than 50% of the royalties he was due, which was an optimistic estimate detached from reality. Cigar hid behind a trite excuse. “I always left dealing with money in the hands of others,” he said, “it was stupid of me.”
Malan’s investigation revealed the mechanism by which the money was stolen from the Linda family. Malan showed how while royalties from “Mbube” brought in millions of dollars, Linda’s daughters, one of whom died of AIDS shortly after the article was published, lived in abject poverty without receiving any income from the fruits of their father’s immortal creation. The article caused an uproar in South Africa.
The legal battle was fought over “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, over Solomon Linda’s part in writing it and the fact that it originated in South Africa and not Walt Disney’s composers. In the Disney company, the plaintiffs found a fat target to claim their money from, including the assumption that nothing good would happen to Disney’s reputation if they insisted on not compensating three poor African women from the Soweto ghetto.
In an interview conducted by the “New York Times” with Malan, he said “because he was amazed at the way too many producers and creators built on the ignorance of the Linda family, on which they built that you would never ask why they received such meager royalties from such a successful song that so many became rich from.” Malan mentioned unlucky songs that trailed a load of bad blood. Like the 27 songs recorded by the young Robert Johnson after the deal he allegedly made with the devil; Ladveli “lost” half of the royalties due to his white patrons because he was in prison; DJ Alan Freed refused to pay Chuck Berry’s share of Maybelline, and Led Zeppelin pocketed Willie Dixon’s “Whole Lotta Love.”
The big money from “The Lion” came when the song was played in an American commercial for a hotel. Much of the money went to Pete Seeger, who refused to accept it. On that occasion it turned out that despite his deep sorrow for the injustice done to Linda, Seeger continued to collect royalties on “Wimoweh” for many years.
The lawsuit was filed by the “Count Fisher” law firm, relying on an unknown legal remedy: Section 5(2) of the Copyright Act of 1911.
A British regulation that became law throughout the empire, including in South Africa. In accordance with the section of the law, even if a creator signs the sale of his rights in his work during his lifetime, 25 years after his death the rights automatically revert to his heirs as part of their inheritance, ignoring various actions taken with the work in the time that has passed since its sale for the first time.
Since according to the law copyright could only be claimed in countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, it was decided to conduct the lawsuit in a South African court. According to this restrictive clause, it was impossible to sue the American company Abilene Music, through which most of the financial activity was conducted. Because Abilene was not an oily fish, certainly not enough to satisfy heirs who came to a turn of bread, the lawyers decided to sue Disney.
In an initial check it turned out that Disney had about 200 registered products protected by copyright in South Africa. These products have become hostages and levers to exercise the rights of the Linda family.
The High Court in South Africa has authorized the plaintiffs to take possession of Disney’s protected products, including the film “The Lion King”, and not to transfer revenues to the American company until a verdict is rendered. Spoor and Fisher obtained injunctions against all of Disney’s proprietary property and also found Abilene subsidiaries that had financial interests in South Africa. The main charge was the use – in violation of copyright law – of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in “The Lion King”, one of the most profitable films in the history of cinema.
Disney responded immediately by demanding to unravel the connection between the lawsuit and its profitable products, claiming that the plaintiffs have no right to create a connection between the things. The court rejected the demand and supported the plaintiffs. The lawsuit was a nightmare for Disney, a company built on a friendly image; A script in which Disney is cast as Goliath, the slaver of a small uncle in the form of a poor family whose children worked as maids and laborers while Disney collected huge sums of money from the table – is considered a disaster.
Shortly before the start of the trial, the defendants, including the Abilene company, reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs: the Linda family will be compensated for the use, including in the past, of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and a future right to royalties from all over the world; The defendants admitted that the origin of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is in the song “Mbube”; Solomon Linda was credited as the author of the song and will be credited in the future; A special fund was established to manage the revenue from the plaintiffs’ copyrights and collect on their behalf the money due to them.
Unlike the previous round, Disney chose to return the Nazra to the hand grenade. In the document she signed with the Linda family, she agreed to pay a significant amount on account of past rights until 2017 and committed to a small percentage of the income from the film. A fund was established to distribute the revenues, which was immediately accused of irregularities; The three daughters, Delphi, Elizabeth and Philda accused the others of selectively distributing the money. The first payment of $120,000 evaporated in favor of the lawyers’ fees. These are claims that the expenses were legitimate because the nurses did not follow the foundation’s recommendation on how to handle the money.
The grandson Daldia claimed that the lawyers’ narrative is wrong: “My aunts used the money wisely. They bought bigger houses and invested in their children’s education. They all live in renovated houses and not in the cabin where they were born. None of them owes money.” According to another source, the family received between 20 thousand and 65 thousand dollars a year during the years of the agreement.
Solomon Linda instilled in the world a song that plays in the collective consciousness to this very day. It is doubtful that the forces that gathered to pick him up would have been successful had it not been for a black man living in a country so far from sight and heart as South Africa.
Plagiarism is common, but the intolerable ease with which the song was handed down from hand to hand, adapted and recorded without anyone tracing its source, symbolizes the cynicism and greed that ignores copyright and intellectual property law prevalent in the entertainment business. As one of the satellites that never dies and never burns up on its way back to Earth, this is not the lion’s last word. He is hoarse, toothless, and old, but he has an extra roar left in him; in a place and time suitable for him.