It’s unsettling when a beloved song takes on a darker hue, especially when it intertwines with themes of cultural appropriation and historical injustice. Recently, while listening to The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens, a wave of unease washed over me. What was once a lighthearted sing-along tune about a sleepy lion suddenly felt… different. This led me down a rabbit hole, revealing a history far more complex and troubling than I ever imagined, centered around the true origins of the Lion Sleeps Tonight Song.
My initial perception of the song was innocent enough – a whimsical ditty perfect for car rides and nostalgic moments, perhaps even reminiscent of childhood music classes. However, the catchy “a-weema-weh” chorus, sung by a group of white men from the 1960s, began to raise questions. Was this simply cultural borrowing, or something more insidious? Driven by this question, I decided to investigate the real story behind this seemingly innocuous song.
The research uncovered a startling truth: The Lion Sleeps Tonight is not an original composition by The Tokens. Its roots trace back to a 1939 Zulu song titled “Mbube,” meaning “lion” in Zulu. The famous “a-weema-weh” is actually a misinterpretation of the Zulu phrase “uyimbube,” which translates to “you are a lion.” The original song, “Mbube,” was written by Solomon Linda, a South African singer and composer, reflecting his experiences herding cattle and warding off lions during his childhood.
Solomon Linda’s story is deeply intertwined with the oppressive reality of Apartheid in South Africa. Under this regime, Black South Africans faced severe limitations on their rights, including economic rights and intellectual property. Despite “Mbube” becoming a local hit, selling around 100,000 copies, Linda was operating within a system designed to exploit him. In 1948, the year Apartheid officially began, he sold the rights to his song to a recording company for a mere pittance – reportedly less than two dollars. Tragically, Solomon Linda died in poverty in 1962, just one year after The Tokens released their massively successful, Anglicized version of his work. The Tokens, on the other hand, reaped significant financial rewards from The Lion Sleeps Tonight, while Solomon Linda received no credit or royalties for his original composition. It wasn’t until decades later, as detailed in this NPR article from 2006, that Linda’s family began to receive a fraction of the royalties, after a protracted legal battle. This victory came fifty years too late for Solomon himself.
This history throws the seemingly harmless Lion Sleeps Tonight into a starkly different light. The exploitation of Solomon Linda’s work is a direct consequence of the legacy of colonialism. South Africa’s history of colonization by European powers, first the Dutch and then the British, laid the groundwork for Apartheid. Colonialism involved not just political control but also the imposition of Western cultural and economic systems, often at the expense of indigenous populations. The racial hierarchy established during colonialism persisted after independence, culminating in the formal system of Apartheid from 1948 to 1994.
As Ania Loomba points out in her postcolonial critiques, the term “postcolonial” is often misleading for those who remain marginalized. For individuals like Solomon Linda, living under Apartheid, there was nothing “post” about their colonization. They continued to experience economic and cultural exploitation. Loomba emphasizes that “‘postcolonial’ does not apply to those that are at the bottom end of this hierarchy, who are still ‘at the far economic margins of the nation-state’ so that nothing is ‘post’ about their colonization.” (1104). The theft of intellectual property, like Solomon Linda’s song, is a profound form of economic disenfranchisement.
The Americanized version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, while not inherently malicious, becomes a clear example of cultural appropriation in this context. It takes a song rooted in Zulu culture and experience, strips away its original meaning and context, and repackages it for Western consumption and profit. This form of cultural appropriation, where intellectual and cultural expressions are taken, reworked, and commodified by dominant cultures, is particularly troubling. It perpetuates a cycle of capitalist imperialism, where wealth and recognition flow away from the originators of cultural works towards those in positions of power and privilege. While this example dates back to the 1960s, the underlying dynamics of cultural appropriation and exploitation remain relevant in our contemporary media landscape. The story of The Lion Sleeps Tonight serves as a potent reminder to look beyond the surface of popular culture and to critically examine the histories and power dynamics embedded within the media we consume.
