Various Artists – The Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa
This week has conspired against me and instead of writing one post and preparing another to be super organised before my holiday, I’m scribbling this post and don’t have much hope for a great literary effort for next week’s one. This week at least the music is going to have to do the talking.
I’m posting Mbube by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds. Play it and you will instantly recognise it as Wimoweh, popularised in the USA by the Weavers and The Kingston Trio and in the UK by The Karl Denver Trio. It was more recently featured in the Walt Disney film The Lion King.
The story of the song and the struggle to ensure that Solomon Linda, the writer of the original song, was credited and all royalties due were paid to his heirs makes fascinating reading.
2 Comments
Now that is great – thanks, Andy.
Yes, it is a great track isn’t it.
But panic is setting in now with my promise of a track for the eventual winners of the World Cup. I’m a bit low on Uruguayan music in fact I could confess to having very little music from each of the semi-finalists with the exception of Spain.
So, should I be supporting the country whose football I have enjoyed most (Germany) or that whose music I know best (Spain)? Life’s dilemmas eh!
One Trackback
[...] I see that, in 2006, The Guardian listed Tight Fit’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight – a version of Mbube by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds – as a top ten earworm. I know which version of this song I’d rather have buzzing around in [...]