Talk:The Lion Sleeps Tonight

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An infobox was requested for the 1972 Robert John recording of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/List_of_notable_songs/13.

There's an animation that's been circulating around the internet which includes this song, and the style suggests that it was made by Disney (or Pixar), but I'm not sure. Does anybody have any idea who could've made this animation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hJhyOQ_eA Sanbuster 14:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Why does the introduction refer to The Tokens? The implication is that they created the song. At the very least Solomon Linda should be named first.JohnC (talk) 09:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

comments about Pete Segeer's role

It's my understanding that Seeger has commented that he regrets recording the song without ever crediting the originators, and ensuring that proceeds and credit went to the people who created the song. He regards it as an act of ethnocentric cultural imperialism borne of the mentality of the era that he has come to regret.

I don't have a cite for this, but I seem to recall it being discussed in the recent movie about Seeger, or the NPR interview. I think it's worthy of inclusion in the article. Whether Seeger is correct or not about the value of importing the song, it's a part of the history of the song and I think should be included. Djcbuffum (talk) 18:17, 27 September 2008 (UT

Although I don't consider him a villain, I think a case can be made that Seeger, an artist and performer, and not a business man or thinker, was rather naive.

Malan's article concludes as follows (excerpt):

Removed -- this lengthy excerpt is a violation of Rolling Stone's copyright. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Malan does not believe that Seeger or Alan Lomax or any of the others who underwent great hardships and made these songs known to millions of people and reaped relatively small (material) rewards are culpable in this or other similar cases. The implication is that it is likely that they have been made to serve as scapegoats (and possibly were also exploited) while multimillion dollar corporations took the profits.Mballen (talk) 08:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Correction and amplification. The views above I gathered not from Rian Malan but rather from a post by South African writer and producer, David Marks, founder of the Third Eye/Ear website on which Malan's article is reproduced and which contains posts from Malan and from the South African copyright lawyer Owen Dean who sued on behalf of Linda's heirs. David Marks writes:

It is so unfortunate that Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Doc Hugh Tracey & even 3rd Ear Music, are sometimes lumped together with these strange material scams. It's also an easy way out, in hindsight, for researchers, the capitalists, the sentimentalists & the sensationalists within the current turbulent mainstream music & record industry. It was us who brought the music into the public arena & the fact that we had no idea of the legal / financial implications makes no difference; the suckers can be trashed to absolve the commercial record industry.

I take the "suckers", who can be safely be trashed to absolve the commercial recording industry, as referring to scholars and enthusiasts such as Lomax, Seeger, and Tracey.

Rian Malan's actual views (from the same website) are stated below. I believe the "Buddhist rogue", he refers to here is the late Harold Leventhal, the genial manager of the Weavers and Woody Guthrie, or possibly Pete Kameron. On 3rd Ear,Manlan writes:

- Pete Seeger’s people asked me to set the record straight. I said, fine. I’d really like to do that, but in the end, it’s the truth that will set us free, and we need to establish what really happened. I really do believe Pete was an innocent party whose chief mistake was to trust his publishers. But I wanted that confirmed, so I sent a long letter full of questions about things that happened long ago. There has been dead silence since. Save for a cryptic email from an old Buddhist rogue who once managed the Weavers and wound up owning a big share of Wimoweh and Lion Sleeps. He just said, “We’re in tune, Rian. We saw the same movie.” Old Pete is 87 now. Maybe this is where it ends.--Rian Malan, post on 3rd Ear Music website.

Mballen (talk) 19:30, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

A 1998 New York Times profile of Harold Leventhal, then 80, describes him as having the "look of a frizzy Jewish Buddha" (Peter Applebome, "He Caught Folk on the Rise", New York Times, November 26, 1998). Mballen (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Can somebody go back and make it more clear exactly what Seeger's role was in all this? The article is such a hatchet job currently, especially the first paragraph of the Copyright section. Who is "Paul Campbell", and why is his name significant? —Torc. ^(Talk.) 19:26, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Peter Seeger inaccuracies

It is strange the Seeger refers to Shaka as the "last king of the amaZulu" when in fact Shaka was slain by his half-brother Dingeswayo who suceeded him as king. The last king of the amaZulu was in fact Cetswayo, who was defeated by the British in about 1879 (some time after Shaka!). 89.241.157.135 (talk) 18:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Cliff discussion makes no sense

I'm going to remove it. Add it back if you can make it mean something. Uucp 16:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Deleted external link

Duplicity has removed an external link I added to a blog post [1] I wrote about the song. Contrary to his/her claim, there is no conflict of interest in linking to a blog post I myself have written. Besides, I derive absolutely no benefit fr. such a link. On the contrary, the link points to an article that provides more depth & references to enrich the experience for the Wikipedia reader. My post is full of wide & varied research and features several fine mp3 cover versions of the song which readers can hear.

Before reverting this link pls. contact me to discuss.Richard (talk) 08:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Copyright law

Interesting fact that under South African Copyright law the copyright on this song would have expired just before the turn of the millenium. (The law states that copyright subsists for 50 years after publication or in the event that the work was not published 50 years after the death of the author) --Renier Maritz (talk) 22:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Word Substitutions

I don't understand why someone has gone in and substituted the synonyms "during" for "in", "initiated" for "founded" and "attained" for "reached" throughout. The former words are stylistically simpler and less cumbersome. Mballen (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The changes are not felicitous. "Cover-versioned" (i.e., "covered"), for example, is not a verb. I am going to changed these back, if no one objects. Mballen (talk) 20:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Laundry list template

I removed the laundry list template. The many covers and reinterpretations of the song are part of what make it notable, and are important to understanding its history and what was at stake in the legal battles over it. I understand the desire to cut down on listcruft, but in this case I think it's both notable and encyclopedic and should stay. -zorblek (talk) 06:17, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite

This entry reads like a long, rambling, magazine article. It doesn't speak with authority but incorporates quotes into the text the way a magazine piece would. It spends way too much time on irrelevant details and needs to be edited down to the basic elements using Wikipedia's style.

It is also missing numerous citations and relies too heavily on just one: "In the Jungle: How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper" by Rian Malan, Rolling Stone, May 2000. Rolling Stone comes out twice a month, not once a month, plus the volume, issue and page numbers are missing. There is an external link to this article, but it's not to Rolling Stone, it's to Longform.com. The Wikipedia entry includes so much material from this one source that its inclusion may violate Rolling Stone's copyright.

The article also contains numerous flowery expressions: "He also brought in the soprano voice of opera singer Anita Darian to vocalize (reprising Yma Sumac) before, during and after the saxophone solo, her eerie descant sounding almost like another instrument."

Lastly, it has long, run-on sentences like this one: "In the liner notes to one of his recordings, Pete Seeger gave his interpretation of the song, which he believed to be traditional (although the song's author Solomon Linda is a credited performer on the album), as an instance of a "sleeping-king" folk motif about Shaka, Warrior King of the Zulus, along the lines of the mythical European sleeping king in the mountain: Shaka the Lion, who heroically resisted the armies of the European colonizers, is supposed not to be dead but only sleeping and will one day awaken and return to lead his oppressed people to freedom." Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 19:52, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

More (4/8/2015)

I tagged this article this afternoon for numerous problems. It's a magazine article, not an encyclopedia entry. It's too flowery, too wordy and too in need of copy editing. I am thinking about doing this myself but I would very much like to hear from Rian himself or anyone else familiar with the song before I begin.

We need the exact citation for the Rolling Stone article (date, volume, issue, page) or that reference should be removed along with all passages attributed to it. I also think the Wikipedia article shouldn't link to the Longform.com copy. I don't know if that organization received copyright permission from Rolling Stone to republish Malan's article but there is no notice to that effect on their webpage. http://longform.org/stories/in-the-jungle-rian-malan. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 22:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Questions

The source for much of this Wikipedia entry is an article by Rian Malan for Rolling Stone, published in "May 2000." The reference links to a copy republished by Longform.com with the author's permission. There is nothing at Longform.com to indicate it was republished with Rolling Stone's permission, however, so I don't think we can include the quoted material from Longform.com in the entry. I also think the Longform.com citation should be removed and replaced with a citation to the Rolling Stone article itself.

Reference #16 below includes the entire text of the Time magazine page. Granted this is one paragraph but I am concerned that it violates Time's copyright.

Lastly, reference #18 is a recording at archive.com of Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds singing "Mtube," which may violate the Solomon Linda family's copyright. Given that the Wikipedia entry is mostly concerned with violations of Solomon Linda's copyright in the past, it seems wrong that we include that link here, especially if is protected by law. Otoh, YouTube has at least six copies of it, too. I got my copy at iTunes a week ago but readers who want the Linda family to receive their fair share can also buy it at Amazon where it's included in "Mbube Roots: Zulu Choral Music From South Africa, 1930s-1960s." Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 03:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

References

I included this information because I think parts of the Wikipedia entry need to have their references moved plus I'm not sure they are all needed. I wanted a record of what was here when I started.

Five references (#6, #8, #10, #13 and #18) look fine to me. #12 needs to be rewritten. Eleven references (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #14, #15, #16, #17, #20 and #21) need bibliographic information. References #7 and #9 are discussions with no citations. I have removed the URLs for #5, #13 and #20 (the dead links), leaving just the bibliographic material.

Reference #16 of the entry has two publications so I am listing them as 16 and 17 here on the Talk page.

1. Link to Rolling Stone article by Malan that was republished by Longform.com without the permission of Rolling Stone. We should replace the Longform.com citation with the Rolling Stone information including the exact date, volume, issue and page numbers.
2. Link to "Scouts South Africa" article;" has title only. (5/2/15 removed as confusing and irrelevant)
3. Standard book citation; has a quote. Needs page numbers.
4. Link to article at Listverse; has author and title only. (5/4/15 this reference was originally to: "Issued by Gallo as a 78 recording in 1939, and marketed to black audiences..." The reference says Gallo released the song in 1939, but doesn't say anything about black audiences. I moved the reference up so that it is now here: "Issued by Gallo as a 78 recording in 1939...."
5. Link to a blank book at Google Books; needs page numbers.
6. Link to Google Books; looks fine.
7. This is not a reference, it's information about George David Weiss; there is no indication of who added this information or why. (5/2/15 removed; Weiss has a Wikipedia entry, people can go read about him there)
8. Link to the University of North Texas Digital Library series. The citation looks fine the only problem being that the track with information about the song has nothing to do with the passage it is "supporting." (5/2/15 removed; I have twice listened to all the tracks, #3 is the relevant one: Seeger says it's an old Zulu tune recorded by Solomon Linda and his "original" Evening Birds, that Seeger has rearranged for the Weavers; the narrator says a 1961 version retitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" "shot to the top of the pop charts" but doesn't say who recorded it. I loved listening to the whole show and but I don't think we can use this)
9. This is not a reference, it is a discussion about royalties and copyright with no citation and no indication of who wrote it. (5/2/15 removed; this is a rebuttal to a reference but we don't know who wrote it plus it has no legal references to back it. Maybe it belongs in the article itself with references but it shouldn't be here. Also, this is not the way Wikipedia uses references -- they should be verifiable sources only)
10. Link to Wikipedia page about the University of Massachusetts Press (why?); citation looks fine. It has a discussion about copyright with no indication of who wrote it. (5/4/25 removed link to MIT and discussion)
11. Link that someone else noted as "dead" (5/4/15 removed)
12. Reference needs to be rewritten.
13. Dead link to September 25, 2006, press release at Emmy Online TV; I don't know if this needs additional information or not.
14. Link to article at "3rd Ear Music;" has title only.
15. Link to article at "Telegraph" with quote; needs volume, issue and page numbers. (5/2/15 quote removed; that's available at the site and shouldn't be in the reference section)
16. Link to article at "Time;" reference has the complete text of that article. Needs author, volume, issue and page numbers. (5/2/15 quote removed; I think this violates Time's copyright plus this shouldn't be in a reference)
17. Link to article at "WIPO Magazine;" needs author, date, volume and issue numbers.
18. Link to a recording of the song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight 1939" by "Linda Solomon" (sic) at archive.com; reference has title only.
19. Reference looks fine.
20. Reference looks fine.
21. Dead link to Netherlands Radio 538; reference has title only (5/2/15 removed; there is no easy way to get the rest of this reference plus there must be a better source for information about top hits in the Netherlands)
22. Link to article at "Guardian;" needs volume, issue and page numbers. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 22:05, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Questions

>"Pete Seeger expressed concerns about the copyright law associated with the song. Folkways Records founder Moe Asch frequently voiced the belief that traditional songs could not and should not be copyrighted at all."

I took this out, it doesn't follow -- Seeger wasn't concerned about copyright until much later when he discovered that Linda wrote the song. That's when Seeger sent the $1000 and assigned his share of royalities to Linda. Seeger thought it was a traditional song, meaning it was in the public domain and free for anyone to record as long as he/she doesn't copy another singer's arrangement without permission/credit/payment etc. He didn't need Asch to convince him of this. Everybody thought that, and still does Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 04:40, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

South African and US copyright agreements

>"Their managers and publisher, and their attorneys, knew otherwise because they had been contacted by and had reached an agreement with Eric Gallo of Gallo Records in South Africa. The Americans maintained, however, that South African copyrights were not valid because South Africa was not a signatory to U.S. copyright law and were hence "fair game." -- Malan article in Rolling Stone

I was curious about this so I asked a friend who is a lawyer specializing in copyright law if it was true, that South Africa "was not a signatory to U.S. copyright law." He sent me this link Bilateral copyright agreements of the United States. This shows that the US and South Africa signed copyright agreements in 1915, 1920 and 1924.

Now maybe the attorneys told Gallo the US had no copyright agreement with South Africa and it could be that Gallo had no attorney of his own to refute this. And it's possible that the attorneys' clients said they'd be happy to pay Gallo even though they didn't think they were required to do so. Regardless, I think we need an additional reference and more information about what actually happened in those negotiations before we can say the above is true. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 22:10, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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First paragraph and Tight Fit

The first paragraph could mention how Tight Fit did a version of this song which reached Number One in 1982. Vorbee (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. Now added. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:09, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

It's "A Whim Away"!

Who writes this crap?? "wimoweh" WTF?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.178.137.210 (talk) 03:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Solomon Linda wrote the “crap”!

please research before making lame comments. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/world/africa/in-the-jungle-the-unjust-jungle-a-small-victory.html#:~:text=But%20the%20saga%20of%20the,brings%20a%20measure%20of%20justice. 204.156.182.148 (talk) 00:05, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

I propose that this article is split into Mbube (song) and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Contrary to what these articles claims the latter is more than just an English language version of the former (and its cover "Wimoweh"). Mbube contains nothing, neither in lyrics nor in chant, that even closely resembles the English verses of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The Tokens basically created a new song bases on Mbube. It's a sort of sampling. The reliationship between Mbube is similar to the relationships between songs like Super Freak and U Can't Touch This or Under Pressure and Ice Ice Baby. Splitting the article would allow us to cover both songs more efficiently.Tvx1 14:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong Oppose. Did you read the article?--Oneiros (talk) 09:04, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Oppose. If we split b/c the Tokens added English verses, we’d have to create a third page for Miriam Makeba’s version, which adds verses in Zulu. Where does it stop? The mention of rap tracks which use familiar vamps from other recordings is like comparing apples to bicycles. The complex and fascinating history of this song deserves to be treated in its entirety in a single article.   — Texas Dervish (talk) 10:24, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Principal version

I think Solomon Linda's version should be listed first. Then The Tokens and co, can be added. DejiJJ (talk) 14:36, 11 February 2022 (UTC)