Good Afternoon inmates! It’s Thursday, please gather around!

The following IP thread concerns a story of exploitation regarding one of the most famous songs to come out of South Africa.

Our story begins with this man, Solomon Linda. Linda was born in 1909 near a small town called Pomeroy in KZN

From a young age, Linda took an interest in music, performing whenever he could. In 1931, like many young South African men at the time, he moved to Johannesburg for work and whilst there, he started a singing group called The Evening Birds.

The Evening Birds & Solomon Linda became very popular, singing at churches, weddings and choir competitions.

In 1939, Linda started working at Gallo Record Company. Gallo was the only recording studio in Sub-Saharan Africa at the time. They had somewhat of a monopoly of the recording and distribution of musuc in this region.

One day, while recording other songs with his group, Linda produced the song Mbube. Towards the end of the end of the session, he decided to add a high pitched vocal of “Mbube”to the end. Mbube means lion by the way.

In 1948, The Evening Birds went their separate ways. I’m not sure why, but it may have a lot to do with the fact that music wasn’t very profitable for them at the time. Thus, no incentive.

In the 1950s, the recording of Mbube found itself in the USA. It was usual at the time for Gallo to ship records it was not using overseas for use by Americans. Like a thrift shop. It was “discovered” by American musician Alan Lomax. He then gave it to his friend Peter Seeger.

SOUND ON: Seeger was not not able to make out what the lyrics were. All he could was “Wimoweh”, an approximate phonetic rendition of Uyimbube. The song was released by The Weavers and it was an instant hit!

In 1961, lyricist George David Weiss was hired to write the English lyrics for a pop version of the song “Wimoweh” to be sung by The Tokens. It was at this point where the now famous lyrics “In the Jungle, the mighty jungle....” lyrics were added.

Fast forward to 1994, Disney produced the movie Lion King. It was the highest grossing movie of 1994, the highest grossing animation ever and its musical score won numerous awards. The musical score included “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. The song had become a global hit.

Meanwhile back in South Aftica, Solomon Linda had passed away in 1962 with less than R100 to his name. He was survived by his wife Regina and his 4 daughters, who continued to live in poverty. They did not receive any royalties from the song.

Let me deal with the issue of Royalties as well as a quick course in Exploitation 101. When the song became popular in the 1950s, Gallo wanted in on the money. They went to Linda and got him to sign a Copyright Assignment Agreement. Transferring ownership of the song to them....

With the Copyright Assignment Agreement in hand, Gallo could go to the producers of the song in the USA and claim that they were the owners, and they were entitled to royalties. They eventually struck a deal wkgh The Weavers and got some sort of payout (not sure how much).

Linda and his family did not receive any royalties from the later use of the song. However, the issue was well known within the music industry. In 2000, this man, Rian Malan decided to write an article on this matter.

With the help of a few lawyers, Riaan and co. consulted the Linda family (now survived by just his 3 daughters) and decided it was time to do something about this and get his descendants royalties.

The case was difficult for a few reasons.

1. Linda had assigned away all rights to the song to Gallo, who in turn had assigned it to the Americans. However, his daughters claimed that their father was illiterate and could not have known what he was signing at the time.

2. The lawyers had decided to sue Disney for royalties, being the most famous and richest of the parties that used the song. However, in order to sue someone in SA, they need to have some property you can attach in SA (I think, my Civil Procedure isn’t great ).

Although Disney didnt have physical property in SA, they had a lot of trade marks registered here. The lawyers attched all their trade marks. Mickey Mouse and co. were then held hostage until Disney could come answer for its crimes in SA.

Disney’s lawyers argued that the song had been assigned by Linda to Gallo decades ago! But the lawyer representing the Linda family, Owen Dean of Spoor and Fisher had a trick up his sleeve. A forgotten clause of the old English Imperial Act of 1911....

In short, the act says that 25 years after Linda died, the Copyright in the song should have gone back to his descendants in 1987. The purpose of this is to avoid situations where a copyrighted work makes money yet the author’s family remains in poverty.

The lawsuit was finally brought against Disney. It was hard to calculate exactly how much money was owed to the Linda family. But it was claimed that Disney owed over 1,6 million USD (over 16 million Rands at the time) in royalties.

Well aware of the potential bad press should they litigate this matter, Disney decided to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount. They had a few settlement terms though....

1. No one was to know how much money they paid the Linda family.
2. The money was to be paid into a Trust and managed by a group of Trustees, who would manage the money to the family
3. After 2017 ( I think ) the family could not claim any further royalties for the song.

Whether it was poor management by the Trustees (most white male) or poor spending by the daughters, the money depleted and depleted very quickly. The daughters maintain that there was mismanagement. The trustees claim the gyals spent it on all on alcohol. Who do you believe?

The terms of the settlement agreement expired and Disney released a new version of The Lion King in 2019. It made more than 2 billion globally. The daughters will not get royalties for use if the song from Disney for this one.

If you want to watch more on this, Netflix has a cool documentary on this strory called “The Lion’s Share”. I think the daughters still live in relatively poor conditions somehwere in Soweto. This one does not have a happy ending.

Solomon Linda’s story is sad. The odds were against him. The big big lesson here is, always read what you sign or get a lawyer involved. Stay Safe Good People!!