Reflections of an Itinerant Musician

Wait! There's a Lion Sleeping Where?!?

You can blame this on Lilli 🧿 ☕ and Robert Waltz, they're the ones who started this earworm.

In case you aren't familiar with the term earworm, it refers to having a song stuck in your head. It replays and replays, over and over, usually without end. Or so it seems. My earworms are most annoying, they very often are not whole songs, sometimes only fragments of a tune, often some inner part of the arrangement of a song.

I do have one going now, thanks to Robert and Lilli. Over at the "Question of the Day!"  this morning Lilli asked;

"What song is ringing in your ears these days?" ~ Today's question is from Vaishali via "QOTD - Question Bank " Thank you!!!

To which Robert answered;

"It changes, fortunately. The latest one was triggered by someone on the internet going:

a weem away a weem away a weem away

And of course now I can't get that damn song out of my head."

It's a catchy tune that easily translates into an earworm because of that repeated phrase. It's in my head right now.

"a weem away" is of course from the song "A Lion Sleeps Tonight", a seeming nonsense phrase used in the intro, chorus, and outro of the tune. We'll get back to "a weem away" in just a bit.

Here in the states "A Lion Sleeps Tonight" has been covered by multiple artists, including The Weavers, Jimmy Dorcy, and the Kingston Trio. The tune finally made #1 when it was released as a "B Side" by the Tokens in 1961. The tune itself has garnered millions of dollars in royalties.

Now a few things you might not know about the tune.

"A Lion Sleeps Tonight" is not the original name of the tune, it wasn't written in English, and it's been the subject of multiple lawsuits, spanning decades.

The song was originally written and recorded by Solomon Linda in 1939. Linda was a South African musician, who rose to stardom in South Africa based on this hit. The original lyrics were written in Zulu. The original title was "Mbube", the word mbube means lion in Zulu. The English lyrics were penned by George David Weiss.

Unfortunately, Linda didn't reap the benefits due to him from the stateside recording, mainly because South Africa was not a signatory to U.S. copyright law. Much to his credit, Pete Seeger of The Weavers did attempt to rectify that by assigning his share of the royalties to Linda. The battle got even murkier when Disney included a version of the tune in "The Lion King".

And Oh Yeah;

That nonsense phrase "a weem away"? It's really an anglicization of the original Zulu word "Uyimbube", which means roughly "You are a lion".

...I'm only the trombone player!

Janus on WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group