Category: Lessons

The song was originally created by Solomon Popoli Linda (1909-1962), a Zulu songwriter. Although Linda could not read or write, he was an excellent musician, and he created an acapella band with whom he recorded music and sometimes performed on the weekend. Linda spontaneously created the song during a recording session in 1939. One of his bandmates commented that it was as if Linda has been “visited by angels.” Linda taught the basic chord progression to his band, and improvised the melody in his high soprano voice. The third take of the song resulted in the well-known melody that we know today. The original record sold more than 100,000 copies, a record at the time in South Africa.

Several years later in the late 40’s, Alan Lomax, the famed musicologist of world folk music, delivered a copy of the song to American folk singer Pete Seeger, who covered the song. It is also believed that the word “Wimoweh” was actually a mishearing of the chorus of “uyimbube” which means “he is a lion” in Zulu, one of the official languages of South Africa. Despite having written one of the most well-known songs of all time, Linda was never adequately compensated for the song’s success. The song generated millions of dollars, yet two of Linda’s children died from malnutrition, and his wife was not even able to afford a gravestone when he died in 1962. Since then, and due to the popularity of a Rolling Stones article about this particular injustice, his family has received some compensation.

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