![]() ![]() Years later the song's popularity would be resurrected yet again with The Lion King. Sadly, Solomon died shortly after in 1962, having received little compensation beyond an initial check from Seeger. Remarkably there were about six versions of that song recorded before The Tokens recorded the one my mother and many generations most likely remember in 1961: ![]() That version still lacks the words you're probably familiar with, but it's a wonderful marriage of the original melodies and an American folksy feeling. He must've liked it because he adapted a version of the song for his group The Weavers and retitled it Wimoweh - a not unreasonable mishearing by American-English ears for what turns out to have been uyimbube ((Uyimbube! All this time! It's Zulu for "You are a lion" but wimoweh is just. This song became a hit in South Africa and found its way over to the United States around 1949 where it was noticed by Pete Seeger. It's unclear to me if that improvisation is captured here - presumably it is - but you can listen to the 1939 recording with Solomon Linda and the Evenings Birds:Īround 2:22 you hear him improvise a melody that sounds much more familiar to modern audiences. Per this wonderful writeup from Rolling Stone, it was during the third take that Solomon improvised the line In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. In fact, the words and melodies on top of the familiar "wimoweh" background vocals were largely improvised. ![]() Originally the tune was called Mbube - Zulu for "lion" - and featured no words in English. It turns out the origins of the song go all the way back to 1939 and that it was written by a South African Zulu musician named Solomon Linda. What I thought was pseudo-world music, faux-African pastiche from the very early 1960s demonstrating possibly dubious taste turned out to be much more interesting! I thought it was enjoyable and reminded me what a nice, simple song it was. My mom sent me a link the other day to Jimmy Fallon and Billy Joel performing a two-man rendition of The Lion Sleeps tonight on the Tonight Show: The surprising history behind The Lion Sleeps Tonight Lions are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which determines the conservation status of species.The surprising history behind The Lion Sleeps Tonight If you have some thoughts or comments about that I'd love to hear them. Therefore in my mind lion meme = Christian meme. And since lions carry some Christian symbolism with them I automatically interpreted every lion meme I saw as posted by a Christian. Secondly, because of the symbiotic relationship between the political right and Christianity, and the anti-vax messaging that comes from the political right, I was left with the impression that strongly religious Christians are among the groups that are the most vaccine hesitant. For one, the Jesus = lion motif has a long history. So there are a couple of reasons why I always equated lion memes with Christianity. Maybe it is the case that Christians are more drawn to posting lion memes. Therefore lion memes fall into two sub categories, overtly Christian ones with attached bible verses, and superiority complex ones.Īlthough there are only a couple of overtly Christian memes in this group of 20 images, 16 of them do mention prayer / prayer warriors. People who post those kind of memes see themselves as a higher class, more enlightened, stronger, etc. Some lion memes are just meant to express superiority. I just viewed lions as a symbol for Christianity. ![]() I did this instinctively without much consideration. Pic 1Ī while ago when I was categorizing memes, I lumped lion memes into the Christian memes group. ![]()
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