The source for most of the remaining American pop iterations of the song was the first "live" album in 1958 of the t Kingston Trio, recorded at San Francisco's legendary showcase nightclub, "The Hungry i." Except for a slightly sophomoric and lightly amusing introduction, the Trio's reading of the song is pretty straightforward and respectful of the original, delivered with their trademark verve and energy
It was Seeger who picked out the song out of a couple dozen on records given him by legendary folklorist and song collector Alan Lomax, and Seeger who pronounced "mbube" (very soft first "b") as "uwimoweh." The Weavers recorded it and included it on "The Weavers At Carneige Hall," and it became a moderately successful single, reaching the Hit Parade Top Forty. The song came to America from Linda's record company, Gallo of South Africa, a subsidiary of Decca - which was recording The Weavers. For a man to sing the part was revolutionary - part of what Shabalala guesses was the "tribute" factor - to the audience, or the Zulu king, or God. This "verse" was done in a singing style that before Linda's version was done only by women. The falsetto "verse" was originally a "ululation" - the curdling cry most often heard in the West as intoned by Arab women in celebration or encouragement but apparently common throughout Africa. Shabalala has pointed out that Linda made a daring, even shocking, change to the performance of the song. The version we hear was codified by Solomon Nisitele, also known as Solomon Linda. Shaka was known, not surprisingly, as "The Lion."
Shabalala believes it was a "tribute" song to someone's majesty, and I have read elsewhere that the song arose in the mid nineteenth century as a tribute to Shaka, the Zulu king who devised their system of warfare, established an empire, and handed the British one of the worst military disasters that their colonial armies ever suffered - a kind of a Custer's Last Stand multiplied by about fifteen times. The song was indeed a traditional Zulu chant, though according to Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo (of Paul Simon's Graceland recording, if anyone's forgotten), not a hunting chant, as is often alleged. This is my 25th Weekend Videos - as I'm a little short on time, being finals week and all at my school, I'm cribbing part of this from a post from my other blog, The Vivid Air, about Solomon Nisitele "Linda" that I called "The Sad Case of Wimoweh." Here's part of what I wrote back then. Bush acknowledged both the morning after the election and in his farewell address this evening.change is in the wind. I thought that I might post something about the coming inauguration.whose meaning and import transcends politics of party, as no one less than George W.
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