That friend was the folksinger Pete Seeger. Discovered using Shazam, the music discovery app. Sam Amidon, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight & Aoife ODonovan, 273 Shazams. Pete Seeger later transcribed the song for The Weavers. Listen to Mbube (Wimoweh / The Lion Sleeps Tonight) by Kronos Quartet Feat. Without actually hearing any of the records in a box sent from Africa, Lomax thought a friend of his might be interested in the box’s contents. This South African Zulu song was first recorded in the early 1940s by Solomon Linda. more tracks from the album Gift of the Tortoise 13. Mbube (Wimoweh) (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) 11,507. It is irregular and halting, but instantly familiar. Near the end of the second take, as the group chanted the title, Linda improvised a wordless vocal melody. But the story might have ended there had a copy of the record not made its way to New York City in the early 1950s, where it was saved from the slush pile at Decca Records by the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax. Watch: New Singing Lesson Videos Can Make Anyone A Great Singer. Mbube (Linda) Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) (Linda / Seeger) wim-o-weh o-wim-o-weh o-wim-weh. In 1939, Solomon Linda and His Original Evening Birds performed three takes of the song called Mbube, the second of which became Gallotone’s subsequent 78 rpm release. The story begins in Johannesburg, South Africa, where in 1938, a group of Zulu singers and dancers called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds stepped into the first recording studio ever set up in sub-Saharan Africa and recorded a song called “Mbube”-Zulu for “the lion.” “Mbube” was a regional hit, and it helped make Solomon Linda into a South African star. The song that topped the Billboard pop chart on December 18, 1961, was an instant classic that went on to become one of the most successful pop songs of all time, yet its true originator saw only a tiny fraction of the song’s enormous profits.

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