![]() ![]() Religious schools that conscripted Black South Africans frequently trained students to sing American spirituals in English. ![]() Three decades later the song would become a centrepiece of Disney’s animated classic The Lion King.īefore being known as mbube, the genre was known to some as ingoma mbusuke, or “night music”, a domestic musical style that was heavily affected by colonial influences: missionaries and white singing troupes are credited as the first to introduce four-part vocal harmony on the continent. After spreading deeper into the US, another set of musicians, doo wop group the Tokens, added English lyrics, creating the 1961 US No 1 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight, although Linda’s name was absent from the credits. In the hands of four white voices from New York City, the looped chorus of “ uyimbube” (“You are a lion” in Zulu) became “wimoweh”, and the title of their cover. In 1951, US folk singer Pete Seeger was handed a copy and decided to record a version with his band, the Weavers. But the song’s long, complicated history was just beginning. One who did was Sam Hinton, curator of the Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium Museum at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.In 40s South Africa, Linda became a star. Outside of activists within People's Songs, few people bought Seeger's record. Pete Seeger recorded it in 1948 for Irwin Silber and Brownie McGhee's Encore label. Laced with irony, the song circulated among other singer-songwriters after its appearance as Atomic Talking Blues in the January 1947 People's Songs Bulletin. After interviewing scientists on the consequences of a nuclear war, he wrote Old Man Atom, a talking blues using a musical template Woody Guthrie adapted from the recordings of Chris Bouchillon. When Earl Robinson opened the first People's Songs office on the West Coast, Partlow became one of its earliest members. In the mid-'40s forties he hosted a program covering labor issues for a Los Angeles station. ![]() Hired by the Los Angeles Daily News, he became an early supporter of the American Newspaper Guild, formed in 1933. The organization set up a booking office for its members and encouraged aspiring singer-songwriters and established composers to send sheet music or demos of new topical songs for possible publication in the monthly bulletin.Īlthough some professional composers were among People's Songs' earliest supporters, the most enduring songs to emerge from the movement were penned by non-professionals like Vern Partlow, a Los Angeles journalist and union activist.īorn May 25, 1910, in Bloomington, Illinois, Verneil Partlow moved to California after working for newspapers and radio stations in Wisconsin and Chicago. In October 1947, the organization held its first national convention in Chicago. Within a year's time the People's Songs concept spread to other major North American cities. Committees were established to find office space, set up a corporation, establish a regular newsletter, secure financing and recruit new members. Reaching out to New York's leftist folk, theatrical and literary communities, Seeger invited potential members to attend the December 31, 1945, organizational meeting of People's Songs. Seeger's model was Great Britain's Workers Music Association, founded in 1939 by members of England's Communist Party. With the war over and now back in civilian life, he dreamed of expanding the Almanacs' ideals into a national movement that would unify singers, performers, choral leaders and labor unions into a force for political and social change. Pete Seeger never abandoned the original vision of the Almanac Singers. ![]()
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