Luigi Creatore

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Mbube Wimoweh (literally: 'The Lion Sleeps') is a traditional Zulu song. The locals encourage themselves with this song in the evenings around the campfire: the longer they sing, the more confident they are that the lion is sleeping and that they have nothing to fear from the king of the jungle. No one knows exactly how it happened, but in the 1950s the song, translated as Mbube Wimoweh and called Wimoweh for short, traveled across the Atlantic and was recorded by the Weavers and Karl Denver, among others. In 1961, the American Tokens released a set-singing version under the name The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which developed into a worldwide hit.

Series Sound Classics No.13