Wimoweh

I have a new favorite song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I first heard this song when Daddy started singing it on the way to Yosemite. It was a long car ride there, and I was grateful for the entertainment. Soon Mommy and Nainnie joined in to help Daddy with the singing. After they completed the song, I waited for a bit and then demanded an encore. "More weema-wokka, more weema-wokka," I cried. They heard my appeals and sang the song again (and several more times after that in the coming days.) Now last night Nainnie had to fly home to the east. Fortunately, she stayed long enough to read me stories and sing songs to me for bedtime. As she is an important harmonic element to the weema-wokka song, I requested it one last time with her. She started singing it herself and then Mommy and Daddy came into the room and joined her in an "extended dance" version of the song. This was absolutely the best.

By the way, the reason I refer to it as the "weema-wokka" song is because Daddy screwed up the lyrics in remembering the song in the car. The real lyric is Wimoweh. Of course, Daddy's in good company. The wimoweh lyric is actually Pete Seeger's mishearing of the real original lyric "Mbube" from the Zulu. You can read the whole story here.

Daddy tells me the song continues to make waves. Disney used it in the Lion King and made zillions of dollars on that film. Apparently, they felt that paying royalties of $15,000 for the use of the song seemed an appropriate amount and now they're getting sued by the heirs to the songwriter in South Africa. You can read more about the legal battle here. Interestingly, the Disney version gets the lyrics right---they use mbube instead of wimoweh. Here's a side by side lyrics comparison:

Disney

Seeger

Note: The Seeger lyrics are incorrectly attributed to Robert John who covered the song.