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Polish Choir sings "The Lion Sleeps tonight"!
Youtube ^ | Youtube | Cronos

Posted on 10/13/2010 2:44:35 AM PDT by Cronos

I discovered this choir on Youtube and love their rendition of songs! Wanted to share it with all


TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: belafonte; choir; poland; song

1 posted on 10/13/2010 2:44:42 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos
For all those who wondered where the song comes from -- I wikipediad it and here goes:

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight", also known as "Wimoweh" and originally as "Mbube" is a song recorded by Solomon Linda and his group The Evening Birds for the South African Gallo Record Company in 1939

Solomon Popoli Linda was born near Pomeroy, on the labor reserve Msinga, Umzinyathi District Municipality in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal where he was familiar with the traditions of amahubo and izingoma zomtshado (wedding songs) music.[2][3][4] He attended the Gordon Memorial mission school where he came in contact with Western musical culture, hymns, and choir contests in which he participated.[2][3] Influenced by the new syncopated music that had swept across South Africa from the US since the 1880s, he worked it into the Zulu songs he and his friends sang at weddings and feasts.[5][6]

In 1931, Linda joined the stream of young African men who left their homesteads to find menial work in Johannesburg, by then a sprawling gold-mining town hungry for cheap labour. He worked in the Mayi Mayi Furniture Shop in Small Street and sang in a choir called the Evening Birds led by his uncles, Solomon and Amon Madondo, and which disbanded in 1933.[7]

Linda found employment at Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel and started a new group that retained the Evening Birds name. The members of the group were Solomon Linda (soprano), Gilbert Madondo (alto), Boy Sibiya (tenor), with Gideon Mkhize, Samuel Mlangeni, and Owen Sikhakhane as basses. They were all Linda's friends from Pomeroy.[2][3][7]

The group evolved from performances at weddings to choir competitions. Linda's musical popularity grew with the Evening Birds, who presented "a very cool urban act that wears pinstriped suits, bowler hats and dandy two-tone shoes".[6]

After Linda started working at the Gallo Record Company's Roodepoort plant in 1939 as a record packer,[8] the Evening Birds were spotted by company talent scout Griffith Motsieloa.[2] Italian immigrant Eric Gallo owned what at that time was sub-Saharan Africa's only recording studio. While recording a number of songs in the studio, Linda improvised "Mbube" (Lion).[3] "Mbube" was a major success for Linda and the Evening Birds, reportedly selling over 100,000 copies in South Africa by 1949. The recording was produced by Motsieloa at the Gallo Recording Studios, in Johannesburg. Linda sold the rights to Gallo Record Company for 10 shillings (less than $US 2) shortly after the recording was made, but under British laws then in effect, those rights should have reverted to Linda's heirs 25 years after his death in 1962.[1][6]

The original South African recording was later discovered in the early 1950s by American musicologist Alan Lomax, who passed it on to his friend, folk musician Pete Seeger of The Weavers. Seeger retitled it "Wimoweh" (an inaccurate phonetic rendering of the song's Zulu refrain, "uyembube") and it was popularized by The Weavers; they recorded a studio version in 1952 which became a Top 20 hit in the USA, as well as an influential live version recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and released in April, 1957, which turned the song into a folk music staple. The Weavers' version was subsequently covered by The Kingston Trio in 1959.[6]

The Weavers' Carnegie Hall version was also the inspiration for the 1961 version recorded by pop group The Tokens, for whom it was extensively re-written by George Weiss and retitled "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; this is the version most people are now familiar with. (However, at the time, 1961–1962, an up-tempo version by the Karl Denver Trio was the more successful in the UK).[9]
2 posted on 10/13/2010 2:51:06 AM PDT by Cronos (Ojciec i Syn i Duch Swiety)
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To: Cronos

How fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TpCQiz-adA

Thanks for posting it Cronos.


3 posted on 10/13/2010 2:51:27 AM PDT by Cindy
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To: Cronos

Here’s from that YouTube channel, but this time it’s about Tigers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEgXdLI0b0
“Eye of the Tiger” Survivors


4 posted on 10/13/2010 2:57:29 AM PDT by Cindy
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To: Cronos

THanks for such of lovely first thing in the morning video. I loved tghe officials in front of the choir!


5 posted on 10/13/2010 3:35:21 AM PDT by cajungirl
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To: bmwcyle

Ping
See history of song.


6 posted on 10/13/2010 4:01:23 AM PDT by theKid51
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To: Cronos

They look like they are having way too much fun! ; )


7 posted on 10/13/2010 4:20:56 AM PDT by Northern Yankee (Where Liberty dwells, there is my Country. - Benjamin Franklin)
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To: Cronos

you may also be interested in seeing the videos made by Filharmonia Dowcipu. They are also a Polish group...very very good.

Oh, and ping for when I have a computer with sound...


8 posted on 10/13/2010 4:38:57 AM PDT by stefanbatory (Insert witty tagline here)
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To: Cindy
Check out this rendition of the song from the old Tracey Ullman Show.
9 posted on 10/13/2010 5:17:40 AM PDT by 6SJ7 (atlasShruggedInd = TRUE)
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To: Cronos
Podziękowania
10 posted on 10/13/2010 5:45:47 AM PDT by GOP_Lady
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To: Cronos

Love it!

You might also like Perpetuum Jazzile’s rendition of Africa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbpwlqp5Qw


11 posted on 10/13/2010 6:50:01 AM PDT by Auntie Mame (Fear not tomorrow. God is already there.)
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To: Auntie Mame; GOP_Lady; Kolokotronis
Dziękuje wszystkim! I love living in Poland, there's a certain life in the air, even if it is close to freezing now :-P
12 posted on 10/13/2010 10:44:09 AM PDT by Cronos (Ojciec i Syn i Duch Swiety)
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To: Auntie Mame

An outstanding performance by those young people!

Toto is one of my favorite bands. Thanks so much.


13 posted on 10/13/2010 12:28:12 PM PDT by GOP_Lady
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To: 6SJ7

Too cool.

Thank you 6SJ7.


14 posted on 10/13/2010 3:22:44 PM PDT by Cindy
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To: Auntie Mame

Bumping yours too Auntie Mame.


15 posted on 10/13/2010 3:26:04 PM PDT by Cindy
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