Mbube

Sometimes a bed looks a little too hungry to be just a bed. Like maybe it's a monster or something, swallowing up the last few hours of a day that's inevitably spent doing required things for bosses and other spuds. Tonight was one of those times. I decided to avoid my monsterbed and hit the rails.

Busking is weird late at night. I got to 59th St around 11:15, and made about eight bucks all night (granted, I only stayed about an hour and a half). People don't seem as apt to receive entertainment at the tail end of the day. I'm not sure I blame them, but then again I wasn't prancing about warbling "Daydream Believer," so I don't know what they were so peeved about.

Saw V for Vendetta earlier tonight: completely saucesome. I'd heard a salvo of unpleasantries about the movie, but it just goes to show that you sometimes have to formulate your own opinion.

I was reading about this guy Solomon Linda today. He wrote "Mbube," which eventually became "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." I remember hearing the Tokens' version of it in elementary school and seeing Timon and Pumbaa jam out to it, and more recently enjoyed hearing Pete Seeger's impassioned live recording...but I didn't know it had its roots in Africa, where Linda wrote it as he actually protected his livestock from a lion. Turns out Linda got completely screwed over by the record label that purchased the song from him (a familiar story), and his family barely received any of the royalties once the song hit it big and appeared in films. Linda has long since passed away (he had only $22 in his bank account when he died), and a sizable chunk of his family has passed away also, some simply because they could not afford medical treatment. The remainder of the Lindas have worked in factories and mills to support themselves, until recently, when litigation has finally corrected the injustices of Disney and several record labels.

If that story isn't enough to piss off any sensible person, I don't know what is.