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Oddities

Singing Powell, Suing Lion

Two links from Charlie’s Weird Shit Saturday post that I am compelled to cite. First, a short BBC video segment about Diplomats and Politicians making asses of themselves:

Here’s Colin Powell in a hard hat, singing his own version of a Village People classic on stage at an ASEAN summit conference in front of the assembled diplomats. (Warning: requires Real Media player.)

The second item he links to is a Guardian article about plans to sue Disney for copyright infringement. This is interesting because the people suing are the descendants of the Zulu farm worker who first recorded the song “Mbube”, better known as “Wimoweh” or “The Lions Sleep Tonight”. This song has been recorded by at least 170 different artists and is the only song not by Elton John in the Lion King soundtrack. Heck, I bet you’re humming it now…
But the song’s creator, Solomon Linda, died penniless and was buried without a headstone in 1962, and his daughters work as domestic servants, live in shacks and struggle to feed their families. But now, a copyright lawyer has found a provision in a 1911 British imperial copyright law which stated that all rights to a song reverted to the composer’s estate 25 years after his death. This doesn’t apply in the US, but global copyright protection cuts both ways…