It also attracted the attention of local record label Gallo Records who bought the rights for a scant 10 shillings from Solomon and promptly employed him as a menial record packer in their factory.

Such was the success of ‘Mbube’ that it went on to sell a staggering 100,000 copies in South Africa alone, making Solomon a legend amongst Zulu’s. By day Solomon worked at Johannesburg’s Carlton Hotel and by night he was the soprano singer in a male choral group called The Evening Birds, who sang at weddings in their pin striped suits, bowler hats and two-tone shoes. The origins of the song go back to 1939 when Solomon Linda, a Zulu migrant worker, recorded the original ‘Mbube’ song (meaning Lion in Zulu) in Johannesburg. I felt similarly outraged when I first heard the story and was reminded of it once more a few weeks ago when Netflix aired The Lion’s Share, a retelling and follow-up of the debacle, directed by Sam Cullum. Riaan himself had been unaware of the song’s genealogy but had taken it up as something of a moral crusade after South African music legend Jonny Clegg alerted him to the origins of the song. The documentary, inspired by an article featured in Rolling Stone magazine by Riaan Malan, the author of the bestselling My Traitor’s Heart, told a tale of cultural misappropriation with countless American artists and behemoth Disney Studios, making millions off a Zulu artist who died a pauper. In fact, it wasn’t until a decade ago that I was amazed to discover the truth about the real author of the song when I watched The Lion’s Trail, a documentary that recounted the backstory to this controversial story, by South African filmmaker Francois Verster. Almost none of which came back to him and his descendants after he died.’ ‘Once upon a time – a long, long time ago – a Zulu man stepped up to a microphone in the very first recording studio in Africa and sung 13 notes that went on to earn more than $16 million USD.

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