Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Mbube

How long before you recognise it?



The full story is here.

Via Volokh and the NYT World Cup summary.

4 comments:

jlbussey said...

Almost immediately. I have a version of the song by Ladysmith Black Mombazo which is very similar in the beginning.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

One of Pete Seeger's live versions also starts that way.

Texan99 said...

I would have said Ladysmith Black Mambazo from the first instant, but shortly the recording took me right back to a Pete Seeger concert I attended in my teens. He had the whole crowd taking the different parts in sections. It was a gas.

I had to do a search for "Mbube" to discover that it means "lion," that it originally referred to this song, and that it later came to refer to the entire African a cappella style that the song was in. Also, that the lyrics I'd always heard in my mind as "a-rimba-rat" were supposed to be "wimoweh." But wait -- Wiki goes further and explains that even "wimoweh" was "a mishearing of the original song's chorus of 'uyimbube' (meaning 'you're a lion')."

Great YouTube catch!

wheels said...

Fifteen seconds in. My daughter decided a few years ago that my ability to identify a song quickly (sometimes upon hearing the opening chord) is just one of those "dad quirks" that I use to embarrass her.

Interesting post, and I liked the linked article.