A documentary about a song and the reverberations from colonialist racism and modern corporatism

Netflix has an amazing documentary about the history of the song we know as Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight). It is a story about redemption at one point in the documentary, but hanging over it are the echoes of colonialism and racism, and how it reverberates into intellectual property law and global economics. Where the film fails, I think, is helping a viewer understand why it is the three daughters of Solomon Linda, the author of the song Mbube, which became Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) received less than $1 million in royalties, which we will discuss initially below.

The film is well worth seeing first, and I invite people to stop reading and watch it first.  

Okay?  Did you watch it?  Okay then.

So, you ask, why did the sisters only receive $750,000 in royalties?  The first reason is the legal battle the famous South African copyright lawyer fought on Linda's daughters' behalf against Disney was based upon a leftover British copyright law quirk that had remained in South African copyright law, which concerned a reversion of copyrights back to the composer after 25 years (the documentary discusses a so-called 1911 copyright law, designed at the time to protect Charles Dickens' widow and heirs). Such a reversion was later repealed in Great Britain, and was never the law in the United States.  The U.S. law has long stated, when the time for copyright expires, the creative works revert to the public domain.  So this means, when the daughters achieved a settlement against Disney for its use of the song in The Lion King, it was only for royalties generated within South Africa.

Second, when trying to figure out how much the daughters could have gotten from Disney, there were two other limitations.  The song takes up, perhaps, two minutes at the most in an hour and a half film or a two hour play.  That's it.  Plus, what we learn along the way in the documentary is Solomon Linda did not write the verses "In the jungle/The mighty jungle/The lion sleeps tonight...In the village/The peaceful village/The lion sleeps tonight." That was written in 1961 or thereabouts by a guy named George Weiss, who is shown to be sorta crass, particularly the way he sings and plays what he wrote.  My wife and I sat appalled at how crassly he played what was so beautifully rendered in The Tokens'  iconic version of the song.  But, what I flashed onto as I watched this song's development unfold was how Heart and Soul became La Mer (here is the classic version) which then became Beyond The Sea.  I listened to Mbube and realized the heart and soul, pun intended, of the Lion song we find so compelling is as much, and possibly a bit more, from George Weiss' verse melody as the Solomon Linda wee-wee-wee-wee-wee and Mbube chant melody.

Third, if there is any criticism of the lawyers in South Africa, it is their lack of vision in agreeing to the ten-year limitation.  But I wonder how good the initial 1911 copyright argument was to have agreed to the ten year limitation in the first place.  I think the documentary was weak on this point as it should have delved into why the lawyer thought the settlement was so good to start with. The lawyer had said on camera the settlement was for far more than he had ever hoped to get from Disney, which told me, as a practicing trial lawyer, he thought his argument arising from the 1911 copyright law was clever, but maybe not so much of a slam-dunk as people around him thought. That may be why there was the ten-year limitation on the copyright claim.  If there is any legitimate criticism of the strategy in accepting the settlement, it was not seeing the idea of what, since the Spiderman franchise especially, we now call "re-boots."  But again, if the 1911 copyright law argument was only so-so, then how far is the leverage?

Now, let's go to the societal issues.  First, Gallo Records, the South African record company where Solomon Linda recorded his song in 1939, certainly ripped off Solomon Linda.  The idea that this man, who could not read or write, signed away his rights to the song in the early 1950s after Pete Seeger, through Alan Lomax, got hold of the song, is almost glossed over.  One looks at Linda's signature on the release of rights and hears the daughters almost saying the signature is a forgery; yet, most lawyers know that waiting decades to challenge such a thing means running smack dab into the statute of limitations.  Second, lawyers took at least 30% of the money (the main lawyer getting 20%).  Third, the South African government, which had wonderfully stepped in when Gallo proved cowardly in not wanting to challenge the international behemoth Disney, decided to take its share of the money fronted to the lawyers and the costs of the litigation.  The documentary does not say what that sum was, but it sounded like another 10-20% so that now nearly half the money went to lawyers and the government--apart from taxes, of course.  And again, let's remind ourselves this is only about royalties in South Africa, not anywhere else on the planet, and remind ourselves too this is only about a portion of a single song in a longer film and play.  

The racism and colonialism hover over this because, as we think of Solomon Linda's daughters, we think of Leadbelly and the black blues artists who sang the songs that never were copyrighted by these poor, black singers and how it was largely the music business executives (whites and some Jews who became "white" in the parlance of the mid to late 20th Century) who made the money.  When one sees how Pete Seeger, upon learning the song was not some "traditional" song--meaning really old, public domain melody--but something composed only thirteen years before, said he wanted no royalties from the song, one stands up and applauds the old Red.  But one quickly learns Folkways Records, for whom Seeger recorded, had no such guilty or humane conscience, and merely gave a relative few pennies percentage of royalties to Solomon Linda and later his widow and daughters.  This is horrible because Seeger was literally singing most of Mbube and had not been singing the later George Weiss-Tokens version.  Seeger, though, coined "wimoweh" because for some reason he could not pronounce "mbube," which I found a bit odd, I have to admit.  And later, when there was litigation in the 1990s between Folkways Records and George Weiss and his music publisher, somehow Folkways lost and George Weiss became, get this, sole owner of the song.  What the heck?  Sole owner?  That there seems to have been no consideration of the Solomon Linda family in the American litigation tells us so much about how law actually works in developed nations and how little regard we have for the nations the U.S. and European nations have exploited over centuries.  

And, in the modern world, meaning since the end of World War II, we have corporations and scamming professionals so often ripping off artists.  When I hear the now late Harlan Ellison criticizing individual consumers for piracy, I think first and foremost of South Park's response.  The real rip off people are the big corporations, and us professionals. Most artists make very little money, and it is only a few superstars who make any real money. And even then, one thinks of The Beatles' John Lennon and Paul McCartney saying how much money record companies and managers made off the Beatles--one thinks of the song You Never Give Me Your Money and, for our libertarian friends, Taxman.  One thinks of how Ray Davies and the Kinks railed against record companies, and how Flo and Eddie/The Turtles talk about how managers and lawyers ripped them off.  Zappa saw this early on and formed his own record company, as did the Beatles, but the money always ended up not quite staying where they thought, which was in their pockets as composers.  And now the Zappa children are fighting over the still vast royalty money proceeds arising from Zappa's estate. 

This is why, the older I get, the more I wonder about why so many of us are so much against a strong, deeply penetrating welfare state, where people are simply taken care of, and allowed to make art, where one may get adulation and status more than money from creating art that touches a mass of people.  Money is a root of evil, not the only one, of course. However, it is stunning how much evil money can generate when we stop to think about it.  The middle people, whether they are corporate executives or professionals (in the form of management, distributors, lawyers, accountants, etc.), are the ones who seem to make oodles of money, and there is nothing creative in any moral sense about what these persons actually do.  And the grasping children or heirs, who did not create the art, end up fighting each other as with the Zappa kids and so many other heirs of artists over the last century.

And so we return to Solomon Linda's daughters, and I find I weep more for their father, weep more  over the exploitation of Africans and African-Americans, which exploitation debases and undermines any joy in the daughters' lives (the side bar about the one sister dying of AIDS does not even bother to mention how many Africans died of AIDS, and how men, who were notoriously straying from their wives, infected many African wives), and weep more for how corporate globalism continues to wind its way through our planet, putting our planet at risk, and harming and eventually killing many human beings and killing off many of the planet's creatures. We rarely want to make all these connections because to do so is simply overwhelming. However, we should also recognize this as a result of propaganda from international corporate owned media, whose executives and management do not want us to think in this manner. It is, as former elite power player Al Gore, Jr. recognized, only in his exile, an assault on reason. It is why, again, I find myself, as I get older, becoming more radical in my views about money and power, and why I keep reading Louis Auchincloss novels to salve my psychic wounds and depression, I suppose.  In my dreams, I keep hoping one day the lion of justice and human kindness will awake.  However, I see more likely only more reaction, more religious fundamentalism, and more fascism.  We humans would rather fight each other over money and power, and, in doing so, draw socially constructed distinctions between ourselves about our religions and skin color, rather than see what we have in common with each other as human beings. We would rather promote a philosophy of selfishness rather than a philosophy sharing with each other.  I did weep a bit too for Solomon Linda's daughters, yes, but I stepped back and thought of these other things and fell into a far deeper despair. 

Give Trump the House of Representatives' impeachment proceeding he obviously wants--plus a primer on parallel campaigns

Trump is goading the House of Representatives Democratic Party leadership to institute impeachment hearings against him.  Trump is behaving as if to say, in language racist Trump would understand, "Yes, Brer Fox, don't fling me into the brier patch."  Trump thinks it will be like Iran-Contra and Ollie North's bullshit testimony that, in the pre-Internet age, was able to convince many Americans he was a patriot. Trump dreams of getting higher poll numbers as happened with Bill Clinton with the Republicans' crusade, er, impeachment proceedings against Clinton.*  I think, however, if people testify to the hundreds of contacts Trump and his camp had with Russians during the 2015-2016 campaign, as people come forward with how Trump has behaved as a business person and how, since the early 1990s, Trump has had to rely on Russian money and Deutsche Bank (the fact courts have now ordered Deutsche Bank and Capital One to turn over its Trump related documents to Congress is a big story lost amidst the jockeying of the past week), this will drive the portion of the electorate, in the Rust Belt particularly, who voted for Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016, and the other undecideds to vote against Trump in 2020. I also see House of Representative's impeachment proceedings as also investigating, under the heading of a cover-up, the money support Russians have given to Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, among others.  This impeachment proceeding will be more like Nixon's as FB friend Joe Conason writes in his latest article at The National Memo.  But it will also take on a larger target of how the Republican leadership has cynically allied itself with Russian oligarchs and are enabling Trump's untrustworthy conduct, particularly with McConnell and Congressional Republicans not being interested in protecting American electoral integrity from Russian hackers for the 2020 election.

The late, non-lamented Wisconsin Junior Senator, Joe McCarthy, loved to talk about the Democrats' "Twenty Years of Treason," which should have been a giveaway that the Red Scare was first and foremost a political operation designed to demonize first New Deal internationalists and then New Deal liberals (see also Page 333 of the Buckley/Bozell book defending McCarthy, where the authors admit a primary purpose for the Red Scare is to strike out against "liberals.").  The charge of treason was and remains a canard in almost every way, but it is a charge too many older Baby Boomers and too many in our parents' generations continue to believe hook, line and sinker.  However, here we have Trump and his twenty-five years of "treason" in the form of what will be shown are rather slippery relationships with Russians and corrupt banks (Deutsche Bank), which relationships Trump brought with him to his White House campaign and presidency.  See Craig Unger's book and Seth Abramson's book on Trump's long march with the Russians. 

It is therefore good to begin impeachment hearings, even if the hearings turn into a sideshow--for we, as a people, can chew gum and walk down the street at the same time.  It is about time Democratic Party leaders understood what election day is about--and that is running parallel campaigns.  One campaign will be the impeachment campaign. Another campaign will be the ideas and policies campaign that progressive candidates like Sanders and Warren bring, and Yang is also bringing.  A third campaign has got to be registering as many young people as possible. What we find from polling data is Americans under 40 represent a potentially majority constituency for a more hopeful and communal America; and are demanding helpful government policies for America. In short, our children understand the New Deal legacy better than most of us Baby Boomers and certainly my parents' generation, who came of age in the aftermath of WWII and the depths of the Cold War propaganda and Red Scares.  And now, a fourth campaign has been added, courtesy of the theocratic Christian fundamentalist branch of the Republican Party: Women across our land are getting more mobilized as it dawns on even those women who claim to themselves they are not a "feminist," that there is, in the words of Stephen Stills' song "For What It's Worth": There's something happening here...But unlike Stills' anthem song from 1967, What it is is, actually, exactly clear.  The anti-abortion legislation being passed in state after state is designed to criminalize women's sex lives, i.e. sexual autonomy, and dangerously and cruelly undermine women's ability to maintain their health.

My advice to people is choose the parallel campaign that best fits your personality and best fits your sensibility. So, as we roll through the rest of 2019 and into 2020, do not castigate the other parallel campaigns as a "diversion" for what is "really" important.  Each of these parallel campaigns is important.  Rachel Maddow has her place as much as a person who registers voters, for example.

Therefore, I say loudly and clearly:  Bring on the impeachment proceedings.  Trump, you want it?  You got it, buster. 

* The impeachment against Clinton in 1998 failed in the senate, as we should recall. However, it so tarnished Clinton's reputation, notwithstanding a strong economy, that Al Gore, running for president in 2000, refused to use Clinton in any sustained way to help his campaign.  Had Clinton not been impeached, Gore would have called upon Clinton without fear that he was condoning Clinton's sexually defined moral failings. The Republican leaders knew the longer game and that is how they got their campaigning-as-a-moderate candidate GW Bush just over the top in the Electoral College in the 2000 election.  And for those who want to blame Nader, I say look within.  Gore won Florida if he and his lawyers had decided to push to count overvotes (where a person pushes in the chad and then writes in Gore's name to show total intent to vote for Gore).  Had they done that, the count showed Gore actually won in Florida, hence, he would have been president.  And really, Baby Boomers.  You had the chance to vote for goddamned Ralph Nader and you blew it.  Your children would have understood what to do then, and my advice to Democratic Party leader poobahs is, If you think you can get away with nominating Biden, you may find more than a few still idealistic youth turning away from the Democratic Party for good.  This remains your election to blow.  And Baby Boomers of the white persuasion, you have been warned--as I warned us back in 2016 about what 2035 or 2036 will look like.

Why economic populism is the way to take the Senate

I like Eric Levitz at New York Magazine. I think, though, in this column, he is thinking too conventionally about the weak prospects for the Democrats in the US Senate for 2020. The article is worth reading through before coming back here.  Don't worry, I'll wait.  I will listen to some music on YouTube while you read. 

Okay? Read it? Depressed? Again, okay. Now, for an alternative...

I appreciate Mr. Levitz's point that the Dems are only likely to gain three or four seats in the current predictions for 2020, but even there, we are seeing once again how little policy figures into the arguments Mr. Levitz is making.  If, for example, the DNC promoted  and supported economic populists in various Republican leaning States, they could win in those places through candidates speaking to rural area Americans' best values.  But let's not start there, shall we?  Let's start with Mr. Levitz's assumption that Republicans serve rural America's interests. Not once does Levitz tell us what it is precisely Republican politicians are giving people in rural areas. Rural areas continue to fall behind economically, are lacking medical facilities and doctors, are lacking teachers for schools, and lacking most things people in urban areas expect, starting with restaurants of good quality. Rural areas lack transportation to other towns or cities, unless their pick ups are in good enough shape to travel distances, and they can afford to pay for the gas, and then have money to spend somewhere else.  So, again, what are Republican politicians giving these people? Well, hate for one. And they give them an extremist gun position that tells them, You can be the hero to stop the Mulsim-Mexican-Jewish-gay hordes ruining your life, all while pushing for Jesus and the Apocalyptic visions that go along with this. And, of course, saving the unborn, and punishing those harlots who want an abortion, makes it all "moral."  It has been an effective recipe over the decades, as the Democrats lost the ability to speak in New Deal language, and, with the Democrats offering mostly the language and policies which make a wealthy person in La Jolla in Southern California feel safe that nothing Democrats propose will cost them money.  And strategists are really surprised rural, mostly white Americans in the various States Mr. Levitz discusses vote for the Republicans?   

So, please, corporate Democrats. If you want to avoid making Mr. Levitz's prognostication a reality, you will find the type of politician who speaks to these folks is a home grown Bernie Frickin Sanders. I've seen it in footage in West Virginia and Nebraska, where Sanders causes more than enough of those folks, when added to the 40% who vote Democrat, and who the Electoral College type of prognostications tell us to ignore as we speak of "Blue" or "Red" States as if completely "Red" or "Blue," to support a Democrat or a person who is, egads, a New York Jew by birth and raising.  To tell me this won't work is to act like what is being done now is working.  No, that strategy of the Clintons and the Neo-liberals has utterly failed in those States.  So, this proposal I make is at least worth the try.  Wine and cheese corporate Democrats, who finesse with language in a way that really has fooled largely white people over 50 who watch cable news, too often tell us what is not going to be accomplished, tell us to accept the globalization that has occurred, as if this type of globalization is the only globalization, and pop champagne bottles at the current economic indicators.  Rural America needs the type of policies that speak to the heartache, and then propose hope through policies that will benefit them directly and their children.

For me, I have long been concerned with rural America, as much as urban America, where poor Hispanics and blacks have lived since the 1950s.  I loved, for example, Tom Harkin, now retired US Senator from Iowa, and endorsed his presidential candidacies in 1988 and 1992. For those who believe so deeply in the Country Mice/City Mice meme, explain how someone like me, a suburban-urban professional guy, a Jew, a "liberal," did that. Tom was a great person who cared about his state of Iowa and what Iowa represented in the history of, and life and culture in, the United States. Cue Field of Dreams. Harkin stalwartly opposed the NAFTA and the WTO for the correct reasons. He understood why there was a New Deal and why we needed one again. But, living in Orange County and Southern California from the 1980s through 2017, I so often found myself out of step with those Democrats (far more economically well off than me, more often than not) who fell for Gary Hart, Dukakis, Clintons, Gore, Bradley, and eventually Obama.  These candidates were nice bankers. All of them. They wouldn't know a union if it fell on them.  They had no idea how to help rural America and never cared enough to find out--or if they knew, they realized it would cost the rich people in the suburbs and urban areas money.  

Meanwhile, people in rural America know bankers are not nice when you need the bankers. They know bankers will never come through in the hard times. They know when the bankers pay a visit to your home, it is to take your home and cut up and sell your farm.  The rural people, when nobody is appealing to their best values, turn to those who tell them who to hate--and Republican strategists and politicians are right there waiting. I have marveled all these years how working class white people and rural white people never notice the bankers standing next to Republican Congressman Steve King, to take another Iowa politician example. But, with the structure of the discourse on television and radio, there has been an effective obscuring of the differences in the two parties because Democrats are always happy to have some banker stand with them--to prove the Democrat is a solid, respectable business person!--and are content when the liberalism the banker shows are about things that don't directly cost the bankers money.  Being for abortion doesn't cost bankers money or power.  Being for same sex marriage may actually make money as gays and lesbians feel more empowered to open joint bank accounts, and gays and lesbians, to the extent they do not take on children, have lots more money to invest if they are in the professional class.  So bankers love LGBT movements and promote them.  Plus, bankers really don't want too many Americans to own guns, do they?

If one constructed a novel about the coalitions in our politics for the past nearly 45 years, people would say it is crazy and would not be able to exist over any length of time. It is too far fetched, they would say. Well, it is, and has been, the reality--and it is now also killing our planet.  Mr. Levitz's article is important and he could well be correct.  And right now, the Democratic Party's national committees, leading "official" political strategists, talking heads on television, and donor classes, are still highly clueless, arrogant, and refusing to accept, strategically, we are in an economic populist moment--and that social media doesn't have to be the enemy, but instead can also be our friend.  If the DCCC and DSCC, for example, promoted, embraced and supported economic populist progressives, they would find more victories in the Senate races in 2020 than Mr. Levitz believes is possible.  The worst that happens, if the Democratic Party committees change course, is a closer loss, and a possible downturn in rich donor class money.  However, there would be more money flowing to those candidates from the grass roots, and more excitement.  If there is a victory, and there well could be, then that could be part of the potential salvation of our nation's (and planet's) fortunes, and, maybe it will begin to heal the rifts which corporate media and strategists currently in power are vastly overstating between rural and urban America. We have more in common with each other, as Americans, than we think.  We have more in common with each other as a species on this planet, too, but we need to tell people in places where they have been taught to hate that are we are on their side before we can hold hands in communion and say there are others who suffer, and we must work together to help them, too.