By integrating the work of musician Lebo M, the score to 'The Lion King' musical tapped into the complex and beautiful rhythms of South African music. The Rough Guide to World Music states,"South Africa is distinguished by the most complex musical history, the greatest profusion of styles and the most intensely developed recording industry anywhere in Africa." South Africa’s musical history, especially in the last century, is linked to its national history and the racist system of apartheid, in which black South Africans were confined to small areas, their movements and rights tightly controlled by the white minority. Because the growth of its music was so closely tied to the country’s history, a study of South African music is a perfect foundation for further exploration into South African history. Here are some South African musical styles. Can you hear how these styles may have inspired the music in 'The Lion King'?

Mbube — South African style of a capella music (a capella means voices alone without instruments) incorporating one or two high-pitched lead vocals and a heavy bass four part harmony. In 1939, a South African singer named Solomon Linda and his group the Original Evening Birds recorded a song called "Mbube," meaning "Lion." We know this song today as the classic "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The term "Mbube" has come to encompass this style of a capella singing.

Iscathamiya — meaning to "step softly," or "tip toe." Tiptoe harmony is four-part call-and-response male choral music style, associated with Zulu migrant workers. The chorus traditionally stands in a line, tip toeing in place, sometimes stamping all in unison. Because of the system of apartheid that kept black South Africans in tightly controlled areas, migrant workers made up the country’s work force; black workers had to migrate from their homes to where the work was. Contracts kept young men away from their families for as long as a year. They were forced to live in single-sex guarded compounds or hostels, created to isolate them from the white urban population; conditions in the hostels were most often dirty and ramshackle. Men forced to live together in these compounds created a style of choral singing in which men had to sing the higher parts usually reserved for women, and because they did not want to be discovered when practicing, the heavy stamping of traditional dances was replaced by light, tiptoe dances. You can hear, and see, iscathamiya style singing in 'The Lion King', especially in the song "One By One."

Photographs of Original London Company by Catherine Ashmore. Photographs of Original Broadway Company by Joan Marcus
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