The ‘Battle of Broken Hill’: The Curious Incident of the Afghan Cameleers’ Two-Man War on the Silver City

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Racial politics, Regional History
Image: britannica.com

On New Years Day 1915 two members of the small immigrant Afghan community of Broken Hill launched an unexpected and deadly attack on a passing convoy of open ore-trucks carrying 1,200 industry picnickers to Silverton. The incident itself did not escalate much further, the so-called ‘battle’ was over after a 90-minute shootout, with the perpetrators dealt with and summarily despatched by a contingent of police, soldiers and private riflemen from the town, however it’s ramifications were more lasting and widespread. What was on the surface a random, mindless and unprovoked attack on innocent picnic-goers, had a complicated lead-up.

The picnic train with overflowing “sardine tin” of passengers (Photo: Broken Hill City Lib)

The casualties:
In the carnage two of the “sitting duck” picnic party were killed by the attackers’ gunfire and up to ten others wounded. The two gunmen then retreated from the scene towards the West Cameleers camp, killing another, unrelated civilian on the way. The police, troops and volunteer militia members of the ‘posse’ caught up with the two attackers at Cable Hill and engaged them in a shootout at a nearby rocky quartz outcrop known as “White Rocks”. During the shootout a fourth victim was killed by stray shots from the perpetrators’ gunsⓐ. A police constable was also wounded and both Muslim assailants were ultimately killed in the affray.

‘White Rocks’ (Source: The Conversation)

In the immediate aftermath of the incident the two perpetrators were wrongly identified as Turks—the Ottoman Turkish Empire has recently sided with the German Reich in the world war against Britain (and therefore against Australia)—due to a Turkish flag and a letter pledging allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey found among the possessions of one of the attackers. In fact the two Muslims originated from the northwest frontier of British India (within modern Pakistan or just over the border in Afghanistan).

A still from a 1981 film, ‘The Battle of Broken Hill’

The assailants:
Badsha Gool Mahomed
(aged about 40) a Pashtu-speaking Afghan Afridi tribesman whose two stays in Australia were punctuated by periods of service in the Turkish Army. After a decline in work for cameleers he was employed in the Broken Hill area’s silver mines before being retrenched. At the time of the incident Mahomed was an ice cream vendor in the townⓑ.
Mullah Abdullah (aged about 60) a Dari-speaking halal butcher and imam for the local cameleer community. Abdullah too tried camel-driving but finding it not feasible turned to working as a butcher in “The Hill”, supplementing it by presiding as spiritual leader for the Afghan community.

‘Barrier Miner’ 2 January 1915’

The influential local newspaper the Barrier Miner had a field day with the incident… “War in Broken Hill”, “The New Year’s Day Massacre“, (Attack) “under the Turkish flag”. Some modern writers have described the “Battle of Broken Hill” as a terrorist incident, “terrorist-suicide mission” (and Abdullah as a) “grey-bearded zealot, fiery when insulted” [Christine Stevens, ‘Abdullah, Mullah (c. 1855–1915)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abdullah-mullah-12763/text23021, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 10 February 2022], and inevitable parallels have been drawn with the contemporary landscape of international terrorism. Giving credence to the train ambush being considered a politically motivated act was the edict of Ottoman sultan Mehmet V that the faithful of the Islamic world take up the fight (jihad) against the enemy in the war, made just two months earlier in November 1914 (which undoubtedly struck a cord with the radicalised Mahomed) [‘History repeating: from the Battle of Broken Hill to the sands of Syria’, Panayiotis Diamadis, The Conversation, 03-Oct-2014, www.theconversation.com].

A union closed shop
Imam Abdullah on the other hand had fresh personal grievances against the locals. He had for some time suffered racist harassment from the town’s youths. In addition, Abdullah had fallen foul of the local branch of the Butchers Trade Union which took a discriminatory approach to not-British butchers in the town…only a week or so earlier the non-unionised Afghan butcher had been convicted for the second time of selling meat without a licence by the chief sanitary inspector. Whether the two men were motivated by a sense of persecution or patriotism, relations between the Afghan community and the Europeans in Broken Hill had been disintegrating for some time with the ‘Ghan’ cameleers camp targeted for sabotage. [‘The Battle of Broken Hill and repercussions for the German Community’, The Enemy At Home, www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au].

Photo: brokenhill.nsw.gov.au

Economic downturn knee-jerk
A heightening of inter-ethnic tension was a direct result of the grim economic climate of the day, mine closures in Broken Hill meant unemployed miners and the search for alternate work…it didn’t take long for resentments to surface about Muslim immigrants taking white jobs. Afghan immigrants were made to feel unwelcome in Broken Hill and other outback towns with the cameleers relegated to living on the edge of European society in ‘Ghantowns’. Tensions were particularly heated between the local unionised teamsters and the immigrants, largely due to the Afghans cameleers being simply more competitive labour options than the white teamsters…cheaper to hire and providing a quicker service than that of the teamsters’ wagons. This perceived threat to the position of European teamsters in the Broken Hill district led them to retaliate with violence against the Afghan community [‘The Battle of Broken Hill’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 20-Oct-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].

Razed German Club house (Photo: Broken Hill City Archives)

A “lone wolf” attack
Despite the assailants leaving a note indicating that they had acted alone, many citizens in Broken Hill connected the event to the Turkish enmity towards the British Empire in the warⓒ. An incensed mob, hell-bent on wreaking retribution against the Afghan cameleer camp, had to be prevented from launching reprisals against the outlier Afghan community. The focus then switched to Broken Hill’s German community who many believed had agitated the brace of Afghans into attacking the picnic train. The police and military this time were unable to stop the rampant mob from torching the German Club to the ground.

Wider ramifications
A crackdown of the authorities was not long in coming. With newspapers like the Barrier Miner and the jingoistic Sydney Bulletin beating up the story for all it’s worth and with headlines trumpeting “Turk atrocity” and “Holy War”, “enemy aliens” from Austrian, German and Turkish working in the Hill’s mines were sacked, followed swiftly by Federal attorney-general Billy Hughes’s blanket internment of all foreign aliens in the country.

Photo: Destination NSW Media Centre

Footnote: In a bizarre coincidence Broken Hill’s “ice cream cart terrorism” had a resounding echo in the abhorrent 2016 Bastille Day “lone wolf” terrorist attack in Nice, France. The perpetrator who drove his lorry down a seafront promenade, killing 86 pedestrians (most of them mowed down by the speeding vehicle), told the police when questioned at the site prior to committing the atrocity that he was delivering ice cream.

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
ⓐ the four victims of the two cameleers’ localised “Holy War” were the only Australians killed on home soil as a result of enemy fire during the Great War

ⓑ Mahomed‘s ice-cream cart was used to transport the duo’s concealed weapons to the railroad ambush site

ⓒ some people in hindsight saw the incident as a prequel on Australian soil to the Gallipoli conflict later that same year

Sydney’s Long-vanished Iconic Boxing Stadiums

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Inter-ethnic relations, Leisure activities, Local history, Memorabilia, Music history, Popular Culture, Sport, Sports history
𝔉𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 ~ 𝔭𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔞𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞 𝔰𝔶𝔪𝔟𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠 𝔭𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔣𝔱

Any Sydneysiders born in or prior to the 1890s would have been aware of the opening of Sydney Stadium. 1908 was the year this iconic boxing arena on the eastern outskirts of the city’s CBD first saw the light of day…literally saw the light of day as it was originally built as an open air stadium. The brainchild of promoter Hugh D McIntosh who constructed a ‘temporary’ outdoor boxing ring on the site of a former Chinese market garden in Rushcutters Bay to hold the world heavyweight boxing contest featuring Canadian title-holder Tommy Burns and Australian challenger “Boshter Bill” Squires. The fight was however just a warm-up for a legendary pugilistic bout in the same arena four months later between Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson. The fight garnered a lot of attention in Australia and internationally as Johnson was the first black boxer to contest (and win) a world title… and the heavyweight title at that!

⚔️ 𝒮𝒸𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓉 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓂 𝑜𝒻 𝐵𝓊𝓇𝓃𝓈 𝓋 𝒥𝑜𝒽𝓃𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 (𝒩𝐹𝒮𝒜/𝒜𝒮𝒪 𝑀𝑜𝒷𝒾𝓁𝑒) ⚔️

The Australian press of the day predictably invoked the race card in the lead-up to the fight, racist descriptions of Johnson abounded, “coloured pugilist” was one of the few politer characterisations of Johnson (Bush Advocate, 28th December 1908). Burns’s thrashing at the hands of his much bigger black opponent—physically it was a real “David and Goliath” mismatch—prompted a backlash from white supremacists. Writer Jack London (ringside at the fight) put out the call for a “Great White Hope” to restore the white man to his ‘rightful’ place atop the professional boxing tree. The decisiveness of Jack Johnson’s triumph tapped into the prevailing currents of eugenic belief of the day, doing nothing to soothe anxieties about the “moral decay and decline” of the white race.

𝔖𝔶𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔑𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔞𝔩 𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶 𝔬𝔣 𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞)

Stadiums Ltd
For almost its entire lifespan (from 1915 to its closure) Sydney Stadium was owned by Melbourne entrepreneur and gambling identity John Wren’s Stadiums Ltd…during that epoch the company enticed most of the top Australian professional boxers including Vic Patrick, Fred Henneberry, Dave Sands, Jimmy Carruthers and Tommy Burns (not the Canadian heavyweight champion) as well as renowned international prize-fighters such as Emile Griffith, Freddie Dawson and ‘Fighting’ Harada, to Sydney Stadium (‘The Wild Ones: Sydney Stadium 1908-1970’, Sydney Living Museums, www.sydneylivingmuseums.com).

𝔍𝔬𝔥𝔫𝔫𝔶 ℜ𝔞𝔶 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔞𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1957 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔉𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔣𝔞𝔵 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰)

“The old tin shed”
In 1912 the stadium was given a lid, an octagonal shaped roof of corrugated iron, and equiped for a capacity of 12,000 seated patrons. As the decades passed, hosting countless boxing and wrestling matches (in operation several nights a week at one point), it acquired the affectionate sobriquet “the old tin shed”❈. From the 1950s while boxing was still its core entertainment, the Sydney Stadium became a venue for popular music entertainers and television stars (eg, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Walt Disney’s Mouseketeers, and so on⚘. This continued into the Sixties with “The Samurai” star Koichi Ose, and perhaps its pinnacle, the Beatles performing there on their 1964 Australian tour (‘Sydney Stadium’, Milesago – Venues, www.milesago.com; ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Championship Title Fight 1908’, Woollahra Municipal Council), www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au).

𓂀 𝓣𝓱𝓮 “𝓕𝓪𝓫 𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓻” 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓽𝓲𝓷 𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 1964

Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.

ᗝ 𝒱𝒶𝓊𝒹𝑒𝓋𝒾𝓁𝓁𝑒 + 𝒶 𝒮𝒾𝓃𝑜–𝐼𝓇𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓌 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝒹?
ᗝ 𝔚𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔱 𝔏𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔱 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1936 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔟 𝔬𝔣 𝔑𝔖𝔚
ஓ๑ஓ

‘Blood’ sports and ”show biz” mash-up
Like it’s older relative at Rushcutters Bay, Leichhardt Stadium’s “bread-and-butter” remained pro-boxing and wrestling. However, during the Depression, the suburban stadium, perhaps anticipating Lee Gordon, innovated by incorporating the prevailing popular form of stage entertainment…Saturday night featured a program of boxing contests intermixed with “Vaudeville entertainment” acts (‘Leichhardt Stadium. 1922.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 08-Dec-1930 (Trove); Milesago).

𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔉𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨

ஓ๑ஓ

By the mid to late 1960s Australian professional boxing was in the doldrums and the stadium itself at Rushcutters Bay closed in 1970. Three years later the complex was demolished to make way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Leichhardt Stadium’s demise as a boxing venue occurred not long after in 1975.

𝐹o𝓇𝓂𝑒𝓇 𝒷o𝓍𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝓇o𝒹𝓊𝒸𝑒𝒹 o𝓃 𝒮𝓎𝒹𝓃𝑒𝓎 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓊𝓂’𝓈 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉, 𝟫th June 𝟣𝟫𝟩0 (𝒫𝒽o𝓉o: 𝒮𝑀𝐻)

◥ 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴 (𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓱𝓻𝓪 𝓜𝓾𝓷. 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓵)

Footnote: White City’s fleeting existence
In 1913 another landmark was erected in Rushcutters Bay, a 9-iron’s distance from Sydney Stadium. The White City Amusement Park, also built on former Chinese market gardens, was a precursor of Sydney’s better known Luna Park. White City offered pleasure-seekers a smorgasbord of lakes, canals, river caves, “pleasure palaces”, “fun factories”, the city’s first roller coaster and it’s pièce de résistance, a gigantic (Pennsylvanian-constructed) carousel. White City lasted less than four years before being burnt to the ground after a lightning strike in 1917 (‘Lost Sydney : White City Amusement Park’, Pocket Oz, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au). In the early 1920’s the White City tennis complex was erected on the site.

𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬

❈ also known as ” the old barn”

⚘ expat American promoter Lee Gordon was the brains behind this move into pop music, bringing out big US bands, singers and duos for concerts at Rushcutters Bay, backed by Australian support acts

Juggling the Double-edged Sword of Late Antiquity Imperial Migration: The Roman Empire’s Mishandling of a 4th Century Gothic Refugee Crisis

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Regional History

2015 was an apogean year for international refugee influx into Europe, the dislocation of war and the fear of persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea brought more asylum seekers to the continent than any time to that point since WWIIa.The sheer scale of the refugee movements, the tragedy of mass drownings, military interventions and border controls, the hostility of some governments towards the continuous tide of migration, the utter chaos and misery of the refugees’ plight, the whole humanitarian disaster all has echoes from distant history.

⍓ Clash between refugees and Hungarian police (Photo: www.rt.com)

The Huns, movers and shakers in the barbarian lands
The refugee crisis in Europe reminded some observers of a chapter in the declining days of imperial Rome. The catalyst for this Late Antiquity migration story was the emergence of the nomadic and war-like Huns. Leaving their homeland (not known for certain but possibly Kazakhstan in Central Asia) after AD 350, the Huns moved along the Black Sea, engaging and defeating the Vandals, the Alans, the Goths and other Germanic and Slavic peoples that they encountered on their path of destruction. By circa 370 the military success of the Hunnic hordes had forced many of the defeated peoples to migrate west toward the Roman Empire. As a consequence, in 376 a large group of Goths comprising perhaps 100,000 men, women and children from two tribes—the Thervingi and the Greuthungi—suddenly turned up on the banks of the lower Danube River, the boundary of Rome’s eastern imperial reach, fleeing from the Huns. The Goths pleaded with Valens, emperor of the east for sanctuary, pledging their allegiance to the empire. The absorption of ‘barbarians’ within the Empire was an established policy of assimilation practiced by Rome, an initial step on a process of transforming foreigners into Roman citizens, albeit with certain limitations on their rights [‘1,700 years ago, the mismanagement of a migrant crisis cost Rome its empire’, Annalisa Merelli, Quartz, Upd. 09-May-2016, www.qz.com].

⍓ Valens’ numismatic likeness

Receptiob or denego?
After lengthy deliberation Valens made a momentous decision…allowing the Thervingi into the imperial territory in return for loyalty to Constantinople and that they provide infantry for the emperor’s armies. At the same time Valens denied permission to the second group of Goths, the Greuthungi, to enter Roman territory. According to the main source we have for this period, historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Valens thought he had secured himself a great deal, a cheap supply of foreign labour and a boost to the empire’s tax revenue [Dan Jones, Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021)].  

⍓ Moesia/Danube border, Roman Empire

⁻

Roman border security
Traditionally, the Romans were very efficient at managing the flow of migration within the empire. Rarely using walls, they relied on natural barriers in the landscape such as rivers and mountains. To defuse any potential threats, the foreign tribes were customarily relieved of their weapons, broken up into smaller groupings and sent off to underpopulated regions. Unfortunately for this project, the traditional practices were not implemented. The operation, delegated to two venal Roman officials to coordinate, was a disaster. The two, Lupicinus and his deputy (dux) Maximus, were incompetent, corrupt and exploitative in their duties. The Thervingi were not made to hand over their weapons, nor were they divided into smaller numbers and dispersed to different regions. In their greed the Roman officials allowed too many of the Thervingi to cross the Danube at the same time, with the result that many Goths perished in the river. When it came to settling the Goths, the two officials committed a series of abuses against the new settlers including selling them the desperately needed supplies at massively inflated pricesc .  And to top off the snafu, Lupicinus and Maximus failed to prevent the barred Greuthungi from crossing the Danube illegally by their own means further downstream [‘Immigration: How ancient Rome dealt with the Barbarians at the gate’, Cavan W. Concannon, The Conversation, 13-Feb-2019, www.theconversation.com].

(Image: slidetodoc.com)

Spirally out of hand fast
From there things went from bad to worst between the Romans and the ever more aggrieved Thervingi. Valens tried to eliminate the Thervingi leadership which backfired spectacularly…a riot ensued and their chieftain Fritigern reneged on his allegiance to the emperor, and most dangerously allied with the Greuthungi against the Romans. Valens was faced with “a unified, massive Gothic army, loose and armed in Roman territory” (Concannon).  The increasingly formidable Goths launched a series of revolts and plundered wealthy Thracian villages and estates (Jones).

Blundering into a military catastrophe 
In 378 Emperor Valens, underestimating the strength of the enemy and imprudently declining to wait until reinforcements arrived from the western Roman emperor (his nephew Gratian), engaged a combined army of Goths and Alans (with cavalry) in the Battle of Adrianopled . The battle went badly for the Romans, Valens made tactical errors and the army was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the barbarians led by Fritigern, resulting in a crushing total defeate .This time Valens paid for his blunder with his life, along with that of roughly two-thirds of the Roman army. Reverberations from the debacle went deep, both Christian and pagan contemporaries saw it as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. For St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, it signified “the end of all humanity, the end of the world” [Lenski, Noel. “Initium Mali Romano Imperio: Contemporary Reactions to the Battle of Adrianople.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 127 (1997): 129–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/284390.]

⍓ Solidus depicting Emperor Theodosius

⁻

The new emperor, Theodosius I, brokered a peace with the Goths in 382, the circumstances after Adrianople compelling him to accept the settlement of the semi-autonomous group of the Thervingi between the Danube River and the Balkan mountains. Within the Roman Empire, the Goths and other barbarians were granted the status of foederati (a federation of client peoples allied by treaty to Rome – in return for certain subsidies and benefits the barbarians were required to provide manpower for military service, eg, as auxiliary mercenary forces to guard the Empire’s frontiers, AKA līmitāneī). At best Theodosius’s pax Gothica was a holding operation, buying the declining Empire time only. The barbarians once inside the imperial borders evolved swiftly into an entrenched force and a growing threat, as the rise of the Visigoths (see note below) and their king, Alaric I, was to demonstrate in the 390s.

 

⍓ Delacroix’s painting of Attila the Hun

⁻

Postscript: The Huns’ invasions of the lands to the south and west, a decisive push to expand its empire, stimulated  the “Great Migration” of peoples, successive waves of migration, raids and rebellions, which weakened the fabric of Roman civilisation, contributing to the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire (AD 410).The Hunnic empire reached its peak in the two decades from 434 when its most famous leader Attila attained power. Under Attila the Huns cut a swathe through Eastern Europe (even invading Gaul), forcing the eastern Roman emperor to agree to pay him an annual tribute of 2,100 pounds of gold in return for peace. Attila died in 453 and bereft of his cohesive and dynamic leadership the Hunnic empire collapsed within six years.

(Image: Historical Atlas of the Mediterranean)

Note: Visigoths vs Ostrogoths
Visigoths was the name ascribed to the western tribes of Germanic Goths, who are thought to have descended from the Thervingi tribe. In the 5th century their sphere of influence extended as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Ostrogoths is the corresponding name for the eastern tribes of Goths, their antecedents coming from the Greuthungi tribe. From their base north of the Black Sea the Ostrogoths in the 5th century extended their influence into Italy.

⁌—————————————————⁍

 a 1.3M, escalating rapidly thereafter, by the end of 2016 the numbers had reached 5.2M (‘Refugee crisis in Europe’, www.unrefugees.org

b receptio (Latin) was the Roman term for integrating external groups seeking asylum in the Empire

c even forcing the starving Goths to sell them their children for slavery in return for dog food!

d modern-day Edirne in Turkey

e Rome’s worst military reversal since Cannae and Hannibal (216 BC)

 

 

Biography of a Small and Unassuming Zulu Pop Song: ’Mbube‘ versus the Goliaths of the Music Industry

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Biographical, Commerce & Business, Inter-ethnic relations, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture

According to Guinness World Records the pop song that has been covered more times than any other record is the 1965 Beatles’ 1965 Paul McCartney-penned Yesterday (a staggering 1,600-plus recorded versions). Conversely The Lion Sleeps Tonight trails far behind the record-holder with a mere 160 or more covers (still a very large number of covers), but few popular songs in the modern era of music can match it’s convoluted, controversial and even tragic history.

The Evening Birds, 1939 (Solomon Linda on the far left)

Ripped off from the debut single
The story starts in the Gallo Recording Studio in Johannesburg in 1939. Migrant labourer Solomon (Ntsele) Linda and his troupe of a capella singers (the Evening Birds) cut a record in the Zulu asisicathamiya style. The tune with its spartan lyrics is called Mbube or perhaps more correctly Imbube (‘lion’ in the Zulu language). The tune they sing is not a particularly remarkable piece of music except for Solomon’s melody. As Cape Town music journalist Rian Malan, who is to play a key role in the Mbube story as it develops, puts it, “there was something terribly compelling about the underlying chant, a dense meshing of low male voices above which (soprano) Solomon yodeled and howled (“a blood-curdling falsetto”) for two exhilarating minutes” improvising as he went along…“a haunting skein of fifteen notes” (’In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”’, Rian Malan, Rolling Stone, 14-May-2000, www.rollingstone.com). Recorded, the song sells over 100,000, copies in South Africa by 1948. Linda’s cut, 10 shillings for the recording plus a menial job in the record company (in the process signing over all rights to the song to company proprietor Eric Gallo).

Pete Seeger (Source: Mother Jones)
Image: the78prof (YouTube)

From a humble back room recording in Sub-Saharan Africa’s only recording company to the American Top 40
This pattern of exploitation, injustice and racism (both overt and by omission) escalates when the story moves to America. Struggling folksinger Pete Seeger hears Solly and the Original Evening Birds’ 78 record, digs the sound and records it with his group the Weavers. But Seeger misinterprets what Solomon Linda is singing, changing the Zulu refrain ‘Uyimbube’ (“You’re the Lion”) to ‘Wimoweh’ on their recording (‘Mbube’ becomes the song ‘Wimoweh’). It’s a hit in the US in 1952 and Seeger’s career receives a big boost. No credit and no royalties for composer Solomon – although later Seeger motivated by pangs of guilt sends Linda a cheque for $1,000 via TRO/Folkways, however it gets siphoned off on-route and never reaches the impoverished Linda in the slums of Soweto in Jo’burg.

“Paul Campbell” is the only writing credit on ‘Wimoweh’ (a common nom-de-plume ploy used to claim royalties on public domain songs)☥

In 1961 a new chapter in the story opens, “doo-wop” band the Tokens, like all pop music enthusiasts in the US, are familiar with the super-catchy “Wimoweh” refrain and want to record it. Their RCA producers get songwriter George David Weiss to revamp the song. Weiss adds new lyrics (“In the jungle, the mighty jungle”, etc) and shifts the focus of the song on to Linda’s chanting melody. ‘Mbube’ having previously morphed into ‘Wimoweh’ is repackaged by Weiss as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, all three versions still bearing the essential imprint of Solomon Linda (Malan). The Tokens’ single—with singer Jay Siegel’s distinctive high falsetto—reaches # 1 in the US and internationally, eventually selling more than three million copies§. Again, no credit and no moolah for Linda who dies destitute in 1962 with just $25 in his bank account, leaving a widow and a half-dozen young children behind.

The Tokens (Source: singers.com)

Spreading the largesse to TRO
While credited songwriters Weiss and RCA’s Creatore and Peretti cash in big time on ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’s’ soaring sales, other formidable industry figures in the US were getting in on the act from another angle  – again to the exclusion of the song’s original creator. Eric Gallo in South Africa injudiciously trades his rights to Linda’s song in America to big international music publishers TRO, (The Richmond Organisation) cutting himself off from benefitting from the ongoing “gravy train” and enriching TRO founder Howie Richmond and his partner Al Brackman.

Industry eyes only on the prize 
Rather than making an act of goodwill or perhaps an atonement of sorts for the wrongs done to Solomon Linda by shuffling a financially meaningful sum in the direction of Linda’s daughters, the major stakeholders, fixating on the riches they see before them, at the beginning of the Nineties dig their heels in, even resorting to wrangling among themselves. TRO and Richmond on one side and Weiss and co-writer Creatore on the other end up fighting each other in arbitration presided over by copyright law judges…”rich white Americans squabbling over ownership of the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa” (Malan).

‘The Lion King’ jackpot

Disney’s turn to exploit the melody’s popularity
The “golden egg” of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ explodes to new astronomical heights in 1994 when the Disney Corporation releases The Lion King, a blockbuster of a a movie—using ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song—which by 2019 has raked in $1.65 Bn at the box office, plus spin-offs such as videos and merchandise. Not stopping there, Disney follows it up with a 1998 sequel Lion King II and a Broadway musical theatrical release (highest grossing Broadway production of all time – >$1 Bn). Added to all this is about another thirteen films that includes ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song, plus its use in television commercials, endless airplay on radio and so on.

The two remaining Ntsele sisters looking at the 1939 photo of their father’s band (Source: Netflix)

The long quest for justice and some light at the end
An amelioration of the unconscionable plight facing Linda’s family only emerges after Rian Malan takes up their cause in the Nineties, writing a penetrating exposé (published in 2000) which gets their predicament publicity and legal support, and also embarrasses the “fat cat” beneficiaries who make some insultingly meagre financial concessions to the family.  A series of court cases ensue but untangling the complicated web of ownership of the three versions of ‘Mbube’ is not straightforward – for one thing both Linda and his two surviving daughters have already signed over their rights to ‘Mbube’ in transactions which were legal, also there are issues with expiry of copyright in both RSA and America. In 2004 the Ntsele sisters with the aid of copyright lawyers initiate a lawsuit against Disney. The 2006 ruling acknowledges  that ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ was of South African origin and rooted in Zulu culture (‘Copyright in the Courts: The Return of the Lion’, Owen Dean, Wipo Magazine, April 2006. www.wipo.int). In an (undisclosed) out-of-court settlement Disney (keen to avoid a PR disaster) and Abilene Music❆ agree to make an equitable and substantial payout to Linda’s surviving daughters. (’The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, Lydia Hutchinson, Performing Songwriter, 01-May-2017, www.performingsongwriter.com; ‘In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory’, Sharon LeFraniere, New York Times, 22-Mar-2006, www.nytimes.com).

Rian Malan (Source: Writers Write)

Malan estimates (2002) that given the seeming limitless sales potential of ‘Mbube’/‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ in all its versions and forms, the royalties owing to the song’s composer would lie in the region of US$15 million, a figure that Solomon’s descendants won’t ever see in their bank accounts…however through the unflagging, dogged persistence and refusal of Malan not just to grasp the nettle but to never let go of it⇼, and the stirling pro bono services of lawyers stirred to action by the injustice, the future is now secure for them, and credit for the classic song is now rightfully attributed to their father. One of those South African copyright lawyers Owen Dean expresses optimism that royalties will be secured for “the use of Mbube in all its derivatives, including ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘, for the benefit of the family” (Malan), noting also that there is “some pride in having successfully championed the cause of the small creator among entertainment industry giants” (Dean).

Source: Definitely Owen on YouTube

Postscript: Remastered: The Lion’s Share, a 2019 documentary shows writer and documentarian Malan’s quest to trace the roots of the mega-successful ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ song, one of the most instantly recognisable pop melodies in American music, and his untiring efforts to help get fair compensation for the surviving daughters of the Black South African composer air-brushed from his part in music recording history.

🎶➿🎶➿🎶

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§ artists to cover ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ include the Springfields, Roger Whittaker, The Tremeloes, Robert John, Glen Campbell, Brian Eno, R.E.M., They Might Be Giants and Tight Fit

☥ another go-to pseudonym—one used by Al Brackman to grab a cut of the songwriting royalty payments pie—was “Albert Stanton” (www.secondhandsongs.com)

❆ who licensed the song to Disney for the movie

⇼ The Guardian aptly summarises this irrepressible trait of the controversial RSA journalist: “Malan is at his best when he finds a story that allows him to employ the full power of (his) instinctive reluctance to take yes for an answer” (Tim Adams, 2nd March 2013).