Mbube - In the jungle, the unjust jungle, a small victory

I didn't know what "Mbube" meant until I read this article from the New York Times . It's about a song whose jaunty tune I've whistled many a time, and which I (and probably many others) know as "Wimoweh" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

It now appears that, to put it bluntly, the song in its present form(s) is the product of a theft of intellectual property , made worse (at least to me) by the involvement of Pete Seeger, the radical US folksinger of the 1940s and 50s who was an early music influence on Bob Dylan.

In 1939 "Mbube" was first recorded by its composer Solomon Linda and his group the Evening Birds. Here's what the US PBS doco A Lion's Tale says:

Because blacks are not allowed to have royalties in 1930s South Africa, the studio gives the band a “petty cash voucher” in exchange for the rights to their song.

In 1948 Pete Seeger, a young American folk singer living in Manhattan, receives a copy of “Mbube” from his friend Alan Lomax, who is working for a record company. Lomax had “rescued” a box of records—including “Mbube”—from the trash, which the company had received from an African record company in the hope that they could be re-released in the U.S. Seeger is fascinated by the song and transcribes it for his band, the Weavers, writing the Zulu chant “Uyimbube” as “Wimoweh.” The Weavers record and perform the song to acclaim in the early 1950s.

In A LION'S TRAIL , Seeger explains: “The big mistake I made was not making sure that my publisher signed a regular songwriters’ contract with Linda. My publisher simply sent Linda some money and copyrighted The Weavers’ arrangement here and sent The Weavers some money.”

Thus did Seeger and his group benefit from exploiting (whether knowingly or otherwise) a talented man who was prevented by the laws of his country from reaping the fruits of his intellectual labours.

But at last, many years too late, out of "the unjust jungle" (of intellectual property law) has come the "small victory" of which the NYT writes. Should we be grateful for this small mercy and shut up, or continue to press for further changes to other areas such as the laws which make it so much harder for less affluent nations to acquire cheap anti-AIDS drugs?