For over thirty years, those first few seconds of Disney’s “The Lion King” captivated audiences with its iconic Zulu chant. To most, those soaring opening notes of the “Circle of Life” are the sound of a childhood masterpiece, but now, it has made its way into a multi-million lawsuit between a comedian and the composer who wrote and performed it.
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Sing it with me: “Nants’ingonyama bagithi Babaaaa!”
That’s what viewers of “The Lion King” belt out with their whole chest before chanting, “Hay! baba, sizongqobaaaa!” Majority of Americans had no clue what it meant, but that didn’t stop anything.
During a recent One54 Africa podcast episode, comic Learnmore Jonasi said the opening lines really meant in English: “Look, there’s a lion. Oh my god.” Hosts Godfrey and Akbar couldn’t help but buckle over in laughter—and confusion— because they assumed the lyrics meant something more “beautiful and majestic.”
However, Lebohang Morake, a Grammy-award winning South African composer who wrote and performed the iconic opening chant, says it does. Now, he wants the comic to pay up $27 million.
Morake’s lawsuit accuses Jonasi of purposefully mistranslating the chant, WRAL News reported. According to the lawsuit filed on March 16 in Los Angeles federal court, Morake accused Jonasi of intentionally mocking “the chant’s cultural significance with exaggerated imitations.”
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Disney’s official translation of the opening phrase “Nants’ingonyama bagithi Baba” is “All hail the king, we all bow in the presence of the king.” The next line, “Hay! baba, sizongqoba,” translates to “Through you we will emerge victoriously,” according to Morake.
In the lawsuit, Morake’s lawyers did acknowledge that “ingonyama” can translate to “lion,” but said the term in this specific song was a “royal metaphor” that invokes kingship. Therefore, Jonasi’s alleged intentional misinterpretation of the lyrics misrepresented “an African vocal proclamation grounded in South African tradition.”
The complaint also called Jonasi’s now-viral comments, “a fabricated, trivializing distortion, meant as a sick joke for unlawful self-profit and destruction of the imaginative and artistic work of Lebo M.” The writer claimed Jonasi presented his translation “as authoritative fact, not comedy,” so the First Amendment wouldn’t cover his joke as parody or satire.
He’s not just suing over Jonasi’s podcast remarks.
Morake’s lawsuit alleged Jonasi “received a standing ovation” for a similar joke he made about the song in Los Angeles during a March 12 stand-up performance, which he said has interfered with his relationship with Disney and his royalties. He’s suing for $20 million in actual damages, plus $7 million in punitive damages.
Jonasi confirmed the lawsuit on Instagram, and has since launched a GoFundMe to help with his legal fees because he said he doesn’t “have 27M.”
“What started as a bit of humor has escalated into a devastating legal battle,” he wrote online. “I am a passionate creator who never intended harm, but I now face overwhelming legal fees just to defend my right to speak and tell jokes.”
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