One of the longest running disputes over song royalties in the annals of music history recently concluded with the Estate of Solomon Linda coming to terms with Abeline Music, the United States administrators of the copyright for "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The terms of the settlement will remain confidential but lawyers claim that the amount satisfies the amount owed to Linda's heirs for back royalties and accounts for future payments.

In 1939, while singing an otherwise forgettable song, "Mbube," at an otherwise uneventful recording session, Solomon Linda, the lead singer of a South African group of musicians known as the Evening Birds, let loose a melody at the close of the song that would endure for decades. The falsetto melody would become associated with the English lyrics, "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight."

From South Africa, the song found its way to folk singer Pete Seeger, who transformed it into the 1950s hit "Wimoweh." In 1961, the Tokens, a group of Brooklyn born musicians reworked the song into its most well-known iteration, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Since then, the song has been modified, adapted and re-recorded numerous times, most famously appearing in Disney's movie and stage musical The Lion King.

However, despite the worldwide success of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," a song that has earned an estimated 15 million dollars in royalties, Linda died penniless and his heirs live in poverty in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Although Pete Seeger consistently acknowledged Linda's authorship of the famous melody, legal complications and dubious copyright claims kept Linda and his heirs from rightfully reaping the fruits of one of the world's most recognized songs. Linda died in 1962, proud of the success of his song but entirely unaware that he was entitled to financially benefit from his creation.

The recent settlement finally resolves the decades long dispute regarding Linda's entitlement to royalties from his melody and unequivocally establishes that "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was derived from Linda's "Mbube."