As the sun goes down at The Country Club in Richmond, Johannesburg, ahead of the gala premier of The Lion King, composer Lebo M and actor John Kani are doing their bit for the promotion of the film.
For Lebo M this is the culmination of a 25-year journey that began when he collaborated with composer Hans Zimmer on the music for the original hand-drawn animation in 1994.
That set him off on a journey that’s seen him work on several other Lion King projects, including the smash hit musical that’s toured the world and wowed audiences for the last two decades.
For Kani, his participation in the Jon Favreau-directed live-action version is the third in a series of films he’s done with Disney since Captain America Civil War and the blockbuster smash Black Panther. For both, The Lion King is special — a coming home for a story that places Africa firmly at its centre.
As Lebo M describes it, this version is the culmination of “a beautiful journey and the continuation of something that started 25 years ago, and that’s the most beautiful gift you can have as an artist, to be able to have one project that sustains itself for so long”.
Kani plays the role of Rafiki in the movie, who he says is “the elder, the sage, the shaman — the great reservoir of the history of this pride. I realised that it’s the role that I now play in the Kani clan — I’m the advisor, I listen and I suggest solutions and I’m a custodian of my own African culture. So I’m in a position in my own life to play this role.”
Having both attended the premiere in Los Angeles earlier this month, the pair have seen initial audience reactions to the computer-generated imagery and have been as wowed as the audience.
For Kani, seeing the final product “took me back to before 1976, when there was no television in SA and we were in love with radio stories. We knew those characters, they were in our rooms, and the reason I became an actor was because of a programme called Consider Your Verdict on Springbok Radio. To take your voice and your passion and merge it to those hand-drawn little sketches of Rafiki has the same power. It blew my mind.”
Lebo M believes the film respects “the dignity of Africans on a global scale”.
“The story is one everyone around the world can identify with – everyone has a Scar, a Mufasa, a Simba in their lives. My life is shaped around the characters in this movie, in particular Simba, who grows up in exile. I grew up in exile and I came back home when the transition was happening and when I was working on the original Lion King.
“What The Lion King has done is confirm our dignity as Africans and the dignity of the African landscape.”
'The Lion King' has confirmed our dignity as Africans: Lebo M
Image: John Liebenberg
As the sun goes down at The Country Club in Richmond, Johannesburg, ahead of the gala premier of The Lion King, composer Lebo M and actor John Kani are doing their bit for the promotion of the film.
For Lebo M this is the culmination of a 25-year journey that began when he collaborated with composer Hans Zimmer on the music for the original hand-drawn animation in 1994.
That set him off on a journey that’s seen him work on several other Lion King projects, including the smash hit musical that’s toured the world and wowed audiences for the last two decades.
For Kani, his participation in the Jon Favreau-directed live-action version is the third in a series of films he’s done with Disney since Captain America Civil War and the blockbuster smash Black Panther. For both, The Lion King is special — a coming home for a story that places Africa firmly at its centre.
As Lebo M describes it, this version is the culmination of “a beautiful journey and the continuation of something that started 25 years ago, and that’s the most beautiful gift you can have as an artist, to be able to have one project that sustains itself for so long”.
Kani plays the role of Rafiki in the movie, who he says is “the elder, the sage, the shaman — the great reservoir of the history of this pride. I realised that it’s the role that I now play in the Kani clan — I’m the advisor, I listen and I suggest solutions and I’m a custodian of my own African culture. So I’m in a position in my own life to play this role.”
Having both attended the premiere in Los Angeles earlier this month, the pair have seen initial audience reactions to the computer-generated imagery and have been as wowed as the audience.
For Kani, seeing the final product “took me back to before 1976, when there was no television in SA and we were in love with radio stories. We knew those characters, they were in our rooms, and the reason I became an actor was because of a programme called Consider Your Verdict on Springbok Radio. To take your voice and your passion and merge it to those hand-drawn little sketches of Rafiki has the same power. It blew my mind.”
Lebo M believes the film respects “the dignity of Africans on a global scale”.
“The story is one everyone around the world can identify with – everyone has a Scar, a Mufasa, a Simba in their lives. My life is shaped around the characters in this movie, in particular Simba, who grows up in exile. I grew up in exile and I came back home when the transition was happening and when I was working on the original Lion King.
“What The Lion King has done is confirm our dignity as Africans and the dignity of the African landscape.”
It’s an idea that Kani also believes in. “It’s now the time for us to put our resources together and dictate the telling of our stories, dictate everything, including financial investment.
“What these films prove is that if it’s good and it’s African content and you use all the expertise we have within Africa, combined with international experience, you can make money.
“Gone are the days that we told stories about suffering and Aids. People have seen those and now they want to celebrate Africa and life and humanity here,” he says.
The Lion King is currently on circuit
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