South Africa’s greatest rock legend sings song to world’s greatest mountain

Friday 14th September 2007

Ronen Yudelowitz, who climbed Kilimanjaro last month with two friends and whose picture currently graces the Hall of Fame, has written to tell me that South African singing sensation Johnny Clegg has penned a song called ‘Kilimanjaro’. (In some references on the website the mountain is willfully misspelt Kilamanjaro – though whether Mr Clegg meant it to be spelt wrongly I’ve no idea.) I’ve managed to catch a snippet of it online and, have to say, it follows the long tradition of disappointing tunes inspired by - or at least named after – the mountain. Not the worst, but a bit too Men at Work for my taste. Still, I may be out of touch here – there are even rumoured to be some people who like the execrable Babyshambles’ ditty Killamangiro. Furthermore, as Ronen himself says, ‘if this doesn’t get you to the top nothing will’ – so clearly my tastes are just not in line with current fashions.

But my thanks go to Ronen anyway, for recognizing my interest in all-things Kilimanjaro.

The song can be found on the Best of Juluka & Savuka album (Juluka and Savuka being the names of his two bands, as far as I can tell). To listen to the snippet I’ve found online follow the yahoo.shopping site here.

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