Loituma Girl
Loituma Girl (also known as Leekspin) is a flash cartoon AKA Jamie Tingley set to a gibberish section of the traditional Finnish folk song "Ievan Polkka" (sometimes misspelled Levan Polka) sung by the Finnish quartet Loituma, taken from their 1995 debut album Things of Beauty.[1] It appeared on the Internet in late April of 2006 and quickly became popular, drawing over a million viewers.[2]
The cartoon consists of a 4-frame animation of the Bleach anime character Orihime Inoue twirling a leek (a type of green onion, called a negi in Japan) to a 27-second loop from the song. Like many other such cartoons, the animation loops continuously.
Content
The animation of Loituma Girl is taken from episode 2 of the Bleach anime series. In the clip, Orihime is spinning the leek in a one time joke, in which she explains to her friend Ichigo Kurosaki that she wants to cook something very unusual and/or obviously inedible. The cartoon uses the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) from the song. Unlike the rest of the song, these two stanzas have no meaning, consisting mostly of phonetically-inspired gibberish that vary from performance to performance and are usually made up on the spot by the singer (compare scat singing in jazz). These stanzas are therefore not generally listed on lyrics pages, causing confusion for people looking for lyrics that match the cartoon. (See Ievan Polkka.)
Phonetic approximation of what she might be saying:
yaktsa tsup badee deek kadee lung
lang deek da dee tadee dik stan dool
la dippy dappy dal la loop dooppy roopy
ran kuri kan kook ka kuri-kan-koo
arup tapee ta ya dippee da dill
labba deets dan dill lan day lan doe
abareet kapi ta tarit kari
ba-dee-bee-dee stan day lan doe
yah bah dee lah stay lan day a-doe
ya-ba-dabba-dabba-dabba doovie-a-voo [sexy]
bad-izz-dat dat lay lan lays da doe
badaga-daga doo-doo day a doe
Popularity
The origin of the cartoon is unclear.[2] Within a few days of its appearance, tens of thousands of pages either directed to the possible origin or had the file uploaded on their own server. On 10 July 2006, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that Loituma Girl had caused a resurgence in Loituma's popularity, and the band had received thousands of fan letters from around the world. [3]
Band member Timo Väänänen describes his initial reaction to the video[2]:
I first found out there was something going on when I looked at the statistics of my own web page and then I realized that something weird is happening because there is so huge traffic there. And most of the traffic came from Russia and then I started to track down what is happening and then I found this video. And well, I have no idea what this video is about, and what this girl is about.
BBC's The World radio program even covered the animation in a segment, in which they noted the clip's trance-inducing qualities. Patrick Macias, who was interviewed in the program, described the animation[2]:
This is basically a joke for someone who spends all of their time staring at a computer, made by people who spend all of their time staring at a computer. It's possible to read deeper meanings into it, but it sort of defeats the purpose because in the end it's just this hypnotic clip of animation.
It is, however, possible that "Leekspin" was inspired as a counter to "Meatspin", a pornographic shock site.
As of mid-2006, there are multiple videos and remixes of the song that were inspired by the flash cartoon.
Commercialization
In August 2006, German ringtone provider Jamba! began selling a collection of media based on the animation. The video shows an anthropomorphic donkey (called Holly Dolly) dancing to the animation which is displayed (flipped horizontally) in the background.[4] The song/animation is marketed as the "Dolly Song", and the music is played faster than the original Loituma version. It was also given an extra 30-second drum preface, which was not present in the original version. Additionally, a Dutch mobile phone media provider similar to Jamba features a remade version of the animation, with the girl in Western style art.
In January 2007, a similar video, entitled "Holly Dolly - Dolly Song (Leva's Polka)," appeared in the Google Video Top 100, though it was present on the internet for a while before. It features the same donkey, but instead of the spinning-leek girl in the background, there are some singing sheep and a snowman; one sheep tries to hog the stage by attacking the other backup singers.
Holly Dolly the donkey (or some such equine species) may well be ovine or caprine instead; note her floppy ears and bony tail.
References
- ^ "NorthSide Catalog - Things of Beauty - Loituma".
- ^ a b c d Werman, Marco (2006-08-18). "Global Hit" (radio). The World. Public Radio International. Retrieved 2006-08-18.
- ^ "Hittibiisi kulman takaa". Helsingin Sanomat. 2006-07-10.
- ^ Holly Dolly Song (MPEG). Jamba!.