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Ievan polkka

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 67.103.192.15 (talk) at 15:31, 29 May 2006 (→Cartoon). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Ievan Polkka or Ievan Polokka, (Finnish for "Ieva's Polka") is a popular Finnish song written in early 1930s by Eino Kettunen in the Finnish Language.

Performers

Description

The song is sung in the Finnish Language and takes the point of view of a young man. It tells the story of Ieva who steals away to someone else's house where everyone is dancing to a polka, and where she meets the handsome young man. When he takes her home, her angry mother is waiting for them, but he tells her straight out to "stop that noise": No matter what she does, Ieva and he "are going to make a match".

Language

The song is sung in Savo, the eastern dialect of the Finnish language.

The intermezzo, which was used in the flash movie described below, is just phonetically inspired gibberish with some Finnish words in it. It is not the part of the original song by Eino Kettunen, but rather is introduced by Loituma.

The text of the intermezzo varies from one performance to other, and is not listed on lyrics pages. It is basically the same as scat in jazz.

Popularity

This song is best known from an a cappella performance by the Finnish quartet Loituma, first released in their album "Loituma" in 1995, re-released in album "Things of Beauty" in 1998.

The song, popular in Finland but previously unknown to the rest of the world, became better-known on the Internet since April/May 2006 because of a Flash cartoon.

Cartoon

A flash animation including this song has gained popularity on the internet. The cartoon consists of a 4-frame animation of the BLEACH character Orihime Inoue twirling a leek to a 26-second loop from the song. Like many other such cartoons, it is set to loop continuously. Due to the infinity, the nonsensical sound of the singing, the simple energizing melody, Orihime's cheerful facial expression the strange swirls that are set as a background and the absurdity of spinning a leek the cartoon is considered very funny and has been spread by quite a number of people. Within a few days, tens of thousands of pages directed to the possible origin or had the file uploaded on their own webspace.

The reason behind her spining the leek is that she is telling her friend what she is planning to cook (usually something weird).

For the cartoon the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) have been used; apparently they have no meaning and are therefore not included in the official lyrics. This is overlooked in most cases by the users who post the lyrics, often causing confusion.

It was originally made by an anonymous user of the image board 4chan and posted on the site's flash board.

By now there are multiple videos and remixes of the song which have been inspired by the flash cartoon.

See also

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