Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Hokey Cokey

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/12/22/singing-the-hokey-cokey-could-land-football-fans-in-sectarian-bother-86908-20989183/

Daily Record [UK]
22 December 2008

Singing the Hokey Cokey could land football fans in sectarian bother

By John Ferguson

POLICE have vowed to crack down on football fans singing the Hokey Cokey -- after claims the song is sectarian.

Catholic church leaders believe the old time children's ditty pokes fun at priests. And they fear it could be hijacked by bigots. [...]

Peter Kearney, a spokesman for the Catholic church in Scotland, said: "This song does have quite disturbing origins. It was devised as an attack on, and a parody of, the Mass. If there are moves to restore its more malevolent meaning then consideration should perhaps be given to its wider use." [...]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1229/1229728603894.html

Irish Times
29 December 2008

Hokey Cokey' gets red card at Rangers

DAN KEENAN, Northern News Editor

SATURDAY'S "OLD Firm" clash between Glasgow's two soccer giants took place without the strains of the Hokey Cokey rising from the Rangers supporters.

The tipsy party ditty has joined the list of songs banned on the grounds of alleged sectarianism amid claims that it is a bigoted take on the Latin Mass. [...]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2058a612-e0e1-11dd-b0e8-000077b07658.html

Financial Times [UK]
13 January 2009

Capitalism's enemies have the best tunes

By Brian Groom

[...] But now Alan Balfour says his grandfather, a 1940s London band leader called Al Tabor, wrote the song and that it is about ice-cream. Tabor was going to call it "hokey pokey", a nickname for ice-cream, but changed it to "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of a Canadian officer who thought it would sound better because "cokey" was a slang term for crazy in Canada. Somehow I doubt this will end debate about the song's origins. [...]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b90ab7c-e692-11dd-8e4f-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Financial Times [UK]
20 January 2009

Letters

Hokey Cokey was founded on a traditional Canadian song

[Jimmy Kennedy, Jr., says his father wrote the song, basing it on a "Canadian children's game called the Cokey Cokey." The title supposedly refers to "drugs taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."]

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=1202503
Canada.com
21 January 2009
Canada's Hokey Pokey cause of England dust up
Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service

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