Koko Smokesign – Koko the signing gorilla / Witch Doctor by David Seville
https://www.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Koko_Smokesign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_Doctor_(song)
https://youtu.be/cmjrTcYMqBM
Koko Smokesign is a Witch Doctor and one of the few Gorillas to resist falling under the shadow of the Umbra Queen. Koko was to be the Wizard’s guide to the Drum Jungle, but has been captured by enemy Gorilla forces.
Koko is one of the wizard’s staunchest allies in Zafaria. During one quest she chants the following phrase. “Ooh-Eeh-Ooh-Ah-Aah-Ting-Tang-Walla-Walla-Bing-Bang”
Hanabiko “Koko” (July 4, 1971 – June 19, 2018) was a female western lowland gorilla. Koko was born in San Francisco Zoo, and lived most of her life at The Gorilla Foundation’s preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The name “Hanabiko” (花火子), lit. ’fireworks child’, is of Japanese origin and is a reference to her date of birth, the Fourth of July. Koko gained public attention upon a report of her having adopted a kitten as a pet and naming him “All Ball”, which the public perceived as her ability to rhyme.
Her instructor and caregiver, Francine Patterson, reported that Koko had an active vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs of what Patterson calls “Gorilla Sign Language” (GSL). This puts Koko’s vocabulary at the same level as a three-year-old human. In contrast to other experiments attempting to teach sign language to non-human primates, Patterson simultaneously exposed Koko to spoken English from an early age. It was reported that Koko understood approximately 2,000 words of spoken English, in addition to the signs. Koko’s life and learning process has been described by Patterson and various collaborators in books, peer-reviewed scientific articles, and on a website.
Patterson reported that she documented Koko inventing new signs to communicate novel thoughts; for example, she said that nobody taught Koko the word for “ring”, but to refer to it, Koko combined the words “finger” and “bracelet”, hence “finger-bracelet”. Another instance was when Koko decribed a San Francisco earthquake as “Darn floor, big bite.”
“Witch Doctor” is a 1958 American novelty song written and performed by Ross Bagdasarian, under his stage name David Seville (better known for creating the novelty singing group The Chipmunks). It became a number one hit and rescued Liberty Records from near-bankruptcy. In the song, the singer asks a witch doctor for romantic advice, the witch doctor responds with a nonsense incantation which creates an earworm.
Seville wrote the song, inspired by a book titled Duel with the Witch Doctor on his bookshelf. In the song, the narrator asks a witch doctor for advice on what to do because he has fallen in love with a girl, and the witch doctor replies with a gibberish line: “Oo-ee, oo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang”.
Seville had spent 200 dollars, a significant sum at that time, on a tape recorder, and he conceived of the idea of recording himself at different speed to create a dialogue between him and the witch doctor. He sang in his own voice as normal, and then overdubbed the song with the voice of the “witch doctor”, which is in fact Seville’s own voice sung slowly but recorded at half speed on the tape recorder, then played back at normal speed (the voice was therefore speeded up to become a high pitched squeaky one). Seville experimented with the process for a period of time before recording it in the studio, although it was said that when the executives from the financially-troubled Liberty label heard the resulting song, they released it to reach the shops within 24 hours.
The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100, the predecessor to the Billboard Hot 100. The single was considered a major surprise hit on the chart, where it became Seville and Liberty Records’ first No. 1 single, and stayed in the position for three weeks. The single also peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart even though it is not a R&B song – this is due to R&B chart being a trade category at the time, reflecting the popularity of the song with black radio stations and customers. The single had sold 1.4 million copies in the United States by December 1958. Billboard ranked it as the No. 4 song for 1958.
The current list of all the (known) Zafaria references are located here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references, I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Koko Smokesign image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment.
Koko and All Ball photo is borrowed from the LA Times and is (c) (Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)
Witch Doctor Album art is (c) Liberty Records and Ross Bagdasarian
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
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