The song, under the original title "Jock-A-Mo", was written and released in 1953 as a single by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and his Cane Cutters but it failed to make the charts.
In the UK, two competing versions of the song were released in 1982 - one by the all-female group the Belle Stars and the other by Scottish singer Natasha England.
Some music scholars say it translates in Mardi Gras Indian lingo as 'Kiss my ass,' and I've read where some think 'Jock-A-Mo' was a court jester.
(laughs)The Dixie Cups' version was the result of an unplanned jam in a New York City recording studio where they began an impromptu version of "Iko Iko", accompanying themselves with drumsticks on an aluminum chair, a studio ashtray and a Coke bottle.
[4] After their producers cleaned up the track and added the backup vocals, bass and drums to the song, the single was then released in March 1965.
[8] It was the third single taken from their debut studio album Chapel of Love issued on Red Bird Records in August 1964.
A comparison of the two recordings demonstrates the shared lyric and melody between the two songs, though the arrangements are different in tempo, instrumentation and harmony.
Their ex-manager Joe Jones and his family filed a copyright registration in 1991, alleging that they wrote the song in 1963.
The trial took place in New Orleans and the Dixie Cups were represented by well-known music attorney Oren Warshavsky before Senior Federal Judge Peter Beer.
The "Iko Iko" story is told by Dr. John in the liner notes to his 1972 album, Dr. John's Gumbo, in which he covers New Orleans R&B classics: The song was written and recorded back in the early 1950s by a New Orleans singer named James Crawford who worked under the name of Sugar Boy & the Cane Cutters.
The tribes used to hang out on Claiborne Avenue and used to get juiced up there getting ready to perform and 'second line' in their own special style during Mardi Gras.
John, playing himself, performs the song in the "movie" Polynesian Town on the May 22, 1981, episode of the Canadian comedy show SCTV.
[15] Natasha's single was one of two competing versions of "Iko Iko" in the Official Singles Chart Top 40 of week ending 19 June 1982,[16] a chart run-down which saw Natasha at number 24, eleven places higher than the version released by The Belle Stars on Stiff Records.
The music video features scenes from the Rain Man movie as well as Belle Stars lead singer Jennie McKeown wearing a black outfit with blue dangling treble clefs and bleach blond dreadlocks.
The track was released by Sony Music UK on June 3, 2019, and started to gain popularity in 2021 after it went viral on social platform TikTok.
Linguists and historians have proposed a variety of origins for the seemingly nonsensical chorus, suggesting that the words may come from a melange of cultures.
[citation needed] Linguist Geoffrey D. Kimball derives the lyrics of the song in part from Mobilian Jargon, an extinct American Indian trade language consisting mostly of Choctaw and Chickasaw words and once used by Native Americans, Blacks, and European settlers and their descendants in the Gulf Coast Region.
[99] In Mobilian Jargon, čokəma fehna (interpreted as jockomo feeno) was a commonly used phrase, meaning 'very good'.
In a 2009 OffBeat article, the Ghanaian social linguist Evershed Amuzu said the chorus was "definitely West African", reflecting the tonal patterns of the region.
He notes that the phrase ayeko—often doubled as ayeko, ayeko—is a popular chant meaning 'well done', or 'congratulations' among the Akan and Ewe people in modern-day Togo, Ghana, and Benin.
Ewes in particular are credited with bringing West African cultural influences like Vodun rites to Haiti and on to New Orleans.
Yaquimo, he has also noted, was a common name among the Taíno inhabitants of Haiti in the early years of the slave trade.
[101] Jakamo Fi Na Ye is also, whether coincidentally or not, the phrase "The black cat is here" in Bambara, a West African Manding language.
In a 1991 lecture to the New Orleans Social Science History Association, Sybil Kein proposed the following translation from Yoruba and Creole: enòn enòn Aìku Aìku nde Jacouman Fi na ida – n – de Jacouman Fi na dè Code language!
[102] Louisiana Voodoo practitioners, as well as those familiar with West African religions, would recognize many aspects of the song as being about spirit possession.
Haitian ethnologist Milo Rigaud published a transcription in 1953 of a Voodoo chant, "Crabigne Nago".