iko iko

But for a brief, four-year period of my life, when I played trumpet to satisfy a school requirement, I’ve never been a musician. It wasn’t anything that I was really encouraged to pursue, thankfully, other than my mom’s insistence that learning to play an instrument would improve my math skills. (It didn’t.)

But I always wanted to write. I eventually began to enjoy writing about music — it was technically my first freelance gig out of college. Apparently, like most things as one gets older, though, I eventually stopped doing what I once enjoyed.  

Which brings us to what you’re reading now. On the precipice of my mid-life crisis era, I’m giving it another go. So I figure we should start at the beginning.

• • •

The “Rain Man” soundtrack was the first album I ever owned.

It was 1989. 

I was five years old. 

And it was my proudest possession. 

• • •

My family had just moved to Houston after less than a year in New York City. Staten Island’s South Shore didn’t really work out for us at the time as a young family of four recently emigrated from Venezuela.

We stayed in a hotel while my parents looked for a home we could settle into. If it had been up to me, though, we would have stayed in the hotel indefinitely — the big pool, the giant beds, and the movies on demand. It was the high life.

My parents have never been the indulgent type, but one day they decided to spend some big bucks and pay to watch a movie from their hotel room. 

“Rain Man.”

I have faint memories of crossing the threshold of our adjoining hotel rooms, ready to settle in for an impromptu movie night before my hopes were promptly dashed. I was not to watch Dustin Hoffman’s award-winning now-outdated, problematic representation of neurodivergence because it was rated R. 

As the “Parents' Guide to ‘Rain Man’” explains:

Parents need to know that Rain Man is a 1988 movie in which a selfish and greedy sports-car salesman (played by Tom Cruise) discovers, in the wake of his father's death, that he has a brother he never knew he had, a brother who is an autistic savant (played by Dustin Hoffman). This movie contains some strong language, including frequent use of "f--k," and two instances of Cruise's character calling Hoffman's character "retarded" and "f--kin' retarded." There are some intense scenes in which Raymond becomes distressed, prone to horrific screams and near-violent outbursts. There's a scene where sex is insinuated (moaning and movement under the sheets) and a brief glimpse of a breast. Prostitution is alluded to. Cruise's character smokes cigarettes. 

I was crestfallen. My parents sent me back to the G-rated hotel room with my three-year-old sister, who showed no interest in the devastation and rejection that Five-Year-Old Me felt. “Care Bears” was on.

• • •

My parents felt bad, though. They didn’t knowingly let me watch an R-rated movie until my dad rented 1997's “Air Force One,” so I never screened the story of Charlie and Raymond Babbitt with them. But they did give me a consolation prize a few days after I was turned away — the soundtrack on cassette.

While I might not have been mature enough for strong language, insinuation of sexual situations and cigarette smoking, I could enjoy the musical soundtrack that accompanied them.

And did I enjoy it. The cassette tape was on heavy rotation on the black Panasonic RX-F3 boombox that our family shared.

In particular, there was something about Track No. 1 — “Iko Iko” by the Belle Stars — that sucked me right in.

Of course, Five-Year-Old Me knew nothing about the song’s complicated history, that it was rooted in New Orleans culture and seemingly derived from a Mardi Gras anthem. The addictive chorus that may or may not have a story embedded within it about rival tribes taunting each other was literally another language, and as a kid still barely beginning to learn English, it was songs like “Iko Iko” that inadvertently helped me connect with a new culture. It turns out no one really knows what “jock-a-mo fee nah nay” means even today, so we’re still in this together.

I was similarly clueless to the fact that this was a cover song twice removed — from the original 1953 “Sugar Boy” Crawford recording of “Jock-A-Mo” to the 1964 version from The Dixie Cups.

Oblivious to both versions, I did come across another version two years later that blew Seven-Year-Old Me’s mind and introduced me to the concept of covers. Needless to say, a newly acquired cassette tape of 1991’s “Sebastian Party Gras” was also frequently played at the Soria household.

I can’t say I came across more versions of the song until later in life, although I would come to find out that there are a surprising number of covers over the years, almost always by musicians that I wouldn’t particularly associate with its Creole Louisiana heritage (Aaron Carter, RIP.)

By the time I could lawfully watch R-rated movies on my own, one of my friends and most trusted music gurus introduced me to Glass Candy, far back enough when they were still known as Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater, and their “Iko Iko” EP. I was hooked. Again.

But the band soon ended up changing their name along with their vibe, shifting from their punk-inspired disco sound into something more grounded in Italo and synthwave. And with the shift came a new version of “Iko Iko,” only this time, they also prominently sampled “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” by the venerable Geto Boys, one Houston’s most valuable musical exports.

Listening to it felt weirdly like home.

PS — Ever since then, I’ve tried to collect MP3s of the song. But in this digital age of streaming, I’ve relented and gathered what I can find in a playlist, which is down below.

I also happen to collect a second, unrelated song that has much fewer versions but that has also somehow been covered by Cindy Lauper. Feel free to guess the track.

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