"Ding Ding Walla Walla" - the name may sound silly - but it's one of the grooviest brukdown Bram songs you'll ever hear.
It was a favourite in the 70's - and then Leela Vernon re-did it in the early 2000's.
Now, it has taken on a new life - as an award winning crossover hit by a Guatemalan artist.
And this weekend that boiled the blood of many Belizeans - who felt that - in the style of Chico Ramos's "Conch Soup"- another Belizean song had been stolen by our Central American neighbors, latinized and then spun back as a hit - with no recognition or royalties for Belize.
But, this one isn't that simple - because "Ding Ding Walla…" has a simple, but complicated history. Jules Vasquez explores:...
If you ever saw Leela Vernon own a stage - you were fortunate to witness a true cultural queen paying tribute to her kriol culture while at the same time taking that culture to a new level.
And while we don't have footage of her performing the traditional folk favourite, Ding Ding Walla - the song's recording did catch the ear of
Guatemalan Kimberly Flores who turned the creole classic into a sort of Latinized Garifuna song called Din-Din Walla Walla.
And that outraged Belizeans everywhere - including Leela Vernon's daughter:
Juliet Vernon Austin, Leela's Daughter
"Well, I think its real highway piracy now."
But, is it? The first recorded version of the song that we know of dates back to the mid 1970's:
Melissa Zuniga of the Belizean Society of Composers Authors Publishers, BSCAP sent out a statement saying "this musical work is actually a traditional Creole song..and is a public domain work, which means: no exclusive intellectual property rights apply, no permission needs to obtained, and anyone can record the song, and even create a derivative work, which Kimberly Flores did:
Melissa Zuniga, General Manager BSCAP
"This song was not actually stolen as is was the general sentiment of our Belizean people, it is public domain, so because there is no intellectual property, no owner, anyone can use the work without obtaining permission."
Vernon's daughter acknowledges its folk roots but says her mother made it her own:
Juliet Vernon Austin, Leela's Daughter
"Ding ding walla walla, just that little segment of that song has been a tradition in our country for many years, maybe I would say over a century, even before Miss Leela. That is why she has been working on retrieving the traditional sounds and music of the Belize Creole culture. However, she went on and made an entire song around that one little song and she called it a slave chant in which she called back to mother Africa and saying that she hasn't heard from mother Africa in a long time."
Indeed, Leela Vernon turned it into a call to the ancestors - a tribute to her powers of cultural recall and representation - but Kimberly Flores has made it into a kind of cultural crossover song:
Melissa Zuniga, BSCAP
"A lot of people only seem to be familiar with Miss Leela's Vernon. It has been creating tension and uproar about this new work. It's translated into a different language based on existing lyrics and existing melody, but it is a new version of that work."
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So it's a fair independent production and we are wasting our breathes criticizing it, a waste of time?"
Melissa Zuniga, BSCAP
"Essentially."
And Zuniga says, rather than trying to fight what is a fair use, we should celebrate the homage - but the Vernon family differs:
Melissa Zuniga, BSCAP
"You know it's just appreciation for the work that has been created to honor one of our Belizean cultural icons, in essence that is what has been done."
Juliet Vernon Austin, Leela's Daughter
"If you're going to make money off it send wah two cents fu wi over here. That's is how its done. You just don't take people's work and say you did that and you develop that music, you develop that sound, because everybody know that's traditional creole brukdown music and creole brukdown music is only made in the country of Belize. It's nowhere else in the Caribbean. Belize creole brukdown music is Belizean."
You can find all three versions of the song at 7newsbelize.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy4fJX9OKGk
