Pan-XOTIK-Da: Of Pandas and Punctuation
Pandas: Pontiffs of Punctuation
Eats, shoots, and leaves! (Oh, the Panda…)
Eats bush and leaves! (Oh! The Panda!)
Eats shoots and leaves! (Oh? The panda?)
Eats bush, and leaves! (Oooooh! Panda!)
Lyrics from “Pan-XOTIK-Da” by Randy Wong, © 2003
Surely we all know that “pandas live in China”, but how often is it apparent that those big black-and-white raccoon bears are also master grammarians?
The Story of Pan-XOTIK-Da
In late 2003, WAITIKI’s Prof. Humming Flower, a.k.a. Randy Wong decided it was time to honor the bears of China with an exotic tiki pop song of his own composing. A catchy tune that starts in 6/4 time, Pan-XOTIK-Da marries Sino-kitsch with modern jazz … all while singing about the virtues of bush and bamboo. The song’s chorus (see above) was inspired by a humorous treatise on punctuation (and its modern deviations) by Lynne Truss. Wong intertwined a similar joke regarding koalas and courtesans to give Pan-XOTIK-Da its famous allegory. (Please note that the correct pronunciation is pan • ZOT • ic • da).
Listen to Pan-XOTIK-Da
Links to Pandas and Punctuation
- PandaFix.com One-stop source for pictures and videos
- The Wikipedia entry for Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Connections to Exotica and Other Musical Traditions
Pan-XOTIK-Da’s use of allegory (the notion that an extended or metaphorical meaning lies beyond what is literally stated) in its lyrics is stylistically appropriate: Allegory is also found throughout Native Hawaiian and Chinese songs, in which depictions of nature often have sexual undertones or subplots. Although Native Hawaiian texts and Chinese texts are wholly unrelated, the intersection of these separate cultures is appropriately linked via WAITIKI’s exploration of exotica.