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Ievan polkka

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Ievan Polkka or Ievan Polokka, (Finnish for "Eva's Polka") is a popular Finnish song with lyrics written in the early 1930s by Eino Kettunen to a traditional Finnish polka tune. The name is commonly misspelled Levan polkka.

Performers

Description

The song takes the point of view of a young man. It tells the story of Ieva (Eva in Savo dialect) who steals away to someone else's house where everyone is dancing to a polka, and where she meets the handsome young man. When he takes her home, her angry mother is waiting for them, but he tells her straight out to "stop that noise": No matter what she does, Ieva and he "are going to make a match".

Language

The song is sung in Savo, the Finnish language dialect of eastern central Finland.

The intermezzo, which was used in the flash movie described below, is just phonetically inspired gibberish with some Finnish words in it. It is not part of the original song by Eino Kettunen, but rather is introduced by Loituma.

The text of the intermezzo varies from one performance to another, and is not listed on lyrics pages. It is basically the same as scat in jazz.

Popularity

This song is best known from an a cappella performance by the Finnish quartet Loituma, first released in their debut album "Loituma" in 1995. The album was released in the USA as "Things of Beauty" in 1998.

The song, popular in Finland but previously unknown to the rest of the world, became better-known on the Internet in April/May 2006 because of the flash cartoon 'Loituma Girl'.

This song has also been used in movies, including popular Russian movie Osobennosti natsionalnoy okhoty (Особенности национальной охоты).

Cartoon

Main article: Loituma Girl

A flash animation including this song has gained popularity on the Internet, starring a character named Orihime Inoue from the popular Japanese anime Bleach. For the cartoon the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) have been used; they have no meaning and are therefore not included in the official lyrics (see the Language section). This is overlooked in most cases by the users who post the lyrics, often causing confusion.

See also

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