Hasa Diga Eebowai (from The Book of Mormon)

Does it mean, "No worries for the rest of your days"? Kind of... This is one of the most shocking, funniest, and perhaps deepest songs in all of musical theater. The makers of "South Park" have created this delightful bit of blasphemy. Host writer/composer David Rackoff takes a close look at the music, lyrics, and context of this song. And we discuss who exactly should be offended by it. The answers may surprise you!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Nothing Like Broadway podcast.
I am writer-composer David Rackoff, the writer-composer of the upcoming Off-Broadway Musical Nothing
Like Broadway, and this is Nothing Like Broadway, the podcast, where each week we pick a song
for musical theater, and then we pick it apart to find out how the lyrics work, how the music
works, how it all works together in context to help tell the story of the show.
A quick warning, this episode will contain lots of foul language because this song contains
lots of foul language.
And so today we are doing Hasa Diga Eebowai from The Book of Mormon.
There isn't enough food to eat, Hasadiga Iboai, people are starving in the street, Hasadiga
Iboai.
So this song occurs about a quarter of the way through Act 1.
The Book of Mormon really quickly is the story of these two Mormon missionaries from America,
one of whom is this very uptight handsome, by the rules kind of guy, and the other is
a short, heavy, nerdy, overly enthusiastic, kind of dweeby guy, and they are an unlikely
pair, they don't really get along for most of the show, and they are very naive American
Mormon missionaries who are sent to Uganda, which obviously is a place that has a lot
of problems, like some of the postings for the missionaries are like Orlando or Arizona
or Paris, you know, very sort of fun vacationy places for these two young guys, and they're
like 19 or something to go to.
These two get sent to probably the most difficult location in the world for them to try to proselytize
and convert local people there to their religion.
And so the main premise of the show is that they are very naive and they encounter real,
real problems in Uganda when they get there.
And then they end up having lots of adventures and struggles, but in a strange way, they
sort of both lose some of their confidence in the strictures of their religion, but also
take the spirit of their religion and end up sort of kind of trying to do some good eventually,
and the confident cocky one ends up taking a backseat to the dweebie nerdy one who ends
up really kind of seeing the world from the perspective of the Ugandans and I think genuinely
trying to make a difference there.
And so it is a comedy comedy comedy show.
It's written by Matt Parker and Trace Stone, who are the creators of South Park, and Robert
Lopez, who did the music for Avenue Q and has gone on to do, I think, Frozen and stuff.
So let's go back for a minute to when it opened.
I saw it in LA on the first time it toured through there and it was a huge hit right off the bat
and it got like unbelievably rave reviews, which was sort of surprising because you're
thinking like, okay, it's the South Park guys, is it just going to be like fart jokes?
And the answer is no, it is not.
It is much more intense and also more deep than a lot of South Park, although South Park
is great too.
The song takes place shortly after when these two Mormon missionaries, Elder Price, who's
the handsome cocky one, and Elder Cunningham, who is the dweeby one, they are really excited
to see what Uganda's going to be like.
And in fact, earlier when they get assigned Uganda as their location, Elder Cunningham
says, oh, like Lion King, which gets a big laugh because then we realize, oh, okay.
So they think they're going to the Lion King version of Africa and they're actually going
to presumably go to the actual real life, much prettier place that is not this fantastical
magical Disney cartoon.
And so that's the seed of the song is it's like showing you not like Lion King.
It uses the Lion King as its main point of reference because that is the main point of
reference for these two characters and kind of also for the audience, you know, like when
we think of Africa and musicals, you know, you go right to Lion King.
So when the boys arrive there, their luggage gets stolen and they are, you know, shocked
to see what the conditions on the ground are actually like.
And a man from the village in Uganda that they are at welcomes them in and tries to
explain their way of thinking to these two American Mormon missionary boys.
So the boys are complaining about all these bad things that have happened to them, like
the luggage got taken.
The local Ugandan man says, oh, we have a phrase to help deal with that.
It's haas adiga iboi.
Raise your hands to the sky and say haas adiga iboi.
And the boys are like, oh, it's like Hakuna Matata in the Lion King.
And he's like, yeah, kind of.
And it is kind of like Hakuna Matata, which means in the Lion King movie, no worries for
the rest of your days.
And so he's like, it's kind of that.
And so everyone starts chanting haas adiga iboi and they get the Mormon boys to participate.
And so they're saying haas adiga iboi.
And then in one of the funnier moments in any show that I've seen, Elder Price, who's
the sharper of the two Mormon boys, is like, what exactly does that mean?
Because he's starting to catch on that maybe this isn't quite cool for them to be saying.
And the man says, I'll just play you that part because it's very funny.
Excuse me, sir, but what exactly does that phrase mean?
Well, let's see.
Iboi means God and haas adiga means fuck you.
So I guess in English, it would be fuck you.
God.
Haas adiga iboi.
And so that's when Elder Price first realizes, oh, this is something we shouldn't be saying.
The audience has kind of picked up on this before he even asked.
You kind of get that there's something that's going to be not totally right about it.
And then Elder Price asks and finds out the clip that we just heard.
And then that goes on for another about minute.
Elder Cunningham, who has not heard what the actual translation is and what he's saying,
is just like getting into it and dancing around with the local people, saying this over and over again.
And it's really funny.
I mean, this whole song is really, this whole show is really funny.
It's a great show.
But it's really funny because the audience gets it and then Elder Price gets it.
And the very last person to get it is Cunningham, who's kind of the dim,
but enthusiastic bulb in this situation.
I don't know how a bulb is enthusiastic, but you get my point.
And so it's this dramatic irony, basically, of the audience
knowing something more than what the characters know.
And it's really funny watching them catch on and then watching Elder Cunningham
make a blasphemous fool of himself for like a minute.
And it's one of my favorite things to do is like to have the audience like one step ahead
of where the characters are.
Nothing like Broadway, the musical that I wrote that is coming to off Broadway this year has a lot of that.
There's just a lot of situations where the audience knows
like 30 seconds or a minute before the character is on stage.
And it's a really fun thing to do as a writer and as an audience member.
It's fun just to be a part of that where you, like as a community, as the audience
is laughing at something that the characters on stage are not yet privy to.
And you can also do it, you know, with serious things.
But the idea is that it's just really, really fun to have the audience sort of congeal
as this wiser body of humanity than the foolish people
were watching on stage, which is, you know, what comedy classically is about.
Lord, what fools these mortals be?
I think that's from it's a running stream.
People are foolish, but at the end they are kindhearted and have a good result.
That having been said, what's happening in the audience,
I saw it when it first came to LA.
I didn't know that much about it.
I knew that I liked South Park.
I knew that it was like a hot ticket and I knew that it was going to be edgy.
But there's edgy and then there's edgy.
I remember sitting in the audience when this song, when they were like, fuck you, God.
I was like, whoa.
And like, you could just feel a chill go across the audience.
Like everyone's jaw is on the floor.
Now it's like a touristy show and it's been running for, you know, 15 years or something.
But at the time it was still something where, you know, a lot of the theater
growing audience, especially like in LA or on tour, are older people, more
conservative people, but you sort of feel like it has the imprimatur of success on
it, of mainstream success.
And so you feel like, well, how edgy can it really be?
And the answer is very edgy.
You have the whole stage full of people going, fuck you, God, over and over and over again.
Sometimes they're saying it in the Ugandan, Hasidiki, Ibuai.
Sometimes they're just literally saying, fuck you, God.
And it was really, really shocking.
Like some people walked out at this point during this song.
A couple of people walked out.
It was a big theater, but a couple of people walked out.
Some people were not.
And nobody was laughing at first.
It took like a few seconds for people to start being like, OK, all right.
Book of Mormon.
I see you.
I'm OK.
I'm on for the ride.
And most people were on for the ride.
I was on for the ride, but I really was just like, you know, it takes a lot to
shock me. I'm not a easily shockable person.
I'm not Mormon.
I'm not going to be like personally offended, but it is still real shocking.
So after a little bit, it goes from silence to shock to titters to people are
howling because it's so funny.
It's a really risky way to write.
Like this is a really brave form of comedy that Trey Parker and Matt Stone
and Robert Lopez are doing here.
And it creates a real communal theatrical experience.
Like sometimes when you are watching a play or a movie or a musical,
you sort of just get lost up in it and you sort of almost feel like you're just
inhabiting the world.
And sometimes you are very aware that you're in an audience surrounded by
people, and that's part of what's exciting about theater.
In high school, we learned about the willing suspension of disbelief,
which is sometimes part of it, but sometimes in a stage, musical or play,
part of it is that we have not suspended our disbelief.
We are now for a couple of minutes aware that this is all really happening
in real time and there are all these people around me and how is everyone
going to react to this?
Another thing that makes this acceptable to most people is that it's incredibly
edgy, but it's not making fun of the Ugandans, which is a very, very fine
line to walk.
And I think that they've done a couple of tweaks here and there in the last
couple of years to just be extra careful that they're not making fun of the
Ugandans. It's making fun of the naivete of the two Mormon boys.
And it's not exactly making fun of Mormonism, really.
Like they're pretty careful about not totally making fun of the religion
of the Latter-day Saints Mormon Church.
It really is about the sort of white savior and naive optimism
that they're making fun of.
And like that is really most of what we are laughing at.
We'll talk a little bit more later about the Mormon Church
reacting to the show in a really interesting way.
But the other thing as far as context that this song does,
this is sort of the hinge point of the show where it goes from the first four
or five scenes and songs are all taking place from the point of view
of the American Mormon kids.
And all of a sudden now we are switching over now that we've arrived in Uganda,
where we're going to stay for the rest of the show.
Now it really is the Ugandan's world.
And the kids are the fish out of water who are wrong in how they thought
the world was.
It's switching where the center of the show is and who the center of the show is.
And the center of the show is the Ugandans and their lives and their struggles.
And so that's a pretty heavy lift for a song, especially one that is incredibly
funny, incredibly shocking and also catchy and silly and fun.
And so it's a pretty amazing song.
Like this song, if this song didn't work, the show wouldn't work.
Or the show would just be a much softer show, like a much more silly,
just a comedy comedy.
This elevates it into a higher level of theater, basically.
You can't overstate how hard the song would have been to song spot.
Like we talked about song spotting, where you were figuring out where the song
to the show are going to be and what they're going to be.
There obviously needs to be a welcome to Uganda song.
This is the most extreme version of it that really tells you what the show
is going to be from here on out.
So musically, this song is a complete riff on Hakuna Matata
from The Lion King and also a little bit the circle of life from Lion King.
And it's a pretty simple song.
So basically one of the things about this song and also the Lion King songs
is that they're written sort of in like a kind of standard sort of pop,
pretty basic sort of way.
I mean, you know, Elton John wrote the music to Lion King, so it's like, great,
he's great, but he's not like particularly interested in African styles of music.
And so he wrote the songs, apparently Elton John in Lion King wrote the songs
more as like pop songs and then Hans Zimmer, the orchestrator and some other
people involved helped to make them sound authentic to Africa in The Lion King.
And they're basically borrowing all of that stuff for this song to make
it sound with the chanting and the instrumentation and the harmonies.
All have a very sort of authentic African kind of sound.
It's sort of a photocopy of a photocopy from the authenticish sound
that Hans Zimmer and people gave to Elton John's music in The Lion King.
Here, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez basically did the same thing.
They sort of wrote a catchy, light, bouncy song.
And then the orchestrator and arranger came in and made them sound very African.
And that's part of what the fun is of this song.
One of the big laughs for me in this song was when the townspeople first start
chanting in a way that sounds very Lion King, very authentic, because you're like,
oh, God, because there's a world where it's the South Park people.
So there's a world where it's just going to be goofy songs
and they're going to have some weird stereotypes of Africans or just like
it's just going to be completely silly.
This is like, oh, no, no, we are really going to have
another drink dances that seem to me, you know, what do I know?
But it seems like they're really taking the dignity of the Ugandan
seriously, musically and dance wise.
They play a little bit of what that sounds like at that moment.
So this is the first time that we really hear the African harmonies.
All right, so let's talk about the lyrics for this song.
And just before we go further, because I'm about to gush about this song,
there are some sloppy technical lyric things here in the song.
Like most of the show of the Book of Mormon is actually very, very well
crafted and like perfect rhymes, perfect scans, really good music
that sounds like old Broadway.
This song, there's a lot of false rhymes because they're going for the joke.
And it's, you know, it's something that I can absolutely forgive in a comedy
like this, where it's just about this really complicated story hinge point
that they are trying to create.
And also it has to be funny and it has to be authentic in a way that gives
the people their dignity and shocks the two Mormon missionary boys
and also everybody sitting in the audience.
So, you know, all is forgiven if you're going for the joke and you get the joke.
Fine.
So Mifalla, who is the town sort of spokesperson who's talking to our Mormon
boy heroes says there isn't enough food to eat.
Hasadiga Iboai.
People are starving in the street.
Hasadiga Iboai.
So eat street, perfect rhyme.
And it's really, it just sets up.
Okay, so there's real problems.
People are starving, not enough food to eat.
I mean, you could, if you wanted to be an asshole about it, you could say
there isn't enough food to eat.
People are starving in the street is kind of saying the same thing.
So like, you know, again, that's not what we're doing today.
Today is not about me picking apart lyrics because it's very effective.
And also you don't want it to be too dense because there's a very complicated
idea that we're trying to get the audience to understand.
So it's okay to repeat yourself, which is basically what there isn't enough food
to eat and people are starving in the street, both meaning the same thing.
So then the follow up couplet to that is we've had no rain in several days.
Hasadiga Iboai.
And 80% of us have AIDS.
Hasadiga Iboai.
So again, not a perfect rhyme.
Days, AIDS doesn't quite rhyme, but it really ups the ante to all of a sudden
we're getting AIDS involved in Africa.
Things are getting serious.
We're now realizing, okay, this isn't just a South Park episode.
These are real people who have real problems.
Many young girls here get circumcised.
Their clits get cut right off.
Weio.
And so we say up to the sky, Hasadiga Iboai.
So all of a sudden now we're into female circumcision, which is a real
dark, heavy thing to be talking about in a comedy song, but it's sort of letting us
know before we get to the actual reveal of what the phrase is.
These are people with real serious problems.
As the song gets bouncier and bouncier and more celebratory, the
circumstances that they're dealing with get more and more serious.
So Mifala says, now you try.
Tilt your head up to the sky.
List off all the bad things in your life.
And so then the two Mormon boys start listing things that are, we can already
tell these are very small potatoes compared to what the actual people who are
in this village are dealing with.
So somebody took our luggage away.
The plane was crowded and the bus was late.
So again, fake rhyme away, late, doesn't really rhyme.
And then Mifala says, when the world is getting you down, there's nobody else to blame.
Raise your middle finger to the sky and curse his rotten name.
And that's when we as the audience realize, oh, now I get what he's saying.
And then elder Price is like, what?
What?
And then elder coming in and clue this in the background, just keep singing, keep singing it.
And then we get to the bridge, basically, of the song where Mifala is introducing
all the different characters in the town, which is very much like in tradition when
they're like, here's the sons, here's the daughters, here's the mama and the papa.
And also like in the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, where it's like, here goes
the bicker with this tray like always.
And you're introducing all the different people in the town in just sort of like a
local color, sort of way a ton of musicals have this, especially older
Rajesh and Hammerstein era, golden era musicals do accept the riff on it, which is
fucking brilliant, is here's the butcher, he has AIDS.
Here's the teacher, she has AIDS.
Here's the doctor, he has AIDS.
Which is so funny.
It's very South Park, but it really is like, it's so knowledgeable of
Broadway history and Broadway styles, but updating it in a way rather than having
it be this crazy, rhymy thing, it's just, there's no joke.
It's just this person has AIDS.
This person has AIDS.
This person has AIDS.
This person has AIDS.
There's a little pull the rug out thing where he says, here's my doctor.
She has a wonderful disposition.
She's all I have left in the world.
And if either of you lays a hand on her, I will give you my AIDS.
Which is very funny.
Introduces the third lead, which is his daughter who becomes the third main
character in the show.
There's a couple of things they're doing here.
So they're saying there's the butcher, there's the teacher, there's the doctor.
So like just in case you thought these were like savages who are, you know,
whatever, it's like, no, no, we've got like a butcher, we've got a teacher, we've
got a doctor.
You know, we are regular people who are in this circumstance.
And then very, very smartly on this reversal, this versus it's a joke.
Here's the doctor.
He has AIDS.
Here's my daughter.
She has a wonderful disposition.
So it's just a joke that he's not saying that this daughter has AIDS, which, you
know, also sort of makes it okay that she's the love interest later in the show,
I guess.
But by using the phrase, wonderful disposition, and especially the word
disposition, he's using big English vocabulary.
So it's like saying, he's not an idiot.
These people are not idiots.
These people are not savages.
This guy has a really healthy vocabulary.
These are just their circumstances.
And it's such a nice way of making sure that we are all on board as an
audience and that the two boys are on board with, these are not dumb,
dumb, who need your white savouring.
These are people who have real problems.
And so it's a very clever lyric choice to have him use the phrase, wonderful
disposition.
The boys sort of realize, and we as an audience realize that these are not
people intentionally being blasphemous.
These are people who are coping with their circumstances.
But then this is a comedy song in a comedy show.
And so how do you up the ante for that?
And so what happens next?
All the Ugandans basically come to the front of the stage with sort of harsh
lighting on them, speaking directly to the audience.
If you don't like what we say, try living here a couple of days.
Again, a false rhyme, but that's fine.
Watch all your friends and family die.
Hasadiga Ibowai.
And that is where they're like challenging us.
Like we dare you audience, people who paid $200 a seat, who have gray hair.
And, you know, this is part of their subscription, who are like offended.
It's like, no, no.
How dare you judge us?
Try walking a mile in our shoes before you judge us.
And it's very like Brechtian confrontational.
Take you out of the moment.
But it's also like, whoa, like, yeah, I guess, I guess who am I to judge these
people?
And it's very brave theater.
Like it's bold and brave.
And then as far as progression goes, up in the ante is when God fucks you in their
butt. Hasadiga Ibowai.
Fuck God right back in his cunt.
I don't hear the C word very often in a musical, like a fun, silly musical about
Mormon boys and little ties.
So that is sort of shocking.
I mean, if you're, you know, a South Park fan, it's not that shocking, but it's
still pretty shocking.
And saying, fuck you God in the ass, mouth and cunt is, you know, like it's hard to,
I can't imagine it would imagine that they were like, okay, what is the most?
Like, let's just get it out.
What is the most offensive thing we could say here to really make our point and
also to sort of let the audience know that, okay, we've got the, you know, we've
ripped the bandit off.
It's hard to imagine getting more offensive than that.
And then they say it over and over again, facing the audience in that same sort of
confrontational Brechtian way of fuck you God in the ass, mouth and cunt.
Fuck you God in the ass, mouth and cunt.
And it's very, very, and they just keep going.
And then the end is just, fuck you, fuck you God, fuck you, fuck you God.
I mean, just looking at it on, even like me, I'm not religious, but like just
saying that feels like a little bit like, oh, I don't feel great saying this.
But it is such a great way of letting you know that this is not just a silly
comedy.
It's shocking, but it's not shock comedy.
It's satire.
And that's the sort of main point that the audience needs to understand at this
point in the show.
Is that they're not just watching a silly comedy, like the producers, which I
absolutely adore the producers.
I'm not citing it, but this is a different genre.
This is satire.
And so this is where it goes from like, it's not just fart jokes.
There probably are some fart jokes, but this is actual social satire talking
about, you know, people and their different worldviews and how we view each other.
Like there's big stuff in this.
Like this is the kind of drama stuff that we study in school just done in a
very goofy musical theater, South Park-y kind of way.
And so that informs how you watch the rest of the show.
You're now being like, OK, this is satire.
We're not just going to be making fun of Ugandan's, which is great, but we're
also not totally making fun of Mormons.
If you're a fan of South Park, which I am, you will know that they had a whole
episode on Mormonism years before the book of Mormon came out.
So you sort of know their feelings about Mormons and they grew up around a lot
of Mormons and Mormon friends.
And, you know, their thinking is that the episode was very, very funny
of South Park when the Book of Mormon was coming out.
I was like, that's weird.
Didn't they already kind of say everything they needed to say about
Mormons when they did their South Park episode about it?
But no, they just went off on a completely different direction.
But their feelings are basically it's to just to put it into my own words
is that some of the teachings are a little silly, like with the golden plates
and some of the specifics, you know, as they are in all religions, have their
silly things, if you really look at it.
But these are generally well-meaning people who want to do good
in the world, who seem like they have very happy families genuinely.
And they seem like good people who are doing good things.
I mean, you know, except, you know, if you're gay or there's a lot of
exceptions to this, or if you're black before the seventies or whatever.
Like, I don't know, it's like officially.
But the point is the attitude that Tate Parker and Matt Stone have
toward the Mormon religion is that like it's a pretty effective way of
living your life as a good person, even though some of the details are silly
and some of the effects of it on certain kinds of people are not great.
But overall, it's not like hateful toward Mormons.
And one of the things that I noticed and that probably most people notice
when you go see the Book of Mormon, I don't know if that's still the case,
but at the time was the Mormon Church had an ad, a full page ad in the playbill
saying something like, if you like the musical, try reading the book.
Which when I saw that I was like, because I read that before I saw the show.
So I didn't really know quite how dark they were going to go with it.
But I was like, wow, that's really cool.
They did that, you know, like that the Mormon Church was like, OK,
rather than just completely protesting it and making this like us against them
kind of war, they're like, you know what, even though the show is, you know,
not what they would probably ideally represent themselves with,
there's enough here that is positive that we are going to put an ad in it.
And so having seen that before the show, that the Mormon Church actually had
an ad that wasn't like we stand against everything that the show says,
it's just like, hey, if you enjoy the musical, try reading the book.
And then seeing this song with her like, you got in the ass,
mouth and kind, it's like, wow, that just really like sort of.
I don't know, it just it makes the Mormon Church seem cooler than I had
previously thought, I guess.
I mean, it didn't, you know, join and become a Mormon, but it definitely
lets you see that even the Mormon Church is open to the possibility
that this is not just the South Park guys pissing all over their religion.
It is a piece of social satire that has more to say about humanity
than just Mormons are bad and Ugandans are dumb.
It's like, no, no, it's not that.
It's that different people have different world views and different experiences.
How do we coexist and make a better world?
Which is, you know, what this show I think is about and what the song is setting up.
So if you, you know, again, I've said this a million times in the show,
I do not support bootlegs, but if you are in a YouTube kind of mood,
definitely go look up this song because it's really fun to see it progress
moment to moment as the audience starts to clue into what's happening.
And, you know, it's a little bit less.
I saw the Book of Mormon again a few years ago on Broadway,
and it definitely was a little bit more because it's such a tourist show now
and it's been going for so long and everybody who was going to see it
on the cutting edge already saw it.
So it's a little bit, it felt a little bit safer just because if it's
been running on Broadway for 15 years, how dangerous could it be?
Because it really felt dangerous when I first saw it.
I was like, whoa, but it still is a great show.
If you have a chance to go see it, it's a really fun show.
But in the meantime, don't tell my sentry, but you might want to look up
some Hasidiki Eboi on YouTube because it's such a fun song and it does
so much heavy lifting for the tone of the show, for the message of the show,
for the story of the show and for the characters in the show, which is,
you know, what more can you ask from a song that basically sounds like
it's going to be a silly joke, but it's actually a very, very muscular
song that gets a lot of work done for the show.
All right.
So this has been the Nothing Like Broadway podcast.
And if you enjoy the Nothing Like Broadway podcast, I bet you will
enjoy Nothing Like Broadway, the musical, which is coming to off
Broadway this fall.
And in the meantime, please follow us at Nothing Like Broadway on Instagram.
You can email me nothinglikebroadway at gmail.com if you have a suggestion
for a song for us to pick apart or if I got anything factually wrong.
And in the meantime, let's go out listening to a little bit of the original
Broadway cast of the Book of Mormon, singing Hasa Diga Eebowai.