Post #405201 by DJ Terence Gunn on Sun, Aug 31, 2008 6:03 PM

The ring-tailed monkeys from South America were the monkeys of choice for most 20th Century organ grinders, who were more often than not Italian.

Regarding the monkey wearing a fez, most of the organ grinder monkeys were dressed up in costumes with hats, and some may have been costumed with a fez with an embroidered Arabic waist coat and poofy trousers. More often than not, though, it was a tiny bellboy's hat that the monkey wore, if the monkey wore a hat at all. Some may have been furnished with a tassle. It could very well be that an artist misinterpretted the bellboy hat as a fez, or perhaps even was inspired by it to illustrate the monkey wearing a fez. But the fez-wearing monkey has no significance to it whatsoever, no link to anything; and I believe it was one (though I doubt anyone can be sure) of those many cases where something was misinterpretted, imitated, and evolved into an image that began showing up more frequently by different artists; and I believe that's why 'tiki artists' use the image today: somebody else used the image before them. However.....

On the same token, as far as todays 'tiki art', the fez has had its place in Lounge culture since the 1990s; and the monkey is representative of an exotic creature from an often exotic locale, and has been illustrated in past Polynesian restaurant and bar artwork for menus, logos, ads, mugs, plaques, etc. Put a fez on a monkey, put the monkey at the seat of a tropical bar, put a tiki mug in the monkey's paw/hand and, not only is it funny, but it seems to suddenly make sense. And we all of us turn a bit into monkeys (don't we?) after a few tropical cocktails.

[ Edited by: DJ Terence Gunn 2008-08-31 18:04 ]