Sweet Banana (Paul McCartney) - Rhodesian connection?

Cafe Society
1

In the song Hi, Hi, Hi (one of the better McCartney/Wings songs IMO), McCartney sings: “I’m gonna do it to ya/gonna do ya sweet banana”. I always thought this was quite silly, as is the rest of the song, but assumed there may have been some reference behind it. As it turns out, recently I learned that the regimental anthem of the Rhodesian African Rifles was entitled “Sweet Banana.”

You can actually hear the song here, set to a montage of some exceptionally well-equipped black Rhodesian troops marching. (This is the first time I’ve seen Rhodesian soldiers with helmets - does anyone know if the standard Rhodesian “troopie” was issued a helmet?)

Might there be a connection here? Why else would McCartney sing “sweet banana” at that specific point in the song? I mean, he could have put a ton of possible words in that rhyme if he just wanted something to rhyme for those two beats. But the two words he picked were “sweet banana” - a pair of words that, as far as I can tell, only appear in one other piece of music - the Rhodesian African Rifles song.

Does that phrase have some other meaning I’m not aware of? Some strange British sexual reference?

2

This is interesting.

The RAR regimental song “Sweet banana” is almost identical in the rhythms and tunes to a song called “Banana” that is part of the Congolese mass Missa Luba from the belgian colonial era. That (the Missa Luba song) is shorter, and it is described as being a Congolese “soldiers’ song”.

I wonder which of the two was derived from the other? Does anyone know perhaps? The Missa Luba was recorded for the first time (I think) round about 1958.

3

Obviously a reference to Canaan Banana, first president of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Canaan was, of course, the land flowing with milk and honey (hence “sweet”) that was promised by God to the Israelites. The song is thus, when you tease out all the references, a complex Biblical allegory. (Except for the reference to “my polygon,” sometimes misheard as “my body gun”. This of, course, is Paul’s lament for the death of his beloved Norwegian Blue.)

If you play the record backwards you can clearly hear Paul saying “I am too dead. I have been dead for ages, honest!”

4

No, I’m pretty sure the banana in question is Paul’s penis.