Organ Grinders, Kongs and Super Mario Monkey Business

This is a post about monkeys in the Super Mario games, but it’s also one of those where I tried to research a video game thing but ended up learning about a weird cultural institution that I had never questioned before. It’s funny how often that happens. 

For those of you who don’t know, I have a post titled “The Wanted List” that is a collection of all the unsolved mysteries I’ve come across in keeping this site. It’s a mix of names and terms for which we don’t yet have an origin story but also larger cultural questions. For example, sometimes several games seem to be riffing on a specific idea that probably comes from a shared pop culture source that I can’t identify. There’s a preponderance of brainwashed blondes in fighting games, for example — Cammy in Street Fight, Nina in Tekken, Sarah in Virtua Fighter — but I don’t know why this trend exists. By posting about it in “The Wanted List,” maybe someone reading it will help me put two and two together. 

Of course, one of the things I put in the original version had a very obvious answer that several readers pointed out immediately. For years, I’d never understood why the generic monkey enemies in Yoshi’s Island are called Grinders, at least in the English version of the game.

I don’t know if they’re ever referred to as such in the game proper, but the Nintendo Power Player’s Guide for Yoshi’s Island does identify these guys as Grinders.

When I first played Yoshi’s Island back in the day, my primary association with that term was as another name for a submarine sandwich, but I was enough of a Nintendo nerd that I knew of a more literal Grinder in Super Mario World. The associations with the gay hookup app wouldn’t coming along until much later, but I’m going to blame Grindr for the fact that it took so long to realize that the name is a reference to the phenomenon of organ grinders, who in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States were often Italian-American and who often performed alongside a monkey. In fact, it’s pretty easy to see the Yoshi’s Island Grinders as Nintendo nodding toward the fact that Mario himself is kind of an Italian-American stereotype.

In one way, that answers that, but this this connection to organ grinders led me to experience a sense of bewilderment that I, an elder millennial who grew up on old media and new media that references old media, have encountered many times before: Why do I know this thing and how have I never stopped and considered how weird this thing is until now? In this specific instance, I wondered why am I aware of the phenomenon of organ grinders (and their monkeys) when I’ve never seen one in real life. Also, I was curious why I associated this specific job with Italian immigrants when there’s nothing about it that necessarily seems like it would suit people from Italy over people from any other country in the world.

Here, friends, is what I found.

The first street organs are mentioned in the late 1700s. Even this early on, they were associated with Italian culture because the companies that manufactured them were founded by Italians, despite many not living in Italy at the time. Among the most notable were Frati & Co. (based in Berlin), Gavioli (based in Paris) and Foucher-Gasparini (also based in Paris), and in addition to small, portable organs, they also made the giant, room-sized ones you might associate with higher forms of culture. Organ grinders as we know them today didn’t appear until the late 1800s and early 1900s. In case it’s not clear, the term comes from the fact that the person operating a street organ would turn a crank to make the instrument play music. I would liken it to a handheld player piano powered by kinetic energy, as the operator isn’t playing music so much as supplying energy to the device to perform a preprogrammed piece. And because the operation required both his hands, the operator would often perform in the company of a monkey, who had been trained to solicit coins from passersby. 

Illustration of an organ grinder and monkey, dated 1873. Via New York Public Library digital gallery, via Ephemeral New York.

This short documentary explains it all. It was released in 1955, but I have to imagine the day-to-day operations did not change all that much between the late nineteenth century and this point in time.

While organ grinders were beloved by children, adults didn’t think so much of them, and it’s not hard to find reports on either side of the Atlantic decrying the phenomenon as a nuisance verging on a moral panic. Among the more famous names to denounce organ grinders were Charles Babbage, Charles Dickens and George Orwell, the last of whom criticized them in a 1929 article now collected in the tenth volume of his collected works. In short, Orwell truly despised the organ grinders of London.

To ask outright for money is a crime, yet it is perfectly legal to annoy one’s fellow citizens by pretending to entertain them. Their dreadful music is the result of a purely mechanical gesture, and is only intended to keep them on the right side of the law. There are in London around a dozen firms specialising in the manufacture of piano organs, which they hire out for 15 shillings a week. The poor devil drags his instrument around from ten in the morning till eight or nine at night [—] the public only tolerates them grudgingly — and this is only possible in working-class districts, for in the richer districts the police will not allow begging at all, even when it is disguised. As a result, the beggars of London live mainly on the poor.

Orwell does not mention the operators of the organs as being Italian specifically, but the association with this marginalized immigrant group seems very much at the heart of organ grinders’ existence in the United States in general and in New York City in particular. In fact, in his 2002 book about the Manhattan neighborhood Five Points, author Tyler Anbinder claims that fully one in twenty Italian men living there in 1880 worked as an organ grinder — and many others living in different neighborhoods would go to Five Points to procure their organs and monkeys. Ultimately, however, this association led to the end of the phenomenon as well as to crystallization of how it would be remembered by people born after its heyday had passed. 

Famed NYC mayor and future airport namesake Fiorello La Guardia seemed to have a particular aversion toward organ grinders stemming from his status as the son of Italian immigrants. Though born in Greenwich Village, he ended up spending a portion of his childhood in Prescott, Arizona, because his father worked as a bandmaster for the U.S. Army, requiring them to move frequently. Around 1892, Prescott received its first organ grinder, an Italian immigrant. His 1948 autobiography, as quoted in this New York Times blog, recalls that this was not a positive development for him.

I must have been about ten when a street organ-grinder with a monkey blew into town. He, and particularly the monkey, attracted a great deal of attention. I can still hear the cries of the kids: “A dago with a monkey! Hey, Fiorello, you’re a dago too. Where’s your monkey?” It hurt. And what made it worse, along came Dad, and he started to chatter Neapolitan with the organ grinder. … He promptly invited him to our house for a macaroni dinner. The kids taunted me for a long time after that.

Most accounts of La Guardia’s 1935 banning of organ grinders from the streets of NYC don’t take into account his brush with anti-Italian sentiment during his childhood. But given that this story lingered in his memory long enough to make it into his memoirs, it’s hard not to interpret it as a factor in his decision, even despite his stated reasons for doing so. 

Those reasons, per the New York Times:

My feeling in the matter is that the institution of organ grinding has long outlived its purpose. … There was a time when it really was the only means of bringing melodious tunes to the ears of many people. However, about a generation ago, the phonograph came into general use. Still later, the radio came into general use and provided music of all kinds. … As far as music is concerned, the organ grinder no longer fills a needed want.

The piece also notes that La Guardia cited traffic congestion as a factor, but whatever the case — what the mayor actually felt and what the official reason given to the press was — the city’s ban on organ grinding changed the phenomenon from something anyone on the street would have experienced to something that you’d only experience in media either documenting that period of time or calling back to it after the fact. For the life of me, I couldn’t pinpoint what initially taught me about organ grinders (and their monkeys), but it was almost certainly some cartoon that falls into one of these two categories.

I might guess the Popeye short “Organ Grinder’s Swing,” which was released in 1937, when the phenomenon would have still existed in recent memory. 

Seeing Popeye tussle with simians in an urban setting might make you think of Donkey Kong — and with good reason, because the flagship Nintendo title exists because Nintendo tried and failed to make a Popeye arcade game. You might guess that Nintendo, needing to pivot away from Popeye, instead zeroed in on an old New York setting and decided to pit an Italian-looking guy against a monkey as a result of the organ grinder association. The association seems even stronger in the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., where Mario is actively restraining Donkey Kong, all while his nimble son hops around, organ grinder monkey-style, trying to free dear ol’ dad.

This would actually be a perfectly logical conclusion too; it just happens to not be the case. Mario, as he’d eventually come to be called, was never intended to look like an Italian-American person. He was only given a mustache because it was a handy way to visually separate his nose from his mouth given the pixel limitations of sprites back in the day. But that aesthetic choice, per the popular telling, resulted in Nintendo of America employees naming the blue collar hero of Donkey Kong after Mario Segale, landlord of the company’s Washington state warehouse and one of many Italian-Americans to sport a mustache. 

Please note that this is not an image of Mario Segale, because apparently none exist online showing his mustache phase. Instead, I’m giving you this image of Captain Lou Albano from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Fun fact: The handlebar mustache is sometimes called the spaghetti mustache specifically because of its association with Italian men.

Organ grinder or not, the association with old New York has hovered in the background of the Super Mario series for a long time. I’m not sure any Super Mario game has ever explicitly stated that Mario is or once was a resident of NYC, but his association with Brooklyn specifically is one that comes up in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, the live-action Super Mario Bros movie and even the newer animated one, where Brooklyn is shown to be not only home to Mario, Luigi and their family but also Pauline, Spike and other characters we might associate with the series’ pre-Mushroom Kingdom days. Even Super Mario Odyssey’s New Donk City is very much inspired by NYC in both look and name.

So in a weird way, calling the Yoshi’s Island monkeys Grinders makes a full-circle loop, where a character that video games had been gradually distancing from any real world origins — the ending to Yoshi’s Island explicitly shows Mario and Luigi being delivered by the stork to parents living in the Mushroom Kingdom — is put back in association with Italian immigrants, old New York and representation of Italian-Americans in general. The organ grinder (and his monkey) was never an inspiration for any of the Mario games, despite all evidence that might make you assume they were, but they’re close enough the vibe that they ended up getting invoked anyway.

And as a result, I now know the history of organ grinders — in the U.S., in media and kinda-sorta in the Super Mario games.

Not a photo of a real-life Mario and Donkey Kong, contrary to what you might think. (Via the Library of Congress.)

Miscellaneous Notes

Per the terms of what I normally write about on this site, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some naming weirdness with the Super Mario franchise and its various simian friends. While the Kongs are the most famous group attached to this franchise, something odd happened with the non-Kong monkeys — including the Grinders, who in Japan are known Osaru-san (おさるさん), that name coming from the Japanese saru (猿), meaning “monkey,” plus the honorific affixes o- and -san. Which is to say that on the Japanese end of things, organ grinders did not figure into the creation of this character.

The year after Yoshi’s Island hit shelves, Super Mario 64 was released, and you might recall that this game introduced a new, different monkey character: Ukiki (originally Ukkiki), who appears in the Tall, Tall Mountain area of the game and may try to steal Mario’s hat. You might mistake this guy for being a crossover character from Legend of Zelda, as A Link to the Past features a Kiki, monkey  character in the environs of the Palace of Darkness. They’re not meant to be the same character however. They’re just monkeys whose names are inspired by kiki (キーキー), the Japanese rendering of the noise a monkey makes. Whatever the case, the Super Mario 64 monkey and the Yoshi’s monkey are at least initially drawn differently. However, when Super Mario 64 DS was released in 2004, Ukiki was redrawn to resemble the Yoshi’s Island monkey in a way the original did not.

Left: art of a Grinder from Yoshi’s Island. Center: Ukiki as he appears in Super Mario 64. Right: Ukiki now, sporting the Grinder’s big puffy cheeks.

Ever since, non-Kong simians appearing in the Super Mario game have taken on the look of the Yoshi’s Island version but have nonetheless been called Ukiki, as if the distance between these two bands of monkeys had been retconned out of existence. Long live Ukiki, I guess.

But it’s also worth noting that among the beta elements in Yoshi’s Island was a sort of “Grinder Kong,” as it’s come to be known online. It’s basically a bigger, ape-like Grinder who would have thrown barrels.

So clearly the fact that the franchise already had a go-to-simian was something the creators had considered, even if they abandoned it before the final version of the game.

Fiorello La Guardia, the NYC mayor who banned street organs, is notable for a few reasons, but if we’re talking names, it’s notable that he rose to power despite the meaning of his name: Fiorello is literally the diminutive masculine of the Italian fiore, “flower.” His name literally means “little flower,” and that’s unusual by the standards of western masculine names. I’m not sure a  man whose names means that could be elected in the U.S. today, given the ridiculous standards of masculinity.

Finally, I should point out that a beautiful version of street organ music exists in a video game I have a soft spot for: Legend of Mana. Two of the characters appearing in this game are Diddle, a literal anthropomorphic street organ, and Capella, a monkey who loves his music. I think about Diddle’s theme a lot even today. Have a listen to it. I think it’s haunting.