The virtual party celebrating Wikipedia’s 25th birthday on January 15th concluded with the premiere of the “Birthday Cake Song”, specially commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation and performed by members of the WikiOrchestra and WikiChoir.
The idea: turning a Wikipedia page into a song
The idea for this song was shared in our group chat on December 4th of last year. Kate and Lukas explained that the organising team for the virtual party had asked to include a custom piece of music. Since we couldn’t all gather to sing together, it was suggested to combine video recordings of each member singing, and everyone immediately agreed.
On new year’s eve, we finally received information about the concept of the song. The plan was to remotely record a video with music set to a string of names of various cakes from around the world. Most of the cake names were traditionally Western, so it was suggested to add more Asian names. There was a restriction that the names had to be from the Wikipedia article “List of cakes,” and I suggested the Japanese “Castella.”
Rehearsing and recording
The final draft, sent on January 4th, contained a whopping 86 cake names. Madeleines and chocolate cake were easy to recognize, but there are many that I’ve never heard of or seen before, such as Bánh bò and Bánh cáy (Vietnam), Medivnyk (Ukraine), and Mané pelado (Brazil)! And while the song starts out slowly, the end is like a tongue twister and I got my tongue all tied up…
Still, I managed to practice the lyrics and it was finally time to record. I decorated my kitchen like a stage with daffodils, a Japanese new year’s flower, lined up stock pots decorated with more new year’s decorations, set up my smartphone for recording on a storage cart, and pinned a WikiWomen brooch on my chest. I played the audio through headphones on my tablet. It was my first time doing something like this, but after practicing a few times, I mustered up the courage and pressed the ‘record’ button. I was nervous and it was hard to smile, but I managed to finish and breathed a sigh of relief. I sent in the files by the deadline on the 7th. In the meantime, various recording ideas from the participants were flying around in the group chat.
The virtual premiere
The virtual party finally arrived on the 15th, the birthday of Wikipedia, and started at midnight Japan time. With everyone excited and chatting in the group chat, the song began with Bobby’s keyboard intro. Everyone’s voices had been mixed together, images of the various cakes were displayed, and our singing faces appeared one after another. Seeing the scenes from the singers’ kitchens was fun, and the excitement grew with the addition of Ferfive’s lovely soprano voice, recorded in a Wikimedia apron and hat, Lukas’ playful clarinet, and Johnny’s percussion. Finally, Ferfive and Misosoof’s virtuoso ‘rap’ delivery left us speechless, bringing the fun-filled music to a close. After the party ended, we were delighted to see the usernames of all 15 members who performed recognised on the screen.
Members from over 10 countries gathered virtually to complete the song in a very short space of time. We would like to thank the organising team for their wonderful editing, and all the Wikimedians around the world who listened to us. Now we are excited to make more WikiOrchestra plans for Wikimania 2026 in Paris!
The Birthday Cake Song video here:
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