Thanks for the link; it's a great insight into the mind of my favourite musician.
It's interesting how much buzz in particular has emerged from the following 'revelation':
David Wise ('Korg Meets Kong' section, page 1 of the interview linked above) wrote:"I wasn't sure which direction to take things in, so I put together a demonstration tape of three different possible styles for the jungle level. I played these to Tim Stamper, who asked me to take the breaks out between the three pieces. That's the jungle tune."
Everyone's reacting like this is new information, but
Dave's own site features
an interview from nearly two years ago where he shared that 'secret':
David Wise (Interview with Chris Greening of Square Enix Music Online, December 2010) wrote:I actually first started producing compositions for Donkey Kong whilst I was still a freelance musician. I understood how important the Donkey Kong license was to Nintendo, so assumed my work would eventually be replaced by a Japanese composer. However, I was asked to produce three jungle demo tunes, which eventually were concatenated to become the DK Swing. I guess someone thought the music was suitable, as they offered me a full time position at Rare.
I must admit, I only came to know this recently myself (see
this tweet), but it's amazing to see how much attention has been paid to recent re-mention of DK Island Swing's origin in the CVG article.