20 pieces of trivia you need to know about Star Wars

The lead singer of Toto is John Williams’ son

We’ve talked already about John Williams’ incredible score for the Star Wars movies, but did you know that his son, Joseph Williams, is the lead singer of the band Toto?

Joseph collaborated with his father on part of the score for Return of the Jedi and wrote the English lyrics for the most famous song of the Ewoks, “Yub Nub.” ILM sound designer Ben Burtt contributed the Ewokese lyrics. Unfortunately, they do not roughly translate as I bless the rains down on Endor.

Yub Nub means freedom, with the English lyrics going “Freedom, we got freedom;
And now that we can be free, Come on and celebrate.” A better party we’ve never been invited to.

Unfortunately, however, “Yub Nub” was replaced in the 1997 Special Editions by the (to be fair, equally great) track “Victory Celebration,” one of many changes made for these re-releases, including a brief shot of Luke hugging fellow pilot Wedge Antilles.

The word Ewok is never actually spoken in the series, with the first reference to them appearing in the credits. Similarly, the most famous of all Ewoks, Wicket, played by Warwick Davis, is only mentioned by name in the credits. Kenny Baker was supposed to play Wicket but was ill on the day of filming — he did get to play the Ewok who steals the Stormtrooper’s speed bike though, so swings and roundabouts.

Several of the Ewok lines are reportedly in the Filipino language Tagalog, but most were actually inspired by the Kalmyk language spoken by Buddhist tribes in Russia. C-3PO could understand Ewokese, despite describing it as a “primitive language.” You, too, can learn Ewokese here, on the Star Wars Wikia, if you are so inclined.

Why not? It’d be an excellent party trick and if we know one thing about Ewoks, it’s that they throw a fantastic kiki.