Deceased Baby Beluga Whale Is Not The Namesake of Beloved Children’s Song, Says Raffi

Children's songwriter Raffi Cavoukian took to Twitter Thursday to clear up some misunderstanding about his song "Baby Beluga," after the death of Kavna, a 46-year-old beluga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium who inspired Cavoukian's song more than 30 years ago.

In several Twitter conversations with people who had expressed sadness over the news of Kavna's passing, Cavoukian urged bloggers to be clear about the fact that Kavna was only an inspiration for his song. 'Baby Beluga,' a paean to an anonymous beluga, swimming "in the deep blue sea," "so wild," and "so free," was not about specifically Kavna, or any beluga in particular, said Cavoukian, but merely about a hypothetical beluga.

“due to false babybelugaisdead reporting, i'm getting v sad tweets from people • bloggers, show some respect—put your words right.#Kavna,” tweeted Cavoukian to his followers on Thursday. "The song's about an imaginary whale," repeated Cavoukian, in dozens of tweets.

* B A B Y B E L U G A song is about an IMAGINARY whale ~ with whom millions feel connected • thanks to Kavna who inspired the song : )

— Raffi Cavoukian (@Raffi_RC) August 9, 2012

But not all of his pleas seemed successful in getting the message across. Huffington Post writer Lisa Belkin got locked into a lengthy exchange with Cavoukian over the placement of quotation marks (or rather, lack thereof) in her article, "Baby Beluga, And the Soundtrack of Our Children's Lives." When the songwriter objected that the first line was misleading, Belkin shot back that she had already made it clear and would not be changing it.

Cavoukian eventually relented on Belkin, taking his case to the next Twitter user. Somewhere in between came the dampened realization, "maybe repeating false news blogs reveals that people read tweets not for comprehension : )"

Two hours after his conversation with Belkin, however, Cavoukian was still at it. He personally sent out another nine tweets correcting the error, in between graciously thanking fans for their support, before finally exhorting followers to read his autobiography for the full story.