Misirlou  

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"Misirlou" was rearranged as a solo instrumental guitar piece by American musician Dick Dale in 1962. Dale's father and uncles were Lebanese-American musicians who were a part of the nightclub scene. Although they were Arab, they, like other performers, played the music of all the main cultures which made up the nightclub patrons—that included Greek music and Misirlou. During a performance, Dale was bet by a young fan that he could not play a song on only one string of his guitar. Later that night, he remembered seeing his uncle play "Misirlou" on one string (actually a double string) of the oud. He tried to imitate that style on his guitar, but vastly increased the song's tempo to make it into rock'n'roll, and the result was the famous Dick Dale "Miserlou". It was Dale's version that introduced "Misirlou" to a wider audience in the United States as "Miserlou."

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"Misirlou" is a song from the Eastern Mediterranean region. The earliest known recording of the song is a 1927 Greek rebetiko / tsifteteli composition influenced by Middle Eastern music. There are also Arabic (belly dancing), Armenian, Persian, Indian, and Turkish versions of the song. This song was very popular from the 1920s in the Greek American and Armenian American communities who settled in the United States of America as part of the Ottoman Empire diaspora.

The song was a hit in 1946 for Jan August, an American pianist and xylophonist nicknamed "the one-man piano duet". It gained worldwide popularity through Dick Dale's 1962 American surf rock version, originally titled "Miserlou", which popularized the song in Western popular culture. Various versions have since been recorded, including other surf and rock versions by bands such as the Beach Boys, the Ventures and the Trashmen, as well as international orchestral easy listening (exotica) versions by musicians such as Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. Dale's surf rock version later gained renewed popularity when director Quentin Tarantino used it in his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, and again when it was sampled in the Black Eyed Peas song "Pump It" (2006). The Martin Denny cover also helped the song resurge in popularity, when it was sampled in the Season 2 episode of Mad Men, "The Jet Set". A cover of Dale's surf rock version was included on the Guitar Hero II video game released in 2006.

History

The song was first performed by the Michalis Patrinos rebetiko band in Athens, Greece in 1927. As with almost all early rebetika songs (a style that originated with the Greek refugees from Turkey), the song's actual composer has never been identified, and its ownership rested with the band leader. The melody was most likely composed collaboratively by the group, as was often the case at the time; the initial lyrics were almost certainly written by Patrinos himself. Patrinos, being originally a Smyrniot (today İzmir, Turkey), pronounced the song's title [musurlu], similar to the Turkish pronunciation, [mɯsɯrlɯ].

The Greek word Misirlou refers specifically to a Muslim Egyptian woman (as opposed to a Christian Egyptiotissa); thus this song refers to a cross-faith, cross-race, relationship, a risqué subject at its time.

Initially, the song was composed as a Greek zeibekiko dance, in the rebetiko style of music, at a slower tempo and a different key than the orientalized performances that most are familiar with today. This was the style of the first known recording by Michalis Patrinos in Greece, circa 1930 (which was circulated in the United States by Titos Dimitriadis' Orthophonic label); a second recording was made by Patrinos in New York, in 1931.

In 1941, Nick Roubanis, a Greek-American music instructor, released a jazz instrumental arrangement of the song, crediting himself as the composer. Since his claim was never legally challenged, he is still officially credited as the composer today worldwide, except in Greece where credit is variably given to either Roubanis or Patrinos. Subsequently S. Russell, N. Wise, and M. Leeds wrote English lyrics to the song. Roubanis is also credited with fine-tuning the key and the melody, giving it the oriental sound that it is associated with today. The song soon became an "exotica" standard among the light swing (lounge) bands of the day.

In 1944 maestro Clovis el-Hajj, an Arabic Lebanese musician, performed this song and called it "amal." This is the only Arabic version of this song.

In 1945, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, women's musical organization asked Professor Brunhilde E. Dorsch to organize an international dance group at Duquesne University to honor America's World War II allies. She contacted Mercine Nesotas, who taught several Greek dances, including Syrtos Haniotikos (from Crete), which she called Kritikos, but for which they had no music. Because Pittsburgh's Greek-American community did not know Cretan music, Pat Mandros Kazalas, a music student, suggested the tune Misirlou, although slower, might fit the dance. The dance was first performed at a program to honor America's allies of World War II at Stephen Foster Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh on March 6, 1945. Thereafter, this new dance, which had been created by putting the Syrtos Kritikos to the slower Misirlou music, was known as "Misirlou" and spread among the Greek-American community, as well as among non-Greek U.S. folk-dance enthusiasts. The dance is also performed to instrumental versions of Never on Sunday by Manos Hadjidakis.

At the time, the 1940s and 1950s, there was a thriving Near-Eastern nightclub scene in New York and New England. Such restaurants or clubs, usually owned by Greeks, featured near-eastern style music played by Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs, and often belly dancers. The musicians played belly-dance music to accompany the dancers and also ethnic folk music to which the club's patrons, also usually Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs, would dance their traditional line dances. Eventually the Misirlou song and dance were introduced into this scene, and to the Armenian-American and Arab-American communities. This was not unusual as there were actually many new, American-made, "folk" songs and dances in this era. It became known to the Armenian-Americans as the "Snake Dance" due to its sinuous foot movements.

The song was rearranged as a solo instrumental guitar piece by Dick Dale in 1962. Dale's father and uncles were Lebanese-American musicians who were a part of the aforementioned ethnic nightclub scene. Although they were Arab, they, like other performers, played the music of all the main cultures which made up the nightclub patrons—that included Greek music and Misirlou. During a performance, Dale was bet by a young fan that he could not play a song on only one string of his guitar. Later that night, he remembered seeing his uncle play "Misirlou" on one string (actually a double string) of the oud. He tried to imitate that style on his guitar, but vastly increased the song's tempo to make it into rock'n'roll, and the result was the famous Dick Dale "Miserlou". It was Dale's version that introduced "Misirlou" to a wider audience in the United States as "Miserlou."

The song's oriental melody has been so popular for so long that many people, from Morocco to Iran, claim it to be a folk song from their own country. In fact, in the realm of Middle Eastern music, the song is a very simplistic one, since it is little more than going up and down the Hijaz Kar or double harmonic scale (E-F-G#-A-B-C-D#).

The Beach Boys recorded a Dale-inspired "Miserlou" for the 1963 album Surfin' USA, forever making "Miserlou" a staple of American pop culture. Hundreds of recordings have been made to date, by performers as diverse as Agent Orange and Connie Francis.

In 1994, Dale's version of "Miserlou" was used on the soundtrack of the motion picture Pulp Fiction, thanks to a suggestion to Quentin Tarantino from his friend Boyd Rice. More recently, the song was selected by the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee as one of the most influential Greek songs of all time, and was heard in venues and at the closing ceremony--it was performed by Anna Vissi. In March 2005, Q magazine placed Dale's version at number 89 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. In 2006, his version once again found popularity, this time as the basis of The Black Eyed Peas' single "Pump It." Also in 2006, a cover of Dale's version was included as a playable song in the rhythm game Guitar Hero II.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Misirlou" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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