🔗 Misirlou

"Misirlou" (Greek: Μισιρλού < Turkish: Mısırlı 'Egyptian' < Arabic: مصر Miṣr 'Egypt') is a folk song from the Eastern Mediterranean region. The original author of the song is not known, but Arabic, Greek, and Jewish musicians were playing it by the 1920s. The earliest known recording of the song is a 1927 Greek rebetiko/tsifteteli composition. There are also Arabic belly dancing, Albanian, Armenian, Serbian, Persian, Indian and Turkish versions of the song. This song was popular from the 1920s onwards in the Arab American, Armenian American and Greek American communities who settled in the United States.

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; Dale's version was influenced by an earlier Arabic folk version played with an oud. Various versions have since been recorded, mostly based on Dale's version, 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 was heard in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction.