What does the title of Dick Dale’s song ‘Misirlou’ mean?
From the West Coast surf hops of the early 1960s to the stylised genre filmmaking of Quentin Tarantino, Dick Dale’s single-string guitar classic ‘Misirlou’ has become the stuff of legend. Yet Dale didn’t write the song. It has its roots in an Ottoman folk song which was known across the Middle East by the early 20th century.
The song came to Dale’s attention because he came from a Lebanese family. In fact, his real name was Richard Monsour, and both his father and uncle were musicians familiar with the musical traditions of the region.
At one of his famous performances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, a fan asked Dale to play a song using only a single guitar string. He struggled to think of a piece that would satisfy the fan’s request before remembering a song his uncle used to play using only one string of his oud, a traditional Arab string instrument. The song was ‘Misirlou’, and Dale flew into a lightning-fast surf rock adaptation of the folk piece, sending the ballroom crowd into a trance-like state.
Before Dale, there were actually several other fairly well-known versions of the song released, including by big band trumpeter Harry James. Yet the guitarist made the piece his own. Nevertheless, it persists as a folk song throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, with countless renditions performed and recorded from the Balkans to Morocco.
But what about the song’s title?
‘Misirlou’ is actually a Greek transliteration of the Turkish word “Mısırlı”, which in turn derives from the Arabic “Misr”, meaning Egypt. During the Ottoman rule over much of the Arab world, this word entered the Turkish language. Meanwhile, the “lı” at the end of “Mısırlı” is added to the end of a feminine noun or adjective.
And so, “Mısırlı” or “Misirlou” roughly translates as “Egyptian woman”. The hypnotic strumming rhythms and quarter-tone key shifts of the song mimic the movements of traditional Egyptian belly dancing. A version of the song called ‘Ya Amal’, with Arabic lyrics, was released by the classical Lebanese singer Maestro Clovis in 1947. Its slower tempo, Arabesque rhythms and Middle-Eastern string arrangement are far more suited to belly dancing than Dale’s later surfer-friendly stomper.
Nevertheless, he keeps the mesmerising piano arpeggios from this Lebanese version as the counter-melodic harmony to his scintillating guitar part. And he adds a trumpet part for good measure, infusing his adaptation with the mariachi sound from just across California’s border with Mexico. This blend of classical Arabic and Mexican folk sounds gives the recording a timeless feel, allowing it to transcend Dick Dale’s place in the pantheon of early surf rock.
Ultimately, though, Dale was employing one of the most alluring melodies in the Middle-Eastern folk tradition. This tradition found a new outlet in the unlikeliest of places, on the beaches of North America’s Pacific coastline. Nothing transcends cultural barriers quite like a single-string riff, after all.
