Featured In: Pulp FictionComposer/Lyricist: Traditional
Performer: Dick Dale and the Deltones
Description:"Misirlou" is a folk song dating back to 1927, originally as a Greek rebetiko composition influenced by Middle Eastern music. The song then gained popularity among Middle Eastern audiences through Arabic (belly dancing), Jewish (klezmer) and Turkish versions.
The song eventually gained worldwide popularity through Dick Dale's 1962 American surf rock version, which was responsible for popularizing 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 and The Ventures as well as international orchestral easy listening (exotica) versions by musicians such as Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. Dick Dale's surf rock version later gained renewed popularity through its use in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film
Pulp Fiction.
Directed in a highly stylized manner,
Pulp Fiction connects the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals, and a mysterious briefcase. Considerable screen time is devoted to conversations and monologues that reveal the characters' senses of humor and perspectives on life. The film's title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue.
Pulp Fiction is self-referential from its opening moments, beginning with a title card that gives two dictionary definitions of "pulp". The plot, as in many of Tarantino's other works, is presented out of chronological sequence.
No film score was composed for
Pulp Fiction, with Quentin Tarantino instead using an eclectic assortment of surf music, rock and roll, soul, and pop songs. Dick Dale's rendition of "Misirlou" plays during the opening credits. Tarantino chose surf music as the basic musical style for the film, but not, he insists, because of its association with surfing culture: "To me it just sounds like rock and roll, even Morricone music. It sounds like rock and roll spaghetti Western music."