Freddy ‘Mustapha’ Mercury

Check out Queen’s brilliant, hysterical song  ‘Mustapha’. I could not be sure, but Freddie Mercury is singing in Arabic, Persian and English, mashing names of prophets with ‘As-salam-alalikum’. The song is part of the Queen’s 1978 album Jazz, and they performed it live regularly.

In live performances, Mercury would often sing the opening vocals of “Mustapha” in place of the complex introduction to “Bohemian Rhapsody“, going from “Allah we’ll pray for you” to “Mama, just killed a man…”. However, sometimes the band performed an almost full version of the song from the Crazy Tour in late 1979 to The Game Tour in 1980, with Mercury at the piano. They dropped the second verse and went from the first chorus to the third. Also notable is that the song was often requested by the audience, as can be heard on Live Killers.- Wiki

How cool does this make Freddie Mercury then? Son of Parsee-Indian immigrants, described as Britains first Asian star, singing ‘Allah we pray for you’  in racially charged late 1970s Britain. Sheer Awesomeness.

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