Egyptian Shumba

"Egyptian Shumba" is a fast-paced, two-chord pop song in the tradition of the fad dance hits that were popular during the 1950s and 1960s, such as "The Twist", "Mashed Potato Time" and "The Loco-Motion". clarinet riff that has been compared to the use of the electric organ in garage-rock, In the song's famous hook, the girls' vocals go from being "perky" and "sweet-sounding" to "shrieking, yelping and grunting like nut-jobs", Nitsuh Abebe of Pitchfork wrote: "The Tammys bop hard and bratty, but by the chorus they're literally growling, barking, and squealing like sexed-up hyenas; in the bridge you can hear them shudder and jerk their way into a frenzy." NME considered "Egyptian Shumba" to be "the closet the [girl group genre] ever got to ripping-up-the-rulebook punk panache". However, Jaime Cristóbal of Jenesaispop noted that the track's sound and energy "undoubtedly originated not so much from a sudden proto-punk spirit but rather from an attempt to achieve a novelty hit." In like manner, Johnny Black of Q called it "little more than a typical '60s novelty platter". ==Release and reception==

"Egyptian Shumba" was released as a 7-inch single in February 1964 on United Artists Records. It featured "What's So Sweet About Sweet Sixteen" as its B-side, a teen-angst song written by Larry Kusik, Eddie Snyder, Joan Babbitt and Phyllis St. James. Another review in Variety described the song as a "way-out rocking ballad with a rendition that seems to go out of its way to be noisy", while noting that "that could be the sound which will make this disk step out of the pack." ==Legacy==

"Egyptian Shumba" has grown to become an underground classic. While reviewing the 2005 compilation One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost And Found, Jeremiah Tucker of The Joplin Globe described it as "one of the most peculiar girl group songs I've ever heard, sounding like the modern freak folkers the Animal Collective produced the song". He also felt that "it would blow the minds of indie-music blogs everywhere if released today." Writing for The Guardian, Joseph Ridgwell called it "the best girl group song ever", praising it as "breathtaking, foot-stomping, soul-shaking" and "mesmerising". Writing a special feature on the Records You've Never Heard But Probably Should for AllMusic in 2008, Andrew Leahey felt that the song's hook was "perhaps some of the wildest, sex-crazed moments in the history of forgotten pop" and concluded: "Forty five years later, the song still sounds electric; it must've sounded positively nuclear back then." In 2006, Pitchfork placed "Egyptian Shumba" at number 177 on its list of the 200 Best Songs of the 1960s, with Nitsuh Abebe writing in its entry: "It's not just that this girl group's gone wilder than any garage band on the list—it's that they're possessed." In 2012, it placed on number seventeen on NMEs list of 20 Forgotten 60s Girl Groups, with the publication calling it "one of the strangest and most flawless girl group tracks ever laid to tape". Billboard ranked it thirty fifth on the magazine's 2017 list of the 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time. In the song's entry, Joe Lynch noted that the track "missed the charts but guaranteed its place in the cult canon by virtue of sheer insanity." Jaime Cristóbal of Jenesaispop noted that, although the influence of such an unknown record cannot be objectively deduced, it "is still fascinating to draw a genealogical line" between "Egyptian Shumba" and songs like the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian", as well as "any punk band in which a group of women has unleashed similar fierce screams, from the Go-Go’s to Bikini Kill through the Raincoats, Sleater-Kinney or the 5678's." and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazettes Scott Mervis called the track a "riot grrrl prototype". with Billboards Joe Lynch noting that the Tammys "successfully combined musical kitsch with unhinged screaming 15 years before [their] debut." ==See also==