What, in the name of God, possessed Queen to use this as an exclamation? Is there context that is not readily apparent in the song?
The thing that made Freddie Mercury truly great was his limitless pretentiousness. No sure any further explanation is relevant.
Freddie Mercury never explained *any *of the lyrics, but that one mostly makes sense - “Bismillah” is Arabic for “in the name of God,” and in that part of the song he seems to be crying out for help.
Freddie Mercury grew up in Zanzibar and India; perhaps that exposed him to the term more frequently.
It’s Arabic. One word for God.
As Johnny Bravo stated, it means “In the name of God…” as the first part of the common Basmala invocation that goes on to say “…the Most Gracious, Most Merciful” . Freddy was a Zoroastrian (Parsi) but as **Telemark **points out he probably heard the Basmala often in his environment growing up.
Scaramouch - fandango
I read this on Wiki recently and thought it was interesting -
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen, released as the lead single from their fourth studio album, A Night at the Opera (1975). Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to have proved accessible to a mainstream audi Me...
When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called “The March of the Black Queen” by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that “Bohemian Rhapsody” is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, “Bismillah” (In the name of God in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (The devil in Arabic).[34]
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Still others interpreted them as Mercury’s way of dealing with personal issues.[18] Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody”.[19] He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury’s emotional state at the time, “living with Mary (‘Mamma’, as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away (‘Mamma Mia let me go’)”.[30]
I don’t know the truth of the Bismallah reference. They might have included that explanation for political reasons.
The band members won’t talk about the song, except to suggest that it was personal to Freddie.
Ok, now that that’s explained, what’s up with “Galileo Figaro Magnifico”?