Poss Miyazaki - Hawaiian Exotics. King Records Japan.1963 ...

During the war years of World War Two the playing of Hawaiian music was forbidden in Japan but at the end in 1945 steel guitarist Poss Miyazaki was the first to emerge. Today it is said that Hawaiian music is more popular in Japan than any country outside of Hawaii!

This 1963 release on King Records features lots of shimmering lap-steel guitar, some electone organ courtesy of Shiro Michi, a smattering of vibes and those Hawaiian all-stars singing some tasty choruses raise a smile. My personal favourites are his arrangements for Beyond the Reef and Hilawe.

Enjoy Hawaiian Exotics from Poss Miyazaki and the Hawaiian All-Stars.

The Exotica Project ...

My browser favorites under the "Tiki" label comfortably outnumber all the rest put together. However few sites have captured my attention like the Exotica Project. Think of it as a musical journey through the widest possible definitions of exotica, all arranged in a handy jukebox style format. Each track is extensively tagged and leads you to another, you take the controls and decide where to go next.

I could tell you more, but I'd never quite reach the level of eloquence demonstrated by Little Danny who put this thing together. It might have been a labour of love, but it stands as up as an amazing insight into the wonderful world of Exotica. Enjoy the music and the rationale for The Exotica Project.

In collecting these obscurities together, I wanted to get past the limited set of artists who have come to personify exotica. I wanted to expand the definition of exotica, to get away from the idea of it as a genre altogether.

These records together comprise only a loose collective, their disparate character undermining easy analysis. After all, exotica is more creative force, more motivating idea, than genre. The examples form, at the narrowest, what is essentially a cross-section of post-War America's popular music and commercial record industry. They possess an unquantifiably exotic atmosphere, certainly, and they broadly invoke some idea of The Other. But even on a purely aesthetic basis these selections are only vaguely similar. What can they say about the post-War exotica phenomenon that isn't just empty generality?

The key to the site is an index that identifies and organizes the discrete components of the style. Here the building blocks of exotica - its motifs and themes - are mapped, as a set, to one hundred otherwise very different selections. It's a mechanical reduction, of course. But, if nothing else, it presents an interesting, uniting perspective on these records - individually and collectively - as well as on the exotica phenomenon in general.

Delineated into a set of indicators, a certain form emerges. The index is a registry of exotica's familiar cues: its Afro-Latin percussion, its jungle and Eastern themes, its flutes, vibraphones and bird calls. These are the cliches of the phenomenon. They might be considered prime indicators of exotica. Other cues - wordless vocals and tremolo guitar, for instance - are less of an exotica stereotype, though, and, interestingly, are hardly less prevalent. Each individual record's character, too, assumes a certain shape in terms of its instrumental and aesthetic constituents. Some records collect larger subsets of the style's parameters together. "Jungle Slave Dance," "Sunset Mood," "Tobago" and "Maui Rain" are, by this logic, the most exotic.

Any number of conclusions might be drawn. The most critical, however, is that the collection convey a sense of exotica transcending originating idiom - whether surf music, easy listening, Latin jazz, R&B or bop - and, too, of exotica as that impossibly obscure mambo-jazz "jungle" title or landlocked guitar combo's b-side version of "Caravan." Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Yma Sumac are only the tip of exotica.

- Little Danny (2010)

Leroy Holmes - Hawaii with a Bongo Beat. MGM Records 1961...

The first thing that strikes you about this release is the cover, highly original it was created by El Cheapo Covers of Hollywood USA using genuine non Hawaiian fruit and flowers! Their motto is "a class cover in under 15 minutes or your fruit and flowers are free".

In this recording LeRoy Holmes has successfully blends two, individually distinctive types of music: the tropically melodious themes of the Hawaiian Islands, and what became known as the "Nashville" beat! The result is amazing! You hear the well loved Hawaiian melodies with a really modern (at the time of release!) backbeat.

Enjoy - Hawaii with a Bongo Beat.

Quiet Village ...

At the last count I had eighty two versions of Quiet Village here at the Secret Island. Quiet Village is one of the most important pieces of instrumental exotica, that was originally written and performed by Les Baxter in 1952. In the liner notes to his album, Ritual of the Savage, Baxter described the themes he was conveying in the work:

The jungle grows more dense as the river boat slowly makes its way into the deep interior. A snake slithers into the water, flushing a brilliantly plumaged bird who soars into the clearing above a quiet village. Here is a musical portrait of a tropical village deserted in the mid-day heat.

Seven years later, in 1959, Martin Denny added exotic sounds to the song, and his instrumental version made it to number four on the pop singles chart. In this video clip Denny performs Quiet Village on the popular show Hawaii Calls...

In 1977, The Ritchie Family recorded a disco version of the song and added vocals. The single was included on their African Queens album. Along with the album's title track as well as "Summer Dance", "Quiet Village" hit number one for three weeks in 1977.  The original single hit was a mono recording edited to 2:42, and this length version was used on the Liberty album as well. There was a different recording, done in stereo, used on stereo Liberty LP's and many subsequent reissues. The full length version only made is first appearance sometime in the 1980's.

Lalo Schifrin Gone with the Wave ...

Today's musical share from Lalo Schifrin is something of a departure from exotica, although it does have a definite exotic flavour. Lalo Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor, best known for his film and TV scores. You'd do well not to have watched a movie he has created the soundtrack for. He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations.

This 1963 release on Colpix Records was the official soundtrack for "Gone With the Wave," an obscure surf movie directed by Phil Wilson, son of Revue (later Universal) music director Stanley Wilson. The elder Wilson was a beloved mentor for many prominent composers, including John Williams and Lalo Schifrin. Schifrin gladly accepted Stanley Wilson's invitiation to score son Phil's surf picture, and recorded 31 minutes of original compositions with a top-flight West Coast jazz band.
While the film itself was barely distributed, the soundtrack album on Colpix received rave reviews, eventually becoming a collector's item for both the jazz and surfing crowds with its array of Schifrin grooves from the glorious mid-1960s.

Here's my favourite from the album - A taste of Bamboo...



Enjoy - Lalo Schifrin Gone with the Wave.

Arthur Lyman - Yellow Bird. 1961

For your listening pleasure the Secret Island brings you the 1961 Arthur Lyman release Yellow Bird. Starting out as a member of Martin Denny's band Lyman wen't on to make his own name in the exotica genre. His signature tune was his cover of "Yellow Bird", which spent 10 weeks on Billboard's Top Ten chart in 1961, reaching #4. At the height of his fame a 1962 Time magazine article from described a typical performance:

"A conch shell wailed, the conga drums thump-thumped, the bamboo sticks clattered. The four men on stage were constantly on the move — clacking wooden blocks, scratching a corrugated gourd, flailing away at Chinese gongs, weaving rhythms that were insistent, sinuous and hypnotic. Occasionally, when the spirit moved them, they barked like seals or whooped like cranes. The happy audience at Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel rattled the rafters whooping back.

The album titled and featuring Yellow Bird was his ninth release. Most of Lyman's albums were recorded in the aluminum Kaiser geodesic dome auditorium on the grounds of the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. This space provided unparalleled acoustics and a natural 3-second reverberation. His recordings also benefited from being recorded on a one-of-kind Ampex 3-track 1/2" tape recorder designed and built by engineer Richard Vaughn. All of Lyman's albums were recorded live, without overdubbing. He recorded after midnight, to avoid the sounds of traffic and tourists, and occasionally on some releases you can hear the aluminum dome creaking as it settles in the cool night air. The quality of these recordings became even more evident with the advent of popular CD reissues, when the digital mastering engineer found he didn't have to do anything to them but transfer the original 3-track stereo masters to digital. The recordings remain state-of-the-art nearly 50 years later.

Enjoy - Arthur Lyman's Yellow Bird. 

The Quiet Village Podcast ...

The Quiet Village is more than just a classic exotica track but also the working title of DigiTiki's (aka Mark Riddle)regular exotica podcasts. The Quiet Village features rare and vintage exotica recordings from yesterday and today and you can join Mark as your host, as he lets the records lazily spin on the phonograph. You could even prepare a Mai Tai to add to the experience, the sound of ice in his glass is a familiar sound alongside the tunes.

He also publishes detailed play lists to accompany each podcast. Such is the level of detail, quality of information and caliber of guests visiting the Quiet Village that a pencil and paper are as essential as the headphones! The news and music sections at DigiTiki.com make the shows and the website a most for any fan of exotica. Check it out...

Webley Edwards presents Hawaii Today ...

Here at the Secret Island I like nothing better than to mix a cool drink, place the needle on the record and watch the sea lap the shore to the sound of some classic exotica. In no particular order I'd like to share with you some of my favourites...

I'll kick things off with this 1966 Capitol release from Webley Edwards - Hawaii Today which was linked to Hawaii Calls, a radio program that ran from 1935 through 1975 that featured live Hawaiian music. It was broadcast each week from the courtyard of the Moana Hotel on Waikiki Beach and was hosted by Webley himself. The first show reached the West Coast of the continental United States through shortwave radio. At its height, it was heard on over 750 stations around the world. However, when it went off the air in 1975, as only 10 stations were airing the show. Because of its positive portrayal of Hawaii, the show received a subsidy for many years - first from the government of the Territory of Hawaii, and then from the State of Hawaii. The termination of the subsidy was one of the reasons that the show went off the air.

Hawaii Calls is credited with making many Hawaiian performers household names across the US and around the world. Among the regulars of Hawaii Calls were Alfred Apaka, Haunani Kahalewai and Pua Almeida. Other well known performers such as Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman also made appearances. Each show opened with the sounds of the pounding surf and the enthusiastic bounding voice of Webley Edwards proclaiming "The sound of the waves on the beach at Waikiki.."

During the height of the shows popularity Webley Edwards served the role of producer of numerous records such as this, released on the Capitol Records label, under the title of "Webley Edwards presents Hawaii Calls." This particular albums contains some typical renditions of hawaiian classic songs and exotica, some as lovely instrumentals as well as some vocal arrangements. I hope you enjoy it...

Webley Edwards presents Hawaii Calls - Hawaii Today. Capitol Records 1966.

Well that was 1966... but what does the same view look like today? Check out Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon 2010 style!

Links can be re-uploaded or deleted on request. Mahalo.