Exotica
Exotica was a popular form of jazz .
Music genre
The genre emerged in the 1950 's in the United States as a crossover of Brazilian / Latin-influenced jazz in the style of Cal Tjader with world music using instruments and musical elements from different ethnic, preferred tropical music cultures. The name is derived from Martin Denny's 1956 album "Exotica".
Exotica saw itself as pleasant background music ( easy listening ) to complete the exotic ambience of a neo-primitivist leisure culture, which mainly used materials and mostly imitated art objects from the cultural area of the South Seas , for example bamboo and tikis , to create artificial paradises. Due to the illustrative nature of this music, there are formal equivalents to film music . In addition to the echoes of naive notions of the music of primitive peoples, human-made animal and especially bird sounds were integrated into the Exotica music. The musical expression oscillates between soft, entranced, atmospheric sounds ("Hawaiian music") and ritual-ecstatic dance rhythms, such as voodoo .
Exotica was rediscovered in the 1990s during the Swing Revival (in the USA) and the Easy Listening Revival (in Europe), influenced musical styles such as lounge and is also very popular within Tiki culture .
Important representatives
- Martin Denny
- Les Baxter
- Arthur Lyman
- Eden Ahbez
- Juan García Esquivel
- Perez Prado
- Gene Rains
- Chaino
- Yma Sumac
- Warren Barker
- Milt Raskin
- Xavier Cugat
Famous albums
- "Exotica", "Quiet Village", "Primitiva", "Hypnotique" (Martin Denny)
- "Ritual Of The Savage", "Tamboo" (Les Baxter)
- "Edens Island" (Eden Ahbez)
- "Taboo" (Arthur Lyman)
- "Voodo Suite" (Perez Prado)
- "Kapu" (Milt Raskin)
- "Voice Of The Xtabay" (Yma Sumac)
- "A Musical Touch of Far Away Places" (Warren Barker)
Songs
- "Quiet Village"
- "Caravan"
- "Taboo"
- "Bali H'Ai"
- "Jungle Drums"
- "Misirlou"
- "Nature Boy"
- "Moon of Manakoora"
- "Hawaiian War Chant"
- "Jungle Fantasy"
- "Similau"