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Exotica
Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny Exotica (Martin Denny album), album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon Waronker, Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder board chairman. The musical colloquialism ''exotica'' means tropical ersatz good, ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Sea Islands, South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "Shangri-La, shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers. History Les Baxter's album ''Ritual of the Savage'' (''Le S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Baxter
Leslie Thompson "Les" Baxter (March 14, 1922 – January 15, 1996) was a best-selling American musician and composer. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica and scored over 100 motion pictures. Early life Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. From 1943 on he played tenor and baritone saxophone for the Freddie Slack big band. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as "What Is This Thing Called Love?" Career Baxter then turned to arranging and conducting for Capitol Records in 1950, and conducted the orchestra in two early Nat King Cole hits, "Mona Lisa" and " Too Young". He also recorded Yma Sumac's first album: "Voice of the Xtabay", which can be considered one of the first recordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Denny
Martin Denny (April 10, 1911 – March 2, 2005) was an American pianist and composer best known as the "father of exotica." In a long career that saw him performing up to 3 weeks prior to his death, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture. Biography Denny was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. He studied classical piano and toured South America for four and a half years in the 1930s with the Don Dean Orchestra. This tour began Denny's fascination with Latin rhythms. Denny collected a large number of ethnic instruments from all over the world, which he used to spice up his stage performances. After serving in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, Denny returned to Los Angeles, in 1945 where he studied piano and composition under Dr. Wesley La Violette and orchestration under Arthur Lange at the Los Angeles Con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lounge Music
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space age cultural elements. The earliest type of lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music. Retrospective usage Exotica, space age pop, and some forms of easy listening music popular during the 1950s and 1960s are now broadly termed "lounge". The term "lounge" does not appear in textual documentation of the period, such as '' Billboard'' magazine or long playing album covers, but has been retroactively applied. While rock and roll was generally influenced by blues and country, lounge music was derived from jazz and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quiet Village
"Quiet Village" is an orchestral pop instrumental that was written and originally performed by Les Baxter in 1951 and an instrumental album from 1959 by Martin Denny. In the liner notes to his album, '' Ritual of the Savage (Le sacre du sauvage)'', Baxter described the themes he was conveying in the work: Martin Denny version In the mid-1950s, Martin Denny and his band performed at a restaurant in Oahu, The Shell Bar, and frequently would play Baxter cover songs. One night, while his group was performing, Denny realized bullfrogs were croaking along to the music. As a joke, the band began incorporating frog sounds and birdcalls into the performance. Soon after, people began requesting "the song with the frogs." "They really enjoyed the frogs!" Denny observed. "And they thought we were making those croaking noises. So I understood that this was the way to go." The squawks and jungle sounds in the Martin Denny version of "Quiet Village" were performed by A. Purves Pullen, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Age Pop
Space age pop is a subgenre of pop and easy listening music associated with Mexican and American composers and songwriters in the Space Age of the 1950s and 1960s. Also known as bachelor pad music or lounge music,''Pulse'' (Monthly music digest of Tower Records/Video) #164 October 1997 Page 57 Article: "Catalog Rolling: How Record Labels Decide What Titles to Re-Release" (article begins on page 42) it was inspired by the spirit of those times, an optimism based on the strong post-war economy and technology boom, and excitement about humanity's early forays into space."Space Age Pop developed out of America's insatiable appetite for the new and improved, providing grown-ups with the music they wanted: seductive moods, primitive beats, and fantastic effects.", Page 6, ''Exotiquarium: Album Art from the Space Age'', Jennifer McKnight-Trontz and Lenny Dee, St. Martin's Press Music/Songbooks, 1999, Although there is no exact album, date, or year when the genre was born, producer Irwin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ritual Of The Savage
''Ritual of the Savage'' is an album by American composer Les Baxter, released in 1951 often cited as one of the most important exotica albums. The album featured lush orchestral arrangements along with tribal rhythms and offered such classics as "Quiet Village", "Jungle River Boat", "Love Dance", and "Stone God." Baxter described the album as a "tone poem of the sound and the struggle of the jungle." The album's liner notes requested the listener to imagine themselves transported to a tropical land. "Do the mysteries of native rituals intrigue you…does the haunting beat of savage drums fascinate you? Are you captivated by the forbidden ceremonies of primitive peoples in far-off Africa or deep in the interior of the Belgian Congo?" Track listing # "Busy Port" – 3:07 # "Sophisticated Savage" – 2:15 # "Jungle River Boat" – 3:08 # "Jungle Flower" – 2:44 # "Barquita" – 1:45 # "Stone God" – 3:10 # "Quiet Village "Quiet Village" is an orchestral pop instrumental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state geographically located within the tropics. Hawaii comprises nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, 137 volcanic islands spanning that are physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. The state's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth-longest in the U.S., at about . The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lānai, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii—the last of these, after which the state is named, is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaii Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands make up most of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the United States' largest protected area a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jewels Of The Sea
''Jewels of the Sea'' is a 1961 orchestral exotica album by American composer Les Baxter. The album was inspired by fantasy ideas of the ocean from pop culture, such as mermaids and sea nymphs, sunken ships, and legendary underwater cities such as Atlantis. There was an overall erotic element to the album, whose tagline was "Titillating Orchestrations for Listening and Loving", and whose original cover featured actress and model Diane Webber smiling glamorously underwater, apparently naked. Although not explicitly shown wearing a mermaid tail, her makeup and jewellery are styled to be reminiscent of the performing mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs. Musically, ''Jewels of the Sea'' is characteristic of Baxter's work, with its use of a traditional European orchestra, primarily percussion instruments and strings, combined with more exotic instruments such as electronic keyboard and electric organ. All tracks are original compositions with the exception of "The Enchanted Sea", an a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shangri-La
Shangri-La is a fictional place in Asia's Kunlun Mountains (昆仑山), Uses the spelling 'Kuen-Lun'. described in the 1933 novel '' Lost Horizon'' by English author James Hilton. Hilton portrays Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – an enduringly happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. Ancient Tibetan scriptures mention the existence of seven such places as ''Nghe-Beyul Khembalung''. Khembalung is one of several Utopia ''beyuls'' (hidden lands similar to Shangri-La) which Tibetan Buddhists believe that Padmasambhava established in the 9th century CE as idyllic, sacred places of refuge for Buddhists during times of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Safari
A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an important part of the safari market, both for wildlife viewing and big-game hunting. Etymology The Swahili word means "journey", originally from the Arabic noun ar, سفر, safar, label=none, meaning "journey", "travel", "trip", or "tour"; the verb for "to travel" in Swahili is . These words are used for any type of journey, e.g. by bus from Nairobi to Mombasa or by ferry from Dar es Salaam to Unguja. ''Safari'' entered the English language at the end of the 1850s thanks to explorer Richard Francis Burton. The Regimental March of the King's African Rifles was "Funga Safari", literally 'set out on a journey', or, in other words, pack up equipment ready for travel. Which is, in English: On Kenya's independence from the United Kingd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
