''Ritual of the Savage'' is an album by American composer

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 ...

, released in 1951 often cited as one of the most important

exotica Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny 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 "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records ...

albums. The album featured lush orchestral arrangements along with

tribal rhythms Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music (cross-rhyth ...

and offered such classics as "

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)' ...

", "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 Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

or deep in the interior of the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...

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 # "

" – 3:19 # "Jungle Jalopy" – 2:37 # "Coronation" – 3:00 # "Love Dance" – 2:19 # "Kinkajou" – 1:53 # "The Ritual" – 3:14

References

{{Authority control 1951 albums Les Baxter albums Albums recorded at Capitol Studios