Search - The Waitiki 7 :: New Sounds of Exotica

Tiki Classics Get Shaken, Stirred, and Perfected Take one part diverse players with intense focus and killer chops, and one part neglected mid-century multi-ethnic hybrid music with origins on America s harmonious island paradise. Add a dash of Technicolor tropical dreamscape, a twist of wild birdcalls, and stir soulfully. The WAITIKI 7 serves up this polychrome cocktail, taking a new serious spin on exotica, the musical genre that leaped from Hawai i s fashionable bars and clubs to mainstream living rooms in post-War America. Keeping true to exotica s deep roots and intense demands on musicians with New Sounds of Exotica (Pass Out; June 7, 2010), the group brings heady passion, acoustic musicianship, and a love of old-school mixology to an art form just begging to be revisited and savored. The luscious mix that is exotica the blend of tropical soundscapes, Latin percussion, and popular jazz perfected by Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, and their ensembles has been profoundly misunderstood. Far from the kitsch of its waning days, the best exotica flows from two very positive and progressive places: the multi-cultural openness of Hawai i s music scene in the first half of the 20th century, and the mid-century impulses that fueled a craze for transcontinental travel and curiosity about Asian-Pacific cultures. It was a huge thing at that time to fly from the West Coast to Hawai'i, explains Randy Wong, the Hawai'i-born, classically trained founder of WAITIKI 7. It became the stepping stone to the East. People became genuinely fascinated by these cultures. The war was over, and there was a spirit of real optimism and excitement. These new travelers came to Hawai'i and discovered what had been brewing in the relatively open climate of cross-cultural exploration for several decades: a vibrant music scene with everything from mixed Hawaiian and English folk ballads, to second-generation Japanese club bands made of traditional Asian instruments, to Puerto Rican percussionists who had recently come to work in the sugar industry. The musicians who played exotica came from this scene, Wong notes. It was really one of the first popular world-music hybrids in America. WAITIKI 7 embraces the pulse and ambiance of exotica, while adding their own stamp thanks to the diverse jazz, classical, and folk backgrounds the seven members bring to the group, including the jazz drums of multi-instrumentalist Abe Lagrimas, Jr; the thoughtful and vigorous Latin and jazz piano of Zaccai Curtis; the ever cool vibes of classically trained Jim Benoit. Improvisation and more expansive, expressive solos, something rarely heard in carefully scored classic exotica, play a major role in shaping the band s sound, as do unexpected instruments from violin (classical virtuoso Helen Liu) to woodwinds of all shapes and sizes (Berklee instructor and Latin jazz master Tim Mayer). The group comes by its love of exotica honestly. WAITIKI 7 percussionist Lopaka Colon picked up not only his beats, but his amazing bird and animal calls from his father, veteran musician Augie Colon, who played for years with Denny. The senior Colon tracked game in the valleys of Hawai i Island and O ahu, teaching himself calls to attract birds and animals. When he joined Denny s group, Augie Colon started tossing in calls to enhance the overall atmosphere, and soon band members were responding, teasingly, in kind. Tiki culture and its exotica soundtrack have another serious side: the heady cocktails once served alongside the music s sonic dreamscapes. We're taking this wholly authentic approach to tiki, Wong explains. To stay in line with that, we take our cocktails very seriously, in the same vein as us performing acoustically. There s a big tiki revival going on: exotica is a big part of that.