“Bwana, Bwana A” is an old Arthur Lyman tune, and quite frankly, the very first exotica recording I ever heard. It opens his album “Music Of Hawaii,” which I think is a CD compilation of his earlier recordings. When I moved to Boston in 1999, my first inclination was to start a Hawaii Club at New England Conservatory, where I was going to school. (Many colleges across the nation have Hawaii Clubs that help transplanted students from Hawaii to network and get settled living on the Mainland). Because I was the only student in the entire conservatory from Hawaii, my Club’s mission was to share and promote traditional Hawaiian culture with those who’d never visited the Islands. Long story short, it worked. Our club at its peak had 458 members (more than half the school).

I was shopping at Tower Records in Boston, looking for Hawaiian music to share with my club members. I stumbled across the Lyman recording and only picked it up because it had a picture of Mr. Lyman as a young man (I’d only known him as an older fellow, since he was a friend of my grandfather’s) wearing polyester pants from the 70s! (On the album cover, Mr. Lyman is the one in the lime green pants with his arm resting on the tiki). Anyways, I popped the CD in my CD player and “Bwana” came on, and I was like “what the hell is this,” so I skipped to the next track, had a similar reaction, and I kept skipping tracks until I reached the end and realized the whole album was filled with these nutty birdcalls and monkey noises and drums and stuff. Because even from all those years growing up and seeing him play, I had only heard him playing ballads and old Hawaiian melodies as a solo vibes player at a posh country club — I had no idea that he had even played with a band, let alone was responsible for the popularity of exotica, etc. I’ve been told since that when Mr. Lyman had his own group, they used to open their shows with “Bwana” – and thus it’s fitting that WAITIKI opens each of its shows with our version, and that we also use the song as the opening for our “Charred Mammal Flesh: Exotic Music for BBQ” album.

A side note: when WAITIKI performs live shows with our dancers, The Waitiki Wahine, the girls come running from either side of the stage and do fast Tahitian dancing during the drum beat in “Bwana.”

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