I’ve been thinking a bunch about what made Denny, Lyman, and Colon bands from Hawaii particularly successful; what was it about those guys that captured the spirit and essence of exotica? Previous posts to this blog, as well as conversations at forums like TikiCentral.com and The Fraternal Order of Moai often point out obvious characteristics: “light” Latin rhythms, a collective view of paradise and the exotique, easily digestible improvisation, catchy compositions whose forms focus on melodic paraphrase for development, etc.

What I’ve learned from my own work with WAITIKI, and from listening to other so-called exotica bands of the era that didn’t originate from Hawaii, is that the addition of Latin percussion to a vibraphone quartet does not an exotica band make.

What no one has really touched on, myself included, is that the cultural/lifestyle background of the players in those bands—that is, growing up as kama’aina in Hawai’i— not only taught them the things mentioned above, but also engrained in them cultural music that Westerns perceived as exotic.

For example, stuff like tinikling or bon dance, which doesn’t appear on the Mainland anywhere mainstream unless you go to ethnic enclaves like Filipinotown or a Japanese cultural event, are actually pretty mainstream when you’re growing up in Hawaii.

So if you’re a musician in an exotica band, and the bandleader (say Martin Denny) says “alright boys, I need this one to have percussion that sounds like tinikling“, fuck, you’re all set! The fun of playing just became way more fun, because how funny is it to play tinikling in a jazz band? But probably, Denny didn’t have those ideas. He was a haole who moved to Hawai’i in 1954. Denny came with a lot of musical prowress, imagination, and a sense of Latin music, but not with all the ‘local’ influences that kama’aina grow up with. No: my guess is that he’d rehearse the band, with Lyman, Colon, Harold Chang, and others, and it was the local boys that came up with all the cool stuff!

If we accept the above, then the quest becomes understanding what was popular, what was hip, what was ‘normal,’ what was everyday music for people in Hawaii at that time, and for professional musicians in Hawaii at that time. The next posts in this series will look deeper into contextual music of wartime Hawaii, and will (tentatively) examine music using the following recordings or musicians:

Club Nisei Orchestra – Japanese Music of Old Hawaii

Gabby “Pops” Pahinui – Slack Key Guitar

(more to come)

Stay tuned…