Live performance of “Quiet Village” by the Martin Denny band. This video is a rare gem; not many videos of his group performing live exist or remain for public viewing. A must-see for anyone who cares about exotica and its performance practice aesthetics.

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Watching this Youtube video brought back several childhood memories from watching Mr. Lyman at Waialae Country Club. One of my favorite aspects of live musicians is the opportunity to hear them perform solo. (Of course, the solo medium works for some musicians but not others, and favors some instruments better than others. For example, vibraphone is arguably better as a solo instrument than double bass — but of course it depends on the abilities and sensibilities of the musician playing). I’ve only seen Mr. Lyman solo. He would do weekends at Waialae where he would play an entire evening by himself. His voicings… so lush. Like others have said: “the man’s ability to emote through the vibes”. Bird calls and animal yells, crystal clear, but never in the way of the music. By watching him, you can see exactly how exotica became so popular. Not through gimmicky pop covers, or the exoticization of jazz standards (though he certainly did a bunch of that, particularly after becoming famous; probably at the bequest of record companies). Neither solely through exotic percussion and hip Latin lounge beats, swanky cover art and tiki establishments, mugs and cocktaillogy. But through the personal care and individual expertise of highly trained musicians. I think what we have to consider are,

What are specific aspects of Lyman’s musicality that make us love his work? How can modern exotica bands emulate his approach and sound by using him as a model?     

Here are some brief thoughts that I’ll expand upon later.

• Some of Lyman’s signature sound comes from his choices in mode mixture, which is in common with classical and jazz musics, but also is prominently done in Hawaiian slack-key guitar.
• The interplay of musical idioms from ‘other’ musics (i.e. Latin, Hawaiian) in support of melody
• My favorite piece that Lyman does is “Seabreeze.” That seemed to be one of his favorites too, because you could count on it almost every time he came to play. Another is “Imi Au Ia Oe.”
• What tunes Lyman’s gang chooses to arrange: More ‘local’ stuff with closer-to-tradition cultural connections than Denny’s “Baxterization” of forms and melodies. 

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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…

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