Tiki Music - Exotica

Musical genres are quite subjective. It's hard to label art that's made for your ears (and many musicians argue that music shouldn't be labeled at all.) Genres, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres can get confusing and cumbersome.

For the sake of organization and (hopefully) simplicity, I'm arranging my tiki music lenses into three musical categories:

Exotica, Lounge and Space Age.

Rather than devoting a lens to modern artists, I'll include them in the lens for the genre which they most closely relate.

We'll start with Exotica, and the other music lenses will be added soon to my "Tiki Lens Crawl".

A genre of music that emerged in the late 50s and named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same name, Exotica is marked by tribal and latin rhythms, enveloped by lush, tropical soundscapes.

Largely panned by critics, Exotica soared (and later fizzled) in popularity in the 50s and 60s. With the emergence of a pseudo tiki/lounge subculture over the past several years, Exotica music has made an unlikely comeback.

Often referred to the as the father of Exotica, Martin Denny has quite a substantial list of albums to choose from!

The following CDs available at Amazon.com are some of the premier compilations or more popular albums from Denny's large body of work.

You can learn much, much more about this influential American musician at The Temple of Martin Denny.

Check out a great biography and list of recordings here.

Arthur Lyman got his start with Martin Denny as a vibraphone player. His style was somewhat softer than Denny's but included more exotic atmospheric sounds like bird calls and bells.

You can read Lyman's biography and get a complete list of his recordings here.

Below are some of his bestselling CDs.

I must admit that I didn't know very much about Les Baxter's life and career until recently, except for the fact that his music had been sampled by The Beastie Boys and P. Diddy. I was amazed to learn that Baxter was born in Mexia, Texas - not too far from the small town of Corsicana where I'm from. Mexia is correctly pronounced "muh-hey-uh", by the way - though if you ever hear a real Texan say it, it may sound more like "muh hair". :)

Les Baxter is considered one of the elite in the Exotica realm, but he apparently enjoyed a very long career in music that included work with Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Nat King Cole and other legendary performers. He scored, composed and arranged music for TV and film as well.

Read a detailed biography about Les Baxter, including a laundry list of his recordings and career accomplishments, here.

Check out the swinging website honoring Les Baxter at (where else?) LesBaxter.com.

Here's a list of some of his most popular albums.

Here are some tiki and skully Squidoo banners & buttons I've made, free for your personal use. A link to my Squidoo lens(es) or website would be nice but not required for you to use the graphics. Enjoy! :)