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Artist Interview
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Examiner - Los Angeles, Artist Interview >>
The Waitiki 7 brings three days of tiki and exotica to Don the Beachcomber
December 25th, 2010 9:31 pm PT
The Waitiki 7 is an exotica band from Boston. The band is heading to southern California to ring in the new year with a three-night celebration (29-31 December) of exotica and tiki at Don the Beachcomber in Huntington Beach. Via phone, Randy Wong (bass) discussed his ties to exotica, the history of the music and the event at Don the Beachcomber.
Describe exotica for someone who is not familiar with it.
It's an early world music hybrid that came out of post-World War II Hawai'i, so it uses those cultures. You've got Chinese, Japanese, Hawai'ian, Puerto Rican. Hawaiian melodies with American swing and jazz, Latin jazz percussion. It's a combination of 50s cool and otherworldy kind of sounds.
What was it about this style that drew you to it?
I'm from Hawai'i, as is half of the band. We all grew up with exotica in one way or another. My connection to it is that I was family friends with Arthur Lyman, who was one of the original vibraphonists of exotica music. I grew up hearing him play the vibes and making these bird calls while he was playing. It was awesome. I had never heard anything like it before. When I moved to Boston, I had a lot of universities calling me to provide Hawai'ian music for their luau events. I wanted to give them something different. When you think of Hawai'ian music, you think of ukulele, guitar, stuff like that. There is this whole other style of music that came from Hawai'i that people don't really know about because it became sort of cliche at one point. Our percussionist, his father was the original percussionist and bird caller for Martin Denny's band. He is the one who brought Latin percussion to the mainstream in Hawai'ian music in the early 50s. He brought the bird sounds because he knew they would heighten the exoticism.
I was just listening to Arthur Lyman on last.fm last night, and also got stuff by Martin Denny and Don Tiki.
Lopaka (percussion), myself and Abe Lagrimas Jr. (drums, vibraphones) all played in Don Tiki in Hawai'i as part of the Hawai'i tiki revival. On December 30, one of Don Tiki's vocalists Sherry Shaoling is performing with us.
The CD is called New Sounds of Exotica. How does this differ from its predecessors?
Most exotica in the 50s, everything was written out. There wasn't much improvisation. It was being done in film studios by arrangers who weren't familiar with Latin jazz. What we're doing is different. The band is jazz players, and the guys are able to build their own vocabulary and make it their own. It's trying to keep the music fresh and have the music appeal to a younger audience. A lot of people think about exotica as music for older people, elevator music. There is that vibe sometimes. For the most part, we're trying to experiment with different dance forms from various cultures. Taking the hip beats that are out there and playing them live.
Why do you think it's important to keep the exotica tradition going?
Like any cultural music, if we're not constantly reminded of it, we're going to lose it. Exotica went through this phase where it was überhip. People tried to copy it, and it became cliche. The next generation in the 70s and 80s were rebelling against it like "This stuff sucks." Now, nobody knows about it, but what you gotta remember is, the way that it got to that point is because there was really good stuff out there. There are a lot of bands now that are kind of in the lounge revival. To me, they don't really get it. They use synthesizers because they can't find a vibes player. Or they think it's about recreating bird sounds that come out of a loop. They use all these samples. The magic of exotica was seeing the guys play everything live. They weren't making the animal calls that sounded like ornithologists. They were making sounds of animals that didn't exist. Because you're trying to create this experience that is completely different from where you are, the urban concrete jungle that you're in, and put you in a lush, tropical place that you're not. We're trying to do it right.
Tell me about the event at Don the Beachcomber and how it came it about.
We've been friends with the Don the Beachcomber team for several years. We were looking for ways to get out there. We've never performed on the west coast before. We just thought what a great way to bring some of the greatest names in tiki together. Don the Beachcomber is known for being a historic tiki venue. Donn Beach, the original proprietor, was a master mixologist who came up with the zombie cocktail. It's one of the foremost tiki cocktails. You think of the mai tai and the zombie. Donn Beach came up with that. There is a huge trend in cocktail culture now, especially on the east coast. They all want to do Donn Beach-style tiki drinks. We have a lot of fans up here that are hugely into Don the Beachcomber drinks, but they've never been to Don the Beachcomber. The one in Huntington Beach is the only one that's real. All of our fans want to go to Don the Beachcomber and we want to bring them the best music. They have the tradition of jazz. What they really need is amazing exotica and Waitiki can provide that. At first, we were just going to do New Year's Eve. But there's so many different aspects to exotica. We can look at the classic stuff, the Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, Robert Drasnin stuff. That's one thing. But not everybody who likes tiki likes that vibe. There's also the guys that just want to dance to that Austin Powers groovy vibe. And tiki can accommodate that too. A lot of modern exotica like Don Tiki and Combustible Edison fit into that mold. One of our producers in Boston used to be the keyboardist for Combustible Edison, which was big in the 90s. He said, "Why don't we do the Waitiki 7 vibe for New Year's Eve?" We decided "We already have two nights. Why don't we add a third night on Thursday the 29th, that lets us do the jazz side of exotica." We're going to do two different quartets. The first is going to be a Hawai'ian take on it, like the Atthur Lyman style: vibes, percussion, bass, drum kit. We're going to do that instrumentation for the first set. The second set is going to be sax, piano, bass and drums, but all exotica material.
What about this event are you most looking forward to?
It's a meeting of the minds. I can't wait to have all those exotica musicians, spanning all parts of the history of exotica in one place. The music is going to be mind-blowing. We're going to have one of the elder statesman there, Robert Drasnin. He was a director of music at CBS in the 50s and 60s. He was an exotica arranger and a friend of Martin Denny. We'll be doing his music on the 30th. To have Combustible Edison come out of the woodwork after being in hiding for 15 years. The energy is going to be unstoppable. We have people coming from all over the world to come to this event: France, Germany, Hawai'i, all over the east coast, midwest. It's going to be a great meeting. I'm really excited about this.
What would you be doing if you weren't making music?
I do a lot of cocktail consulting and mixology, so probably that. 12/25/10 >> go there
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