Post #521587 by ikitnrev on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 9:52 AM

The wild imagery of "taking a virgin hula girl and sacrificing her to the volcano God" is definitely part of the 'Pele as Goddess' exotica - why else would Arthur Lyman place photos of erupting and flowing lava on his LP covers?

But you can't go and and keep on throwing virgins into the volcano - it would get old after a while, and you don't want to be slave to a God who demands 'round the clock 24 hours a day' sacrifices. You would tire, and need to relax, and when you go back to your beach hut, you want to relax, sip a cocktail, and put your arms around the hula girls you did not sacrifice. (Sipping, and having the time to sip, is a luxury - gulping implies you are overthirsted, or need to be elsewhere as soon as possible.)

Maybe exotica is a bit unusual in that it allows for a wide range of expression - from the frantic flurry of the tribal drums pounding in unison, to the soft sounds of someone blowing a conch shell way off in the distance. The ratio tends to definitely focus on the quieter, more melodic elements, but does allow for that sliver of wildness to appear.

Maybe that is a bit of what tiki exotica is - it is the illusion of living in paradise, but with some sense of danger - perhaps the eruption of Pele - that could drastically change things. Yes, you may be in Paradise, but echoes of the WW2 past might still be heard in the distance, or rumblings of volcano tremors felt underfoot, or a Hukilau hurricane may approaching over the horizon. But that danger isn't used as a reason to fear or panic, but more as a reminder for you to enjoy even more the pleasures that are placed in front of you.

Exotica isn't just a series of pleasant musical notes - it is also the imagery associated with it.

When I think of the punk, I think of a more-or-less constant stream of loud and fast and very energetic music in an urban setting - music that I listened to a lot when I was younger, but definitely not exotica. Surf and rockabilly are placed much lower on the musical intensity scale, but I still mainly picture them as more energetic music - the first thing I think of is beach twist dance parties, or street hot rod racing after midnight. While people in the rockabilly and swing cultures do relax, that relaxation is not their core image.

The wild sliver of danger influence is important, and may be why the punk and rockabilly crowds have embraced the modern tiki revival - tiki and exotica isn't a pure calm, it's not just our grandparents falling asleep around the poolside as quiet Hawaiian-influenced jazz is played, its not simply feel-good Jimmy Buffet sing-alongs, or a steady monotony of mellow steel-drums. With exotica, there is a sense that things could get wild at any moment (Esquivel!) That wild explosion may or may not happen - but it is there.

The ex-punk/rockabilly crowds may have been attracted to the tiki/exotica scene because it was a genre of music that had mostly been abandoned by the elders. The tiki room was there, empty, vacant, and unappreciated, the imagery was there, waiting to be rediscovered. It may have been perfect timing - the aging punkers and rockabilly crowd, looking for a quiter setting for themseleves as they grew older, that would still allow them to mellow out a bit, but still retian a sense of wildness -- and they claimed the imagery, embraced the scene, and were and are a critical element in its revival.

Vern