Les Baxter

March 14 is Les Baxter's birthday and, for me, an appropriate occasion to proclaim my undying love for Baxter and Exotica, the music style he helped to pioneer and popularize.

Exotica is great simply for its musical qualities, which included instruments like the chinese bell tree, the vibraphone, the theremin (ahh, the theremin) various hand drums, a string section and, of course, man-made jungle sounds. But exotica is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Exotica was part of a broader post-WWII American interest in Polynesia and tiki culture. It was about transporting the 1950s and 1960s suburbanite to far-off, exotic lands. But what exotica offered was an ersatz-exotic experience. It was not grounded in the traditional music of any of the locales that inspired it; it was designed to sound like what your average American thought the music of those locales should sound like. I think that idealism comes out in the sound and it is one of the most attractive aspects of exotica.

Anyway, if your ear is ever getting tired of the same old sounds, check out some Les Baxter, Martin Denny or Esquivel.