Lost and found in translation

Exotica: The word itself is contaminated. In the US, to invoke it without air quotes in any serious cultural discussion is a major gaffe. It reveals lingering colonial-era thinking: us versus them. The musical version that blossomed like a plastic orchid in the 1950s smacks of the same high-handedness. It’s a movement largely born of Hollywood composers’ habit of serving up the vaguest, laziest signifiers of some other culture’s music, with a blithe disregard for its particulars. (Think Tarzan movies. Or anything set in Asia. It’s no accident Les Baxter scored movies: Daughter of the Sun God, Operation Bikini, Tonga Tika.) With musical exotica, the question’s not, are we even allowed to listen to it anymore? It’s, do you even want to?

Silly question: nobody loves a fad more than the Dutch. But didn’t bachelor pad music roll through years ago, sometime between Raymond Scott and the Comedian Harmonists? Surely de Volkskrant’s morgue brims with think-pieces on Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny, who did for Hawaiian music what Tarzan soundtracks did for talking drums.

Black Market Audio’s Dutch Exotica compilation is so far behind the curve, one fears it’s trying to bring the fad back. The CD’s mostly okay, actually, because it doubles down on lost-in-translation absurdities: Dutch takes on Hollywood versions of Polynesian music. Or worse. Consider Jamaica Johnny’s “Pineapple Princess”—Johnny being Nelis Liefeld from Surinam, whose ode to a Hawaiian beauty sounds oddly like the chipper calypsos that passed for source music in old Saint and Danger Man episodes set on the island of Bamaica or Jarbados and shot on a Borehamwood soundstage. The lyricists’ local-color research seems to have been limited to travel brochures: there’s talk of a ukulele (extolled but unheard), water skis and skin diving. Unaccountably, our heroine lacks a surfboard, preferring to cruise on a crocodile. Never mind the only place you’ll see a croc on the islands is the Honolulu zoo.

Or take Den Helder-born Milly Scott’s ode to where she longs to be, “Africa.” As a salute to the mother continent, Milly sings and scats most of it in Louis Armstrong’s gravel growl. (Didn’t Hollywood once put him in leopard skins?)

The CD notes are scanty, but the on-line annotation is much better (while it lasts: http://dutchexotica.nl/artists.htm#02). And from looking at the artists’ biographical sketches, you can see many of the artists fall into two general categories, with a little overlap between.

The first and larger (and far more interesting) group is drawn from outposts of Holland’s empire. That figures: Surinam’s music, with its mix of South Asian, South American, Caribbean and European influences, is almost readymade exotica. So we get Max Woiski, Sr. (“Bron Bron Calypso,” a movie song), Lex Vervuurt (“Paramaribo Mambo”), and Max Jr. picking guitar.

Two guitarists hail from Bundung, Jakarta. For “Midnight in Malaya,” Boy Jansen twangs like Dick Dale, on a Singapore scale (now who’s being vague?), over a modified habañera beat. On “Tango des Roses” lap steel wiz George de Fretes hits zingy glissandi and portamenti drenched with echo, à la Santo and Johnny. (Have they had their 15 minutes in Holland yet?) For a second it actually turns into a tango.

De Fretes student Rudi Wairata, from Malaku, contributes “Whistling Guitar” which bristles with odd arranging touches—for bass clarinet, lap steel and clipped percussion over walking bass—that parallel Vic Mizzy’s madcap music for the ’60s sitcom The Addams Family. (This is all fad-worthy, folks). His “Bali Bali Boogie” features boogieing so anemic and vocal harmonies so tepid it makes the Andrews Sisters sound like James Brown. But a water-toned vibist’s deceptive intro is pure gamelan music, witty misdirection.

Some of the loopiest music here is untethered to obvious ethnic markers; the Sun Ra/bachelor pad connection comes across in Thom Kelling’s “Tabu,” where squeaky free-jazz saxes (Piet Noordijk! Who knew?), mixed way back, provide jungle sound effects. Dick Willebrandts’ “Zambesi” clearly aspires to be a Raymond Scott chart. “El Cumbanchero” showcases Johnny Meijer’s serious accordion chops.

A second, smaller group of artists included here walked a fine ethical line during the War: the Ramblers, Willebrandts, Guus Jansen, and a Surinam transplant or two who, wink wink, got classified as Aryans. We could probably draw some deep conclusions about that—but it’s probably just a sign of the terrible dilemmas the generations(s) of musicians who produced exotica had to face.

But then there’s Wout Steenhuis, whose “Bali Ha’i” is one of several examples of boilerplate exotica here. But give it up to a musician who fought in the Resistance, got captured by the Nazis and escaped, went back into action and got wounded the day before Liberation. A cynic might call Steenhuis the rarest of exotic species here: Dutch war hero. Snap!