Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation

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Preface / Karen Pinkus vii
1. The Tiki Hour 1
2. Mondo Exotica 17
3. Exotic Fragments 34
4. The Laboratory of Dr. Les Baxter 45
5. Martin Denny: The Frog and the Prince 57
6. The Age of the Grand Expositions 67
7. Cocktails All Around 78
8. The Tribes of Exotica 96
9. A Venus in the Lounge 111
10. Destination: Space-Age Pop 121
11. The Moon in Stereo 145
12. Crime Jazz 168
13. Shaken and Stirred 180
14. Italian Style, from Spies to Exotica-Erotica 192
15. Italy's Exotic Adventures 211
16. Lounge Italia 226
17. La Dolce Vita 235
18. Hangovers? 262
Notes 267
Discography 307
Index 355

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Tiki torches, cocktails, la dolce vita, and the music that popularized them—Mondo Exotica offers a behind-the-scenes look at the sounds and obsessions of the Space Age and Cold War period as well as the renewed interest in them evident in contemporary music and design. The music journalist and radio host Francesco Adinolfi provides extraordinary detail about artists, songs, albums, and soundtracks, while also presenting an incisive analysis of the ethnic and cultural stereotypes embodied in exotica and related genres. In this encyclopedic account of films, books, TV programs, mixed drinks, and above all music, he balances a respect for exotica’s artistic innovations with a critical assessment of what its popularity says about postwar society in the United States and Europe, and what its revival implies today.

Adinolfi interviewed a number of exotica greats, and Mondo Exotica incorporates material from his interviews with Martin Denny, Esquivel, the Italian film composers Piero Piccioni and Piero Umiliani, and others. It begins with an extended look at the postwar popularity of exotica in the United States. Adinolfi describes how American bachelors and suburbanites embraced the Polynesian god Tiki as a symbol of escape and sexual liberation; how Les Baxter’s album Ritual of the Savage (1951) ushered in the exotica music craze; and how Martin Denny’s Exotica built on that craze, hitting number one in 1957. Adinolfi chronicles the popularity of performers from Yma Sumac, “the Peruvian Nightingale,” to Esquivel, who was described by Variety as “the Mexican Duke Ellington,” to the chanteuses Eartha Kitt, Julie London, and Ann-Margret. He explores exotica’s many sub-genres, including mood music, crime jazz, and spy music. Turning to Italy, he reconstructs the postwar years of la dolce vita, explaining how budget spy films, spaghetti westerns, soft-core porn movies, and other genres demonstrated an attraction to the foreign. Mondo Exotica includes a discography of albums, compilations, and remixes.

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Crammed with facts about sounds, composers, their histories, reminiscences and a whole lot more, Adinolfi has more than done his research, which , in such a odd, diverse, and obscure field of music, has to be applauded. . . . [A] very worthy edition to any bachelor pad. . . ." -- Jonny Trunk

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