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

Description

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.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Similar books

• 

  Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

  By Susan Strasser, David Suisman

  jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age, 76. 32. Lea Fletcher, Narrativa de mujeres argentines: bibliografia de los siglos XIX y XX (Buenos Aires: Feminaria Editora, 2007); Maria Castellanos, “Portico” de Silvia Guerrico Los Principes ...

• 

  A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism

  By Paul Youngquist

  The satellites are spinning A new day is dawning The galaxies are waiting For planet Earth's awakening. ... are spinning A better day is breaking The galaxies are waiting For planet Earth's awakening.21 Galaxies await Earth's awakening.

• 

  Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso

  By Timothy Dodge

  recorded by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters on Atlantic in 1954, Ballard's version of “The Twist” reached the number sixteen position on Billboard's rhythm and blues chart in April 1959.97 Dick Clark (1929–2012), host of the very ...

• 

  Soundtracked Books from the Acoustic Era to the Digital Age: A Century of "Books That Sing"

  By Justin St. Clair

  ... Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation (2008), at the height of the Cold War, Americans countered fears of annihilation and Soviet domination with dreams of “a place in the sun,” with fantasies of tropical ...

• 

  Steelpan Ambassadors: The US Navy Steel Band, 1957–1999

  By Andrew R. Martin

  But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steelband helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin. In fact, the story goes, the Piper was only there as a colorful figurehead; something an obscure reporter dreamed up in order to play ...

• 

  Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America

  By Benjamin M. Han

  While the first two episodes did not explicitly single out race, the third features a standup comedy act by Tom Cooper, who is introduced as originating from Brooklyn. Cooper jokes about his experience growing up in an integrated ...

• 

  Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork

  By Bill Martin

  This was one of the gigs where Davis and group opened for rock groups, in front of large audiences. Reportedly, when it was first suggested to Davis that he could enlarge his following by supporting rock groups, he was outraged.

• 

  Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice

  By James Leo Cahill, Luca Caminati

  He was tasked not only with filming but also with disseminating messages of national salvation by means of singing, performing theatrical works in streets, putting up propagandist posters in public spaces, and screening films with a ...

• 

  The Music of Counterculture Cinema: A Critical Study of 1960s and 1970s Soundtracks

  By Mathew J. Bartkowiak, Yuya Kiuchi

  ... Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation, Francesco Adinolfi describes “exotica” music or commonly referred to—to some critics and fans' chagrin—“lounge” or “cocktail” music, as one that was born out of a ...

• 

  Sweet and Savage: The world through the mondo film lens

  By Mark Goodall

  Nothing was true, and nothing was untrue...” J G Ballard Being the first ever English-language title devoted exclusively to the controversial and influential mondo documentary film cycle, this revised edition of Sweet and Savage remains ...