Mondo Exotica , livre ebook

377

pages

English

Ebooks

2008

Écrit par
Adinolfi Francesco Adinolfi ,
traduit par Pinkus Karen Pinkus

Publié par
Duke University Press

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377

pages

English

Ebooks

2008

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

25 avril 2008

EAN13

9780822389088

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

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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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

25 avril 2008

EAN13

9780822389088

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Popular culture Music

MondoExotica sounds, visions, obsessionsof the cocktail generation

Francesco Adinolfi

Edited and translated by Karen Pinkus

Duke University Press Durham and London 

with Jason Vivrette

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper♾ Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Warnock Light by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Mondo Exotica: Suoni, visioni e manie della Generazione Cocktail was originally publised in Italian by Einaudi Tascabili, ©  Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino.

. . . . Preface by Karen Pinkusvii The Tiki Hour 1. . . .  Mondo Exotica 2. . . .  . . . .Exotic Fragments 3 . . . .The Laboratory of Dr. Les Baxter 4 . . . .Martin Denny: The Frog and 5 the Prince  .The Age of the Grand Expositions 6. . . . . . .Cocktails All Around 7 The Tribes of Exotica 8. . . . A Venus in the Lounge 9. . . . Destination: Space-Age Pop 10. . . . The Moon in Stereo 11. . . .  . . . .Crime Jazz 12 Shaken and Stirred 13. . . . . . . .Italian Style, from Spies to 14 Exotica-Erotica . . . .Italy’s Exotic Adventures 15 . . . .Lounge Italia 16 . . . .La Dolce Vita 17 . . . .Hangovers? 18

. . . .Notes . . . .Discography . . . .Index

Contents

Karen Pinkus

. . . .

Preface

Vittorio Gassman (Bruno) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Roberto) are driving along te Via Aurelia outside of Rome in Dino Risi’s  brilliant comedic ﬁlmIl sorpasso.¹ Bruno slips a   into is dasboard record player. It’s a melancolic song by Domenico Modugno, “Veccio Frack” (“Old Tux”).

It’s midnight. Everything is quiet. e last café turns oﬀ its lights. e streets are deserted and silent.

It’s a pop song from —not exactly part of te canon of exotica—but wat Bruno says is emblematic: “Listen, it seems like noting. But it’s got everyting.” Mondo Exoticais a narrative kaleidoscope of music and popular culture tat begins wit te generation tat grew into adultood after World War II

and extends to yout culture of te s and te present. It’s a book tat may seem like noting—like so muc pop epemera—but it as everyting (or better, it tries to be inclusive in te way tat record nerds will try to outdo eac oter wit teir knowledge of obscure releases). Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionarydeﬁnesexoticas someting “intro-duced from anoter country; not native to te place were found.” he plu-ralexoticais used to indicate tat wic is “excitingly diﬀerent or unusual.” If we focus on te preﬁxexo, external, it becomes clear tat exoticism sould imply “everyting tat is oter, [or rater] to open oneself up to te strangeness of te oter and to feel, among oters, cloted in a disquieting strangeness.”² But wait—it’s not as simple as it seems. Suc assumptions presuppose a laborious extrication (exo) from one’s own conditioning and an opening to te diversity of te world, stripped of every colonialist/im-perialist and geograpical fantasy. However, tis isnotte pat taken by exotica, te musical mode tat took te United States by storm in te s, or by wat was generically (and erroneously) codiﬁed as “lounge/cocktail music” in te s. his is not to condemn outrigt a genre tat produced excellent musicians, singers, and arrangers, but rater to place tis musical fad witin a zeitgeist tat boasted assimilation and cultural anniilation of te oter as one of its distinctive traits. Today it as become almost second nature to ear music from te postwar period wit “politically correct” ears, or to veemently criticize unmerited and misrepresentative appropriations of oter cultures and teir sounds. We can’t excuse exotica, but we sould study its contexts and its modes of functioning. For instance, te fater of exotica cuisine, Vic Bergeron of te mytical Trader Vic’s cain, once said: “In  I went to Taiti for te ﬁrst time and I ated te goddamn place! Here all tese years I’ve been promoting Sout Seas cuisine and products, and I go tere and see it for myself, and it rains all te time and te girls ave bad teet and te food is crummy and I can’t wait to leave. It’s te pits. It’s a boil on te ass of cre-ation, tat place. I’ll tell ya!”³ Bergeron’s reaction is ardly a surprise: Any sudden passage from a purely imagined exotic to a direct confrontation wit an autentic object can ave a dramatic eﬀect on even te most open-minded person. An emblematic case study on exotic perceptions is oﬀered by te  Paris Exposition Universelle. For composers like Camille Saint-Saëns, Cinese music was beautiful on te page. But wen e actually lis-tened to te “real” music played by “autentic Oriental” artists in ﬂes and blood, e found it “atrocious to our ears.” But, e conceded, “if one took te time to study it, it oﬀered someting of potentially great interest.”⁴

. . . . preface viii

For most Americans wo ave studied te ideology of exotica in an aca-demic context, te foundational text is, of course, Edward Said’sOriental-ism. Said distinguises a European current of orientalism from an Ameri-can one: For Americans, te Orient is typically te Far East; for te Frenc and Britis, as well as oter European nations, “te Orient [te Middle East, essentially] is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also te place of Europe’s greatest and ricest and oldest colonies, te source of its civilization and languages, its cultural contestant, and of its deepest and most recurring images of te Oter.”⁵ Said teaces us tat te Orient (like te Occident) is an idea, but not just an idea. he same can be said of exotica, and it is a primary contradiction tat resurfaces over and over in te pages tat follow. hrougout tis book, ten, we ave omitted te quasi-obligatory scare quotes tat sould, could, and would normally accompany an academic work publised in te new millennium on subjects suc as “exotica,” “te exotic,” “te oter,” and “te Orient.” Exotica witout scare quotes expresses a relation between two cultures, even if suc a relation is not always explic-itly stated as suc. “Because,” as te music critic R. J. Smit wrote, “if exotica was a sound, it was also aplace.”⁶ In its obsessive searc for exotica culture, tis book moves all over te world (and even into outer space), but two of its primary geograpical poles are te United States and Italy. he title itself exempliﬁes geograpi-cal movement:exoticais a word tat exists in Englis and expresses te idea of a multiplicity of diﬀerent cultures.Mondo, as most readers know, means simply “world” in Italian. It also as a more precise genealogy in relation to a series of exploitation and B-movies from te s and s in Italy, as developed especially in capter .Mondo cane(), featur-ing music by Riz Ortolani (wo also composed for te astounding sound-track ofIl sorpasso) was a documentary directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti. Originally deﬁned as a “sockumentary,” Jacopetti’s ﬁlm (featuring “exotic” American senior citizens learning to ula dance in Hawaii or doing bizarre calistenics in a gym to rid temselves of all manner of bulges) inspired many imitators and virtually launced te penomenon of usingmondo to refer to te portrayal of a violent, absurd, and unpitying world. Later mondowill be widely used to refer to any world tat seems extreme, ex-cessive, or sexually deviant. Obviously, te title of tis book follows on tis tradition.Mondowas far from te only term used in Italian genre cinema. Alessandro Blasetti’sEuropa di notte(Europe by Night, ) generated a wole series of “by nigt” genre ﬁlms likeAmerica di Notte(America by Night, ),Mondo di Notte ,, and(, , ),Universo di Notte

. . . . preface ix

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