Readings:
- Shuhei Hosokawa (1999) “Martin Denny and the Development of Musical Exotica,” from Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Post-War Popular Music
- Barbara Ehrenreich (1983) “Breadwinners and Losers: Sanctions Against Male Deviance” and “Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes,” from The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
Listening:
- Tracks by Juan García Esquivel, Martin Denny available on Blackboard
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9 comments:
Question about readings:
One thing that I think would be interesting to discuss is the actual effect on behaviors, not necessarily the popular opinion of the press, on the changing notion that men must be the breadwinners of the house to the notion that men could be single and still masculine. For instance, did the Playboy magazine actually cause more men to remain bachelors and live the single life, or did the marriage rate remain the same? Was there a way for men to maintain their “independence” even if they were in a monogamous marriage?
Another, unrelated, question involves the article on Martin Denny. I would be curious to see if both genders enjoyed the musical exotica, or if one gender preferred it. This was not addressed directly in the article, but I feel that the article gives enough information to allow for a good class discussion. Also, the album cover given for one of Martin Denny’s albums is a good indication of the targeted audience.
Artifact Discussion:
I listened to Martin Denny’s song “Aku Aku.” The song consisted of purely percussive instruments. The birdcalls and ‘hoots’ in the beginning of the song were rather interesting and exotic. Other instruments I detected in the piece included mallets/xylophone, steel drums, traditional drums, triangle, and chimes. Because the song used percussive instruments of varying pitches, it did have a melody (not just rhythm). This obviously directly relates to the article “Martin Deny and the Development of Musical Exotica.” Denny strived to combine the South Pacific and the Orient to create a pure fantasy of what the islands are imagined to be like. He establishes a mood by “stressing melodic content and highlight[ing] it with novel effects.” In “Aku Aku,” this goal is definitely obtained, as Denny creates a melody with percussion instruments and tries new effects such as the birdcalls. Denny uses the vocal birdcall impression in order to give the impression of jungleness. Denny’s style creates a relaxed, laid-back style of music that is pleasing and interesting to the listener. The relaxed setting of the music allows for spontaneous sound effects such as the hoots of the birds.
The album cover for Martin Denny’s album “Quiet Village” seems to suggest that the exotic nature of the music is targeted mainly toward a male audience. I am hypothesizing this due to the picture of a woman seductively dressed and posed on the album art. The scenery is exotic in the album art as well. It seems as though Martin Denny is trying to attract the male audience and “seduce” the men through the fantastical music of the exotic world.
I also listened to Juan Garcia Esquivel’s song “Mucha Muchacha.” This song was very Latin sounding. At one point there is a male/female vocal interaction. The male identified himself as “muchacho” and called the women “muchacha.” He repeated it several times in a rather condescending tone, possibly portraying the woman as unable to quickly understand simple concepts.
After reading the articles and listening to the works by Martin Denny and Juan Garcia Esquivel, I formulated the following questions: 1) Which elements of Denny’s pieces lead to its categorization as “exotica” music? 2) Is this categorization justified, or is it “pure fantasy” as Denny claims (77)? 3) Why is exotica a fitting musical style for communal spaces of hotel lobbies, elevators, etc?
Artifact discussion:
I find it interesting that Denny makes musical references to non-Western geographical regions of the South Pacific and the Orient using historically Western instruments of the piano, vibraphone, and upright bass. Denny describes his work Quiet Village as having a “compulsive jungle rhythm to it” (77). However, he also refers to the geographic references within his music as “pure fantasy.” This begs the question: what constitutes an exotic, jungle rhythm? Denny frequently references bird calls in his pieces, which Hosakawa refers to as the “essential signature of musical exotica” (77). In my opinion, Denny’s works are deemed “exotic” by listeners because of the frequent elements of distraction dispersed throughout his pieces. Specifically, in Caravan, Denny maintains a simple melody on marimba. Yet he inserts chimes and percussion sounds that continuously draw the listener’s attention away from the scale-like melody.
Like Denny, Juan Garcia Esquivel layers distracting elements overtop of a simple, repetitive melody. In his piece La Bikina, he distracts his listener away from the simplistic keyboard melody using female voices, horns, and maracas. This piece sounds slightly less “exotic” than the works of Denny because there are no recognizable birdcalls. However, perhaps the loud horns could be interpreted as the calls of other animals.
After thoroughly listening to the works of both Denny and Esquivel, I conclude that Denny is correct in calling his exotic illusions “purely fantasy.” Both artists play on Western expectations of exotic locales. The final production: made up of Western instruments of strings, wind, and percussion instruments, merely presents a Western ideal of non-Western culture, much like the visual works of European orientalist painters of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Question:
Did Playboy really invent or popularize the men’s accessory industry? From movies (Titanic is one of the many examples) it seems that men were always wearing nice watches, smoking cigars and drinking scotch. Did Playboy bring this taste for luxury to less wealthy men?
Artifact Discussion:
When listening to the exotica samples I found that the author’s description is incredibly accurate. The use of chimes, maracas, and tambourines in Bangkok Cockfight set up an island scene in my mind. Because the noises bounce back from one ear to another and they are so casual and disorderly it seems like an amalgam of street performers in a town square. The sound lacks the formality of many other music forms I’ve heard because it did not seem to keep a constant time count throughout.
What interested me about Juan Garcia Esquivel was the title of his album: Space Age Bachelor Tracks. This sound does not seem like something that Hugh Hefner would appreciate. The opening to Whatchamacallit has loud horns that are more in your face that the rest of the exotica. The squawking horns do not seem like something a bachelor would listen to when trying to calm down. Aside from the calming drums in the background to the song, it lacks the tribal and Latin feel that Denny’s tracks have. For example, the track gets much louder around 1:18 and begins to sound like something one would hear at the Moulin Rouge or even a circus.
The one thing the tracks had in common was the quality of sound. When listening to the music on my computer speakers rather than headphones, the noises became muddled and drowned each other out. Just as Hosokawa mentioned, this type of music really requires good hi-fi equipment. When listening to rock or rap the difference between lower quality and higher quality product did not change the listening experience as drastically.
Question:
In our last reading of the article, “Turn it Down,” the author Keir Keightley spends a good chunk of time discussing the wife’s response to hi-fi in the house. However, the female response to Playboy, when it first came out, is not discussed very thoroughly in Barbara Erenreich’s “Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes.” I would be very interested to know how females, and wives especially, reacted and responded to the publishing of this new magazine.
Artifact Discussion:
Firstly, I will discuss Martin Denny’s exotic music that I listened to. I listened to a few tracks, including “Quiet Village” and “Tsetse Fly.” Within a couple of seconds of listening to each, you get an overwhelmed sense of being transported to an exotic jungle, with all the bird and monkey sounds, and the non-western music attempt of percussion and low strings and such. You get an immediate and exact sense of what Shuhei Hosokawa describes in “Martin Denny and the Development of Musical Exotica.” Hosokawa describes the music as a vehicle of transportation to take one’s mind on a trip to the tropical jungle, and away from the hectic craze of American life. To me, this seems like another means of escape from reality in the social context of the fifties when American men wished to have freedom and relaxation in their homes, and time away from their wives. In this sense, exotica music seems to have the same contextual intention as hi-fi did in the American home.
Next to discuss is the album cover of Martin Denny’s “Quiet Village.” The first thing to note, and is also described in “Martin Denny and the Development of Musical Exotica,” is the setting of the album art. It is a tranquil, modest bungalow nested deep in the jungle. This visual effect serves an additionally similar intention as the music itself, to transport the listener from the comfort of his home to the exoticness of the jungle. Secondly, the sexy woman placed in the album cover utilizes the enticement of males to listen to the exotic music and feel the sense of freedom from their wives. It also is similar to the intention of Playboy magazine at the time, in that it gave men the alternative to being a husband. As Erenreich discusses in “Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes,” Playboy magazine allowed men to feel that it was okay to be a bachelor, and not feel homosexual, or a loser, because of it. My opinion is that the music exotica had a similar effect, as enforced by the woman in the album cover of “Quiet Village.”
Question: The “Breadwinners and Losers” article mentions the idea of labeling single men who are not married well into their working age as homosexual. I wonder to what extent that idea was applied in the society of the time period described in that article. In modern times, many men choose to stay as bachelors at a later age than before, so that that idea is not widely applied nowadays to single men. However, did people generally assume that such men were homosexual several decades ago like how the article described? If not, what were the other possible explanations for this “single life”?
Artifact Discussion: The clips of exotica music struck me as several things before I read the Hosokawa article. First, they reminded me of modern calypso and tribal music: the generally upbeat, tropical feel of the songs made them seem more foreign than they are. Also, they contained a variety of sounds, ranging from human chants to a tsetse fly-like buzz, that stood out from the other “western” instruments of the song (like the piano, for instance). These sounds, which were often accompanied by tribal drumbeats and other percussive rhythms, augmented the foreign touch of the music.
After I read the article, I was particularly curious about two points. The first was the association of exotica songs with “evocative song titles whose key words denote particular attributes” (Hosokawa 87). One thing that struck me as peculiar prior to reading the article was the choice of song titles by both Martin Denny and Juan García Esquivel: the titles of the selected songs were creative, but they did seem to have ties to the songs themselves. For one thing, the name of the song was spoken or sung in some songs – for instance, in “Mucha Muchacha” – and in others the origin of the title was obvious from listening to the sounds in the songs – like in “Tsetse Fly” or even in “La Raspa”. Also, Hosokawa mentions the idea that listening to exotica music “empowers the ‘pure escape’ from ‘everyday civilization’” – as if one were literally or figuratively escaping from (Hosokawa 84). Many of the selected songs did reflect this kind of escapism theme. In “Besame Mucho,” the music reflects that used in relation to island vacations and includes romantic voices saying “Bésame mucho” in Spanish. Both of these things probably intend to give listeners the sense of and perhaps desire to escape to a distant tropical island and find romance there as well. The instrumentation, particularly the use of western instruments played to tribal rhythms and unique percussion instruments with distinct, exotic sounds, allows this and the other songs to invoke the optimism and mystery of what was perceived as foreign.
Questions:
Why was there such a need for escape for "man" in a seemingly male-dominated society, and one where it would seem women were just as, if not more, defined by their gender roles as men? Was it women or men putting pressure on men for maturity during that time? And what role did music play in allowing men to reclaim the indoors?
Artifact Discussion:
A "playboy didn't have to be a husband to be a man"--these are words that kind of just nudge at me before they cause me to be awe-stricken as I am enlightened into what the writers had to say about manhood during the 50s. "Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes" really magnified the gender divide prevalent during the 50s and 60s in America. It was interesting to read about how a man's success and thus his masculinity was equated with how well he fit in to the role of 'breadwinner' and provider for his family in "Breadwinners and Losers", and then to be exposed to the contrasting argument posited that didn't degrade the act of making money, but emphasized the bondage of "sharing it" in the context of family and marriage. The publication about Playboy thus reiterated the perceived "need" for a male rebellion and one that was still "masculine", one that included the escape that music and Hi-fidelity sound would provide, which may have taken form in music such as those written/produced by Martin Denny.
In the album cover depicted, "Quiet Village": The Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny, one might be captivated first by the colors in the image: warm oranges, reds and yellows, tropical scenery that somehow link the Western world with the "other", more tropical, world of bamboo and foliage, nature, birds, and the like; if the scenery wasn't enticing as a sort of paradise, then perhaps the young, but familiar, alluring woman staring at the prospective buyer had a capability to accrue interest by a public that could have included a male seeking "escape" during this time period. All of these factors, as well as the "exotic" often "Latin-like" sounds of the music itself help to illustrate the capacity of music to translate a listener into another world. Through the development of a style of music that brought to the ear sounds not traditionally associated with music, Denny was able to produce a sound that would likely appeal to the vision of male dominance in the indoors. Such music would seemingly posses the capability to transport a man into a place of fantastic-reality, bringing the freedom and adventure of the outdoors into one's home, and combining the created mood with the sophistication of the more jazzy sounds apparent in the music; this could have provided a perfect formula for the "trapped man". The album cover in a way reiterates that women weren't excluded from the male "escape" but depicts that perhaps the capacity in which they were included was one that was very different from the role of wife or "mother of the home".
Question:
Who are the men who want to escape the role of breadwinner? Is it men who can't satisfy the requirements of that role? Or does this group include men who can satisfy it but who remain emotionally dissatisfied for one reason or another?
Artifact Discussion:
In "Martin Denny and the Development of Musical Exotica," Shuhei Hosokawa asserted that "In order to clarify this discussion, the term 'exotica' is taken here to designate the imaginary and intentional construction of non-western sound arranged and/or performed for western audiences." Upon listening to the track "Bangkok Cockfight," I agree that I feel transported away from the continental US. The closest I can imagine being is Hawaii. However, I wonder how this relates to the assertion made in Barbara Ehrenreich's pieces regarding men wanting to escape from the constrictive social roles in place, in particular, the role of "breadwinner." The connection that leaps to mind is that if men didn't feel they could remove themselves from those roles emotionally, they would want to escape physically, by leaving their country altogether.
Some of the other things that stick out to me in the Hosowaka piece are that the music emphasizes "mood and effect" rather than "structure and thought"; "fantasy of travel"; and "interaction between both human and nature." I just want to point out that these are some of the basic themes of many versions of feminism. I find it highly ironic that when men rebel against patriarchy (if that is, indeed, what exotic music is being used for), that they use a methodology that is so similar to what women use. I also think that Hosokawa's idea that "the asymmetric power relates between the West and the rest of the world" is important, but I do not yet completely understand this aspect of the article's argument and would like to explore it more.
Question: It struck me as interesting how Americans have always had this fascination with other cultures and this interest has pervaded society and the media, as illustrated with exotica in the late 1950s and early 1960s However, do other cultures consider American music and sounds as interesting in this time period and then?
Artifact discussion:
The tracks from Juan Garcia Esquivel and Martin Denny really help exemplify the genre of exotica and space age pop that was so prevalent in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hosokawa’s article defends the musical integrity of exotica, specifically through Martin Denny, arguing that exotica was not just “superficial evocation and imitation of faraway places and people,” but rather a “complex form premised on a play of subtle sound textures” (Hosokawa 72). After listening to the tracks, I would agree with Hosokawa’s argument especially after listening to Denny’s tracks. For example, “Bangkok Cockfight” adapted some oriental elements into the track, but also implemented instruments like the drums, piano, chimes, and marimba. These instruments, which are typically never mixed, give for a very different genre of music that was coming about in the mid-twentieth century. Some may attribute exotica to the general American fascination with everything foreign because of the American homogeneity found during that time, however, the music created was intricate and vary layered.
After listening to some of Esquivel’s music, particularly “Mucha Muchacha,” I have concluded that much of this exotica and space age pop are very different genres that were emerging in this time period. Just like with the development of rock and roll and psychedelic rock, like the Beatles, new genres of music represent a society moving towards heterogeneity, especially in the media. As such a diverse group of people moves into society roles such as breadwinners start to change. I found it interesting Ehrenreich seemed to defend the traditional role of men as breadwinners and belittle them when they couldn’t fit this societal role, as evidenced in her likening of a failure of a role to being a woman or a homosexual. Role changes have become have become restricted and compartmentalized, while music has started to change.
Question: In the Playboy article, Hefner claims to have started a movement to “reclaim the indoors for men,” and that the life of a man had become far too boring and controlled while a wives’ had become too cushy. First off weren’t the men the ones who kept the women indoors in the first place? During the 60s women were fighting to get out of the home and explore the world beyond marriage and family. If Hefner was okay with women but not wives, wasn’t the really problem just marriage as an institution? Rather than encouraging the life of a womanizing bachelor, shouldn’t he have encouraged more open, and perhaps more sexually experimental, marriages?
Artifact: I really enjoyed the Juan Garcia Esquivel tracks. They relate well to the concepts brought up within the Playboy article. The last track, “Besame Mucho,” for example, is something I could absolutely see being played in a guy’s bachelor pad, or in a flirtacious scene in a 50s film. The soft quality of the music is in no way indicative of life outside, but rather of a timidly coquette life indoors, perhaps involving a good bottle of scotch, some fancy cheese, and candlelight. It’s the kind of stuff you listen to in the background of an intimate restaurant on a nice date.
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