Exoticamusicmusic beyond the familiar

An independent magazine about unusual music. It is not a record label, production company or shop and has no connection with the former website on this domain; we do not sell or distribute recordings.

History

History of the subject

Unusual music has no single history; it has several strands that sometimes cross. One runs from the electric instruments of the early twentieth century, another from studio easy listening that dreamed of faraway lands, a third from an industry that needed new shelves and new formats. Below is a short timeline of verified dates, followed by some notes on it.

Dates in music history are few. But each one is surrounded by decades of sound.

— Editor's thought

Timeline

  1. 1920

    Leon Theremin invents the theremin, an electric instrument played by moving the hands through the air without touching it.

  2. 1950s

    Exotica takes shape in the United States: light instrumental music with "exotic" motifs, percussion and imitations of the sounds of nature.

  3. 1957

    Martin Denny's album "Exotica" is released, and its title becomes the name of the whole style.

  4. 1982

    The compact disc goes on sale and gradually changes how listeners collect and store music.

  5. 1987

    A group of British record companies adopts the term world music as a category for record shop shelves.

How to read this timeline

Exotica shows how the studio imagination built a picture of a faraway world. The musicians never travelled to the islands they played about: the exotic was assembled from vibraphone, bongos, gongs, birdcalls and soft jazz harmonies. It is a stylisation, and it is worth hearing as one, with curiosity about how a foreign culture appeared to a mid-century city listener.

The world music label arose for a different reason: retailers needed somewhere to file recordings that did not fit the usual sections. As a result, very different traditions ended up under a single word. It helps to remember that the term is about selling, not about the musical cultures themselves.

The theremin and the compact disc are stories about technology. The first showed that an instrument could sound without being touched; the second changed the format of the album, the length of a recording and what a home music shelf looks like.

  • Collections

    Themed collections of directions for a first encounter with unusual music.

  • Analysis

    How to break down a track by timbre, rhythm, structure and recording quality, using hypothetical examples.

  • Archive

    All magazine sections grouped by topic, plus a note on the domain's archived addresses.

Sources

  • Music encyclopedias and reference works
  • Release credits: booklets and sleeves
  • Sound recording archives

Historical information is based on music encyclopedias and reference works. Details of releases, concerts and venues change, so check them with publishers and organisers.