A Conversation with Waitiki 7’s Randy Wong (Part 1 of 2)

Randy Wong is the founder and leader of exotica ensemble the Waitiki 7. The group recently released two new albums: Caves of the Sea and Enchantment Under the Kiawe Tree. I spoke with him in connection with a feature I wrote for SPIN Magazine, but our interview was so enjoyable that separate from that, I’m also posting the following lightly edited transcript of our entire conversation. – bk

Bill Kopp: The Waitiki 7 came together after the ‘90s revival that gave us Combustible Edison and like-minded acts. What inspired you to launch the group?

Randy Wong: It was a combination of things. My best friend, our drummer Abe Lagrimas Jr. got his introduction to Exotica through Don Tiki, which was an outfit that came out in the ‘90s out of Honolulu; they were contemporaries with Combustible Edison. Through that experience, Abe – who was I think 15 years old at the time – got to meet percussionist Lopaka Colón, who was channeling his father’s bird calls. Abe got his professional introduction in music, touring with Don Tiki to things like the close of the Kahiki restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, of all places.

And then at the same time, I was learning about Exotica music through a school project at New England Conservatory. We had a career skills class, and they said, “Come up with a fictional press kit for a musician you really admire.” Growing up, I was familiar with Arthur Lyman, the vibraphonist, because he was a family friend of my grandfather’s. And I thought, “Well, I’ve grown up seeing Arthur play, but I don’t know very much about him other than he plays vibraphone and he makes bird calls. So that would be really cool to check out.” So I hit up the Firestone Library, and lo and behold, there were a bunch of recordings down there. Listening to it, it’s jazz, but obviously he’s playing some music that’s inflected with Hawaii. And then I started to go down this rabbit hole of learning about Martin Denny, Les Baxter and others.

So as were developing that, Abe and I became housemates in Boston because he was going to Berklee. A tiki bar opened up down the street from us, and as enterprising college musicians, Abe and I were like, “Could we get a gig at a tiki bar playing exotica?” And that’s how the idea for Waitiki 7 was born. We didn’t know anyone else who would be interested in the music. We weren’t sure if it was really going to be popular in New England, but it certainly was. We started out with a Craigslist ad, looking for other musicians who were interested. Eventually, we formed a quartet, and we became good friends with Brother Cleve [Robert Toomey] who was keyboardist and producer for Combustible Edison.

That led us down another rabbit hole when we learned about the music of Juan Garcia Esquivel through our record collecting. We had started a 25 piece big band that we called the Waitiki Orchestratica that brought back that Esquivel music. And then shortly after that, an opportunity came to play the House of World Cultures in Berlin. They said, “Put us together something very special that really focuses on classic exotica,” because that was one of the festival’s themes. I said, “I’ve always wanted to have an all-star exotica septet.” The original quartet instrumentation of Waitiki was alto flute, vibraphone, bass and drum kit. And in the Martin Denny groups, you always had piano and vibes.

I was like, “I’d love to bring in my really good friend and classmate Zaccai Curtis, who’s an incredible Latin Afro Cuban pianist, and have him play the piano role.” And then, you know, we can’t just have drums, we also have to have percussion. And so let’s bring in Lapaca Colon to represent, to live in that role that his father played in Martin Denny’s band. And then, and then my girlfriend at the time – now wife – Helen Liu, is a phenomenal violinist. And I said, “Let’s have her in there too, because we can really expand the sound dimension with strings.” And so the Waitiki 7 was born.

Detractors – of which I am most definitely not one – sometimes cite what they see as the inauthenticity or even the cultural appropriation characteristics of exotica. How do you address that?

That’s a totally valid question. And it’s something that we’ve addressed time and again throughout our career. Abe and I started this group as interpreters of a mid-century pop sound that we came to know as part of the history of music in Hawaii, distinct from traditional, indigenous, authentic Hawaiian music.

So this is the music we’re playing. Some of the songs are exotic, creative interpretations of what’s called hapa haoli – half Hawaiian, half foreign – music. Those are basically jazz standards with jazz harmonies and 32 bar song forms that don’t exist in Hawaiian music, but with Hawaiian melodies or a mix of English and Hawaiian language lyrics.

So we’re taking those elements which are already a creative interpretation and “exotifying” them. And then there’s a whole bunch of other exotica music that really only sometimes found its way into other genres. Like “Quiet Village” or “Cubano Chant” or “Taboo”; those are all songs that have become standards in exotica. You don’t really hear them in jazz anymore, but they were really prevalent at the time.

There’s the question of authenticity, which is: “How is exotic music authentic to us?” Abe and I grew up in Hawaii, born and raised in Hawaii. Exotica music was part of that time. And then the other folks in the band, Zaccai bringing in his Afro Cuban literacy and adapting it, because there’s always been a lot of cha cha in exotica. And you know him as a celebrated performer of that music. And what’s more authentic than having someone like that being the one to interpret it?

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