{"id":30744,"date":"2026-03-10T05:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T09:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30744"},"modified":"2026-03-11T07:55:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:55:56","slug":"a-conversation-with-waitiki-7s-randy-wong-part-1-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/a-conversation-with-waitiki-7s-randy-wong-part-1-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Waitiki 7\u2019s Randy Wong (Part 1 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Randy Wong is the founder and leader of exotica ensemble the Waitiki 7. The group recently released two new albums: Caves of the Sea<\/i> and Enchantment Under the Kiawe Tree<\/i>. I spoke with him in connection with a feature I wrote for SPIN<\/i> Magazine<\/a>, but our interview was so enjoyable that separate from that, I\u2019m also posting the following lightly edited transcript of our entire conversation. \u2013 bk<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Kopp: The Waitiki 7 came together after the \u201890s revival that gave us Combustible Edison and like-minded acts. What inspired you to launch the group? <\/b><\/p>\n

Randy Wong:<\/b> 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 \u201890s out of Honolulu; they were contemporaries with Combustible Edison. Through that experience, Abe \u2013 who was I think 15 years old at the time \u2013 got to meet percussionist Lopaka Col\u00f3n, who was channeling his father\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cCome up with a fictional press kit for a musician you really admire.\u201d Growing up, I was familiar with Arthur Lyman, the vibraphonist, because he was a family friend of my grandfather\u2019s. And I thought, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve grown up seeing Arthur play, but I don\u2019t know very much about him other than he plays vibraphone and he makes bird calls. So that would be really cool to check out.\u201d So I hit up the Firestone Library, and lo and behold, there were a bunch of recordings down there. Listening to it, it\u2019s jazz, but obviously he\u2019s playing some music that\u2019s inflected with Hawaii. And then I started to go down this rabbit hole of learning about Martin Denny, Les Baxter and others.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cCould we get a gig at a tiki bar playing exotica?\u201d And that\u2019s how the idea for Waitiki 7 was born. We didn\u2019t know anyone else who would be interested in the music. We weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

That led us down another<\/i> 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, \u201cPut us together something very special that really focuses on classic exotica,\u201d because that was one of the festival\u2019s themes. I said, \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to have an all-star exotica septet.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

I was like, \u201cI\u2019d love to bring in my really good friend and classmate Zaccai Curtis, who\u2019s an incredible Latin Afro Cuban pianist, and have him play the piano role.\u201d And then, you know, we can\u2019t just have drums, we also have to have percussion. And so let\u2019s bring in Lapaca Colon to represent, to live in that role that his father played in Martin Denny\u2019s band. And then, and then my girlfriend at the time \u2013 now wife \u2013 Helen Liu, is a phenomenal violinist. And I said, \u201cLet\u2019s have her in there too, because we can really expand the sound dimension with strings.\u201d And so the Waitiki 7 was born.<\/p>\n

Detractors \u2013 of which I am most definitely not one \u2013 sometimes cite what they see as the inauthenticity or even the cultural appropriation characteristics of exotica. How do you address that?<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a totally valid question. And it\u2019s something that we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

So this is the music we\u2019re playing. Some of the songs are exotic, creative interpretations of what\u2019s called hapa haoli \u2013 half Hawaiian, half foreign \u2013 music. Those are basically jazz standards with jazz harmonies and 32 bar song forms that don\u2019t exist in Hawaiian music, but with Hawaiian melodies or a mix of English and Hawaiian language lyrics.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re taking those elements which are already a creative interpretation and \u201cexotifying\u201d them. And then there\u2019s a whole bunch of other exotica music that really only sometimes found its way into other genres. Like \u201cQuiet Village\u201d or \u201cCubano Chant\u201d or \u201cTaboo\u201d; those are all songs that have become standards in exotica. You don\u2019t really hear them in jazz anymore, but they were really prevalent at the time.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the question of authenticity, which is: \u201cHow is exotic music authentic to us?\u201d 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\u2019s always been a lot of cha cha in exotica. And you know him as a celebrated performer of that music. And what\u2019s more authentic than having someone like that being the one to interpret it?<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41,49],"tags":[5855,5854],"class_list":["post-30744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exotica","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-randy-wong","tag-waitiki-7","cat-28-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30923,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30744\/revisions\/30923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}