The WAITIKI 7: New Sounds of Exotica

The WAITIKI 7 … changing lives (and family situations?) with every album release. Hey, here’s a good reason to buy our music: as a belated Mother’s Day gift, or just in time for Father’s Day!

While the lounge music revival has come and gone, it’s nice to see that The Waitiki 7 are keeping the fire burning for exotica and doing a bang up job of it. I love this record and even my parents love this record. Being of the generation of the cocktail set New Sounds of Exotica is right up my parents alley and they could even name records that it sounded like. We bonded over this record!

DJ Paul Pop, POP! Stereo Blog (FirstCoastNews.com), May 12, 2010

Read this full review (if the link above goes bad) at the Rock Paper Scissors archive.

Our album, Adventures in Paradise, is featured in “Prelude” section of the print edition of JAZZIZ Winter 2010!

The Waitiki 7, a born-in-Honolulu ensemble loaded with virtuoso talent, updates the classic exotica mood on Adventures in Paradise (Pass Out)—a 13-track excursion that pays respect to the venerable music’s roots while charting its own distinctive course . . . The contributions of woodwind player Tim Mayer, trombonist Mike Dease and violinist Helen Liu provide Waitiki 7 with substantial improvisiational firepower. Laka, the Hawaiian goddess of song and dance, should be smiling.—Mark Holston

Download the full review as a PDF

Santa Salsera, host of the WXDU program Azucar y Candela speaks highly of our album Adventures in Paradise. Salsera writes:

Exotica is back, baby. Not your typical “salsa dura,” nonethless, the Latin backbone is authentic, the musical approach pure jazz. This album is a special liqueur. Recapture your own personal cocktail hour (drink recipes are included with the liner notes) and go with the wave.

Live in the Raleigh-Durham area? Tune into Azucar y Candela on WXDU 88.7 FM, Wednesdays 6-8 PM.

Read the full review here, or

Download as a PDF.

Nate Chinen posted a thoughtful commentary on exotica the other day at his blog The Gig. Chinen, who was born and raised in Honolulu, is no stranger to exotica or its musicians—he studied drums with Harold Chang, gigged with many of the Islands’ finest jazzers, and wrote remembrances of Arthur Lyman when Lyman passed away. He’s now an esteemed jazz critic, known for his writings for the New York Times, JazzTimes, and Village Voice.

… the band, which also includes pianist Zaccai Curtis and percussionist Lopaka Colon, is on the right track with Adventures in Paradise released last month. The music reflects a firm grounding in Hawaiian culture, and a real grasp of this genre’s practices. (Colon’s father was the revered percussionist Augie Colon, a former member of Denny’s group; he appears on that recording of “Quiet Village.”) … If there’s room for a postmillennial exotica revival, this is the band to beat.

Check out the whole article online here. Nate wasn’t able to catch any of the shows during our East Coast tour, so if you saw and liked us, please comment below his post to let him know!

Download Nate Chinen’s “Exotica: It Takes A Village” as a PDF