Cocktail music
| Lounge music | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1950s–60s, United States |
| Typical instruments |
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| Derivative forms | |
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space-age cultural elements. The earliest type of lounge music appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, and was known as light music. These days, the term lounge music may also be used to describe the types of music played in hotels (the lounge, the bar), casinos, several restaurants, and piano bars.
Exotica, space age pop, and some forms of easy listening music popular during the 1950s and 1960s are now broadly termed lounge. The term lounge does not appear in textual documentation of the period, such as Billboard magazine or long playing album covers, but has been retrospectively applied.
While rock and roll was generally influenced by blues and country, lounge music was derived from jazz and other musical elements borrowed from traditions around the world. Exotica from such artists as Les Baxter, Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman sold millions of records during its heyday. It combined music that was popular outside the USA, such as various Latin genres (e.g., Bossa nova, Cha-Cha-Cha, Mambo as in Cal Tjader's fine Latin jazz efforts), Polynesian, French, etc. into a relaxed, palatable sound. Such music could have some instruments exaggerated (e.g., a Polynesian song might have an exotic percussion arrangement using bongos, and vocalists imitating wild animals). Many of these recordings were portrayed as originating in exotic foreign lands, but in truth were recorded in Hollywood recording studios by veteran session musicians. Another genre, space age pop, mimicked space age sound effects of the time and reflected the public interest in space exploration. With the advent of stereophonic technology, artists such as Esquivel used spatial audio techniques to full effect, creating whooshing sounds with his orchestra.
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