A Far Away Place
A Nursery Video Leads Me Back to the World of Exotica Music … and Martin Denny
John Fraim
An interesting (fun? serious?) new post to Midnight Oil on my visit to nearby Oakland Nurseries. Carrying my Mission 1 Pro cinema camera and shooting in 4k 30fps. Mostly all internal parameters set by me in the camera. One of those times in the past few days when the sky is blue. I visited the nursery on the way home the other day.
I’d shoot a short video at the nursery. While I walked around getting some inspiration for putting more flowers and plants and trees around our home. I always get this way when I/we go to Oakland. But no real planning in advance other than the fact I’d been at the nursery before.
Experimenting with mixing different filters to the un-filtered footage. This shifts back and forth in the short film. Many Cartoon filters used but also others like Blockbuster used. Color graded. Intention was to alternate real footage with cartoon footage from my editing program. Been experimenting with uses of the Cartoon filters on the editing system. For example, see a recent blog of at https://midnightoilstudios.org/2026/08/21/if-the-world-was-a-cartoon/.
But here, the use of other filters like Blockbuster or coloring effects producing some unusual effects. Mixing all of this in A Far Away Place was suddenly “reintroduced” to the music of Martin Denny in the form of Caravan for this video.
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The music is interesting. It comes from the music from a time and place I remember very well. It reminds me of my uncle Lee’s restaurant in Columbus called the Kahiki. Those wkho’ve been there need no explanation. For others, it was a giant “supper” club shaped like a great Polynesian vessel. Lee brought the idea back to Ohio from seeing these new types of Polynesian restaurants like Trader Vics and Don the Beachcombers in California while visiting his aunt. But he didn’t follow Trader Vic or Don the Beachcomber but a huge Polynesian restaurant on the beach in Florida. He went down to check out the place. He got some of his ideas on the scale of the restaurant.
He brought the idea to Ohio and the Kahiki became very successful. In fact, it became a destination spot for celebrities from all over the nation. It was that time in my life when I was going to a nearby college and the Kahiki was always the top-level place one could think for impressing a date.
I spent a good amount of time at the Kahiki simply having dinner with my uncle and aunt at the Kahiki since I was going to college nearby. I came in with dates more than once. One of the memories of the Kahiki and this time in my life is the music of Martin Denny.
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The inside of the Kahiki was like being inside a small village and surrounded by the plants of a SW Pacific, tropical world. The inside of the Kahiki was something even Walt Disney would be proud of. (Not sure if Walt ever heard of it but it was certainly along a “disneyesque” design.)
But one of the great things that added to making the Kahiki special, in my opinion, was the type of music I would always hear at the Kahiki. It was something I didn’t really remember at the time. Until I heard the music Martin Denny again. I have a post to Midnight Oil on this. When protest songs and psychedelic bands and all one wants to place at the start of it all. The type of music that became known as “Martin Denny music” was not your usual nightclub stuff but exotic music. From Polynesia. All the troubles of the world are far away. Essentially, grand vacation music. Troubles are only the surrounding protective presence of a sheltered life from one’s public life.
Essentially, music that should be beams through all the Tommy Bahama stores around the nation. (If it isn’t already). Or the perfect music for a Tommy Bahama commercial.
The perfect type of music for exotic large tropical worlds. Birds all around. The sound of SW Pacific Ocean lifestyle. Not about war but about a new version of a lifestyle. A lifestyle opposite of the wars in the SW Pacific fought by many American soldiers. A music that forgets all current events in the multiple sounds from instruments. Martin Denny was the best at this.
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Here is the legendary jazz song CARAVAN played by the Martin Denny band. How did I find it? I sorted the thousands of songs I by length of time. I scrolled through the songs on my MacBook Air searching for something close to a match. Just to see what this was. I could always add or delete clips to match a piece of music. Checking with copyright of music before YouTube does it for you is a good idea. But I figured I was good using music of the 50s and 60s.
Finding this piece of music for a short video on a nursery. By the method of matching up lengths of time. The length of time of the nursery film I made. And then, matching up this video with a piece of music.
A perfect match! The video footage to a particular song in my library.
Something meant to be by this ancient Chinese method this match came about. A matching across the dimensions of video footage matched to music. Not just any music but music I have collected over the years into my Mac library. I don’t know what the collection’s at now. In the thousands somewhere. With access to all that’s on the cloud.
Matching items in the world by length (video footage + music footage) is similar to using ancient Chinese and Indian methods of matching objects in the world. Objects that have a relationship across various media and senses.
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Here, a video in my editor with a piece of music. From beginning to end. The song Caravan by Martin Denny perfectly matched the short little video I made of the nursery. More than just an old song I remember – from the songs inside the Kahiki when I went there in those years – the music of Martic Denny brings back those years so well.
Another example of what’s called synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences. Fascinating how I found this particular piece of music from my collection thousands of pieces in my collection. The music of Denny became very popular to many at a particular time. Most likely in the 60s. It almost seemed the perfect music to go with the memory of exotic places American troops had memories of. As well as all the other memories they had.
Of course, it is the music heard during the day in the Kahiki.
One time, I stopped at the Kahiki to reassure myself of life before going through initiation week into a fraternity at my college. Then, after going through initiation week, it was the first place I stopped at heading home for the holidays.
It was good to hear Martin Denny type of music that evening going home to lick my wounds. I had a few albums of his music and used to listen to them all the time.
Now, the first time in a long time. But appropriate to reflect on my uncle, the Kahiki, a time in America, a restaurant trend, a great Polynesian restaurant. A type of care-free music. A time in my life. Suddenly brought back not by a conscious search for it but by the unconscious call for it through a group of images. A system much related to the iChing.