The Tikiyaki Orchestra
Jim Bacchi’s Los Angeles ensemble that brought Exotica back to live big-band performance and became the house band of the modern tiki-festival circuit. The Les Baxter side of the genre’s founding binary, scaled up for the contemporary era.
The Tikiyaki Orchestra is the band that proved Exotica could sustain a touring big-band operation in the modern era. Jim Bacchi—multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and the project’s founder and leader—assembled the group in Los Angeles in 2004 with a deliberate scale-up ambition. Where Exotica and Taboo had been four-piece working-bar combos and I, Swinger a six-piece band, Bacchi wanted a full Exotica big band: horns, multiple percussionists, vibraphone, keys, bass, and rotating vocalists, around seven players at working strength.
The debut, StereoExotique, began as a near-solo studio project—Bacchi played nearly every instrument himself, with steel guitar the notable exception—before the band became the live, full-ensemble operation it is now. Its central argument is that orchestral Exotica deserves a contemporary live vehicle: the Les Baxter side of the genre’s founding binary, rather than the small-combo Martin Denny side. Ritual of the Savage (1951) had been a Capitol studio production that nobody tried to recreate as a working ensemble, because the economics of a twelve-piece mood-music orchestra never supported it. Bacchi built the band, wrote the arrangements, and bet there was a modern audience for live big-band Exotica.
The audience existed. The Tikiyaki Orchestra became a fixture of Tiki Oasis—the San Diego festival that is the revival’s annual gravitational center—and the broader festival circuit including the Hukilau, anchoring main-stage programming and demonstrating that the scene could economically support a touring Exotica big band. The catalog grew alongside the live reputation: the full-band Swingin’ Sounds for the Jungle Jetset! (2009) followed the debut, with later records including Aloha, Baby! and Idol Worship and Other Primitive Pleasures extending the original-composition side of the project. The orchestra has rotated members across its lifespan, but the core stays consistent—Bacchi as arranger and leader, with a stable horn, percussion, and rhythm section. The band’s strength is the ensemble approach rather than individual virtuosity; it reads more like a mid-century studio orchestra than a band of soloists.
Start here
StereoExotique is the founding document and the right entry point—Exo-Tica opens with the full-ensemble fanfare that signals the scaled-up approach, and the band’s take on Quiet Village sits squarely between the Baxter orchestral and Denny combo versions. From there, Swingin’ Sounds for the Jungle Jetset! (2009) shows the project as a fully realized live big band rather than a studio creation.
Why they matter
Every live-Exotica engagement at Tiki Oasis, the Hukilau, or a regional tiki festival depends in some way on the model the Tikiyaki Orchestra established. By proving that orchestral Exotica could be performed live, at scale, and profitably in the contemporary era, Bacchi gave the revival its house band and its festival-stage sound. For the live-music side of the modern genre—the part you actually experience standing in a crowd with a Mai Tai in hand—this is the founding act.