This displacement of time and style is at the core of Hosono’s music, and is an extension of what appeals to him about exotica. (“It’s fun how it feels phony,” he said in 2020.) But beyond a giddy penchant for experimentation, he repeatedly complicates simple authentic/inauthentic dichotomies and notions of directional influence. “Hurricane Dorothy” is named after John Ford’s 1937 adventure film The Hurricane—about a Polynesian sailor who gets imprisoned—and its lead actress Dorothy Lamour. He sings about the woman’s qualities as simultaneously Caribbean, Arabian, and Slavic, recognizing that false representation is easy to swallow when it stays in the realm of desire. Musically, it’s an updated take on Denny’s own exotica, but it also stands as a continuation of Hosono’s work in Happy End and Caramel Mama (later known as Tin Pan Alley). This was no longer just Hollywood nostalgia, but Japan’s own utopic artificiality.
Hosono wasn’t the only one making music like this in Japan. Makoto Kubota, who appears on the album and inspired its title (he called Hosono the titular phrase), released Hawaii Champroo in 1975. The LP was co-produced by Hosono and maintained a seamless, tonally consistent blend of Hawaiian, American, and Okinawan music. And while Tropical Dandy is purposeful in its genre-blending, it can feel like a novelty with songs like “Peking Duck,” which features a Brazilian rhythm, spurts of pentatonic melodies, and lyrics about Yokohama’s Chinatown and Singin’ in the Rain. Hosono’s music is a little miracle in this way, honoring the fact that ideas—musical and otherwise—are always circulating, mutating, and inevitably rendered as approximations. When the Peking Opera-style singing appears on the otherwise folk-rock song “Kinukaido,” it feels less like a mocking insult—compare it with Mighty Sparrow’s take the year prior—than an exaltation of the gap between the real and fraudulent. This isn’t because Hosono is shamelessly ignorant, but because he knows that music is inherently personal, and that one’s own experiences are a prism for everyone else’s—why try to hide that?
The most gorgeous track on Tropical Dandy thrives on such transparency. The spare, gentle samba rhythm on “Honey Moon” is dotted with tender hints of steel pan. Hosono’s band uses synths and guitars to simulate the instrument’s timbre, but it’s not quite right—and better for it. Getting a mere taste of these bright, chiming sounds leaves a craving for the genuine thing, which always feels within reach. But as he sings about swaying hair and relishing the twilight, the metallic sounds start to crumble. Hosono understands that exotica is all about dangling the impossibly, ostensibly real in front of you, creating a longing for something you’ve never known. He says as much on the gorgeously straightforward “Sanji no Komori Uta,” where he talks about putting on an old record and singing a song—a routine that serves as his lullaby. That’s all music ever is: a gateway to your dreams.