The Leisure Experiment [pre-recorded; archived re-broadcasts]
Wikipedia entry for exotica:
"Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same title that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War ...Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers."
" Its origins are a bit murky, emerging from both the big-band jazz tradition of the 1940s and the now universally reviled easy-listening pop era of the early 1950s. It’s often muddled with other, very similar musical genres popular in the 1950s and 1960s, like space-age pop and lounge music. "[from music.avclub.com]