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Na Pali – their stories in their songs

“Musical Ohana” at E Kanikapila has taken on many different forms or interpretations. Siblings, intergenerational family members, hanai family, extended family…and this week it was a foursome bonded by their appreciation of songs that speak of their personal experiences.

Carlos Andrade (guitar), Pat Cockett (ukulele), Pancho Graham (standup bass), and Fred Lunt (steel guitar) are together called NA PALI. Their evening of sharing songs at EKK is a multi-faceted accounting of their lives -- about sailing on the Hokulea; about Ko’olau – a person, a place; about life in old Kealia and Hanalei; celebrating the birth of a grandchild; and travels with Taj Mahal.

		Na Pali

Hokule’a Hula”, a musical chronicle of the 1985 voyage of Hokule’a from Aotearoa to Tonga to Samoa and to Hawai’i, in which the sailors explored experimental navigation by the stars. Halfway between New Zealand and Tonga, the escort boat, following some distance behind, were told that they saw land before them. The escort boat said their instruments show no land nearby, but the sailors said the land is right in front of them. From this experience came “Navigator’s Lullaby”. Pat said he cried when they completed the arrangement because it was so beautiful. It was indeed.

Between Kilauea and Moloa’a on Kaua’i is a district called “Ko’olau” where Pancho today makes his home. It was natural that he do so having grown up in the Ko’olau district on Oahu. He wrote a song called the “Rose of Ko’olau” about his companion. One day when the group was rehearsing this song on Pancho’s spacious lanai, the “Rose” gallops by on her horse. Pancho sang the vocals on his song.

Carlos’ well-known song about Kalui Ko’olau of Kekaha, who was stricken with Hansen’s disease and escaped to the mountains of Kalalau with his faithful wife, was sung by the group. They called up Manulele to join them in this song. Jack London wrote a story about Ko’olau. Later, Ko’olau’s wife was interviewed for the Hawaiian language newspapers. These interviews were later translated into English by Frances Frazier.

Pat Cockett, son of a small town physician, shares stories of his life growing up in Kealia town which was really a happening place at one time. On the outskirts of Kapa’a town, Kealia was once bustling with plantation activity, horse corrals, and even a huge mill across the white sand Kealia beach…today a haven for fishermen, beachcombers, and surfers.

He recalls his mother raising turkeys in the tennis courts on the plantation estate where he lived. The old school, which in more recent years became the first site for Island School, remains today a symbol of a lifestyle now history.

Teaching was very stressful and one day Pat was sitting in Kealia, remembering the Kealia of yesteryear and watching the traffic going by on the highway, and the song “Kealia” came to be.

Carlos’s well known “Moonlight Lady,” similarly, is a song about the women who worked the taro fields in Hanalei and his great respect for them.

Out of Carlos’s second Hokule’a sailing voyage from Raratonga to Tahiti come a song for the younger generation.

All of the songs evolved out of the experiences of their lives.

	Fred Lundt of Na Pali

Carlos, became a grandfather 4 times over. A song is composed to honor this newborn cherished by parents and grandparents. The songs names the place where the child is born, in this case Pila’a, a place in the Ko’olau district of Kaua’i. “Kamali’i”, a song about Keiki O Ka Aina is sung by the group.

World class musician Taj Mahal, who made his home on Kaua’i for many years, had a great impact on these musicians over the years by his generosity and mentorship, taking them on musical tours all over the globe. “Hula Blues Band” chronicles their adventures in Europe on Carlos’ first of many musical tours.

“Taj, we need another song” voiced the group, sitting around in a circle. Taj, the blues man, starts strumming and soon comes up with a fusion of country blues and taro patch tuning and this song ends up in the bar scene in “Six Days and Seven Nights” in which Harrison Ford was getting drunk. Pancho, on the standup bass, and Carlos, on guitar and vocals, switch places on this song.

Carlos gave us a peek into his indigenous culture mapping project at the University of Hawaii in which the “maps” are couched in the poetic verses within songs. In “Aloha Haena” the names of the winds that blew in from the seas and names of the mountains are some of the ways in which Haena is described. They ended the evening with “Hanalei Bay Blues”, an earlier song that he wrote about the extraordinary beauty of Hanalei.

The songs of today capture and preserve the history and heritage of days gone by…for future generations.

Carol Yotsuda

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