EKK 2008 - Na Alo Hou

On Sunday, January 20, the night before our EKK Monday, we launched our 2008 Silver Anniversary season with a concert at the Kauai Community College. KAUKAHI, made up of Kawika Kahiapo, Barrett Awai, Dean Wilhelm and Walter Keale, engaged the audience at a spiritual level with their amazing harmonies. Each artist was featured with their favorite songs and stories, but together their voices blended in rich harmony which is quite difficult to describe. It just is.
Opening the concert were the EKK coordinators for the past 25 years each with their special brand of music -- Nathan Kalama opened the first half with a pule and closed with his interactive “Japan Airlines” hula which had the entire audience on their feet and dancing. Fran Nestel along with Richard Beach and Peggy Lake honored Frances Frazier with one of her many compositions. Cindy Combs, accomplished kiho’alu artist, added her special jazzy style of singing. The effervescent Lady Ipo, along with Garrett Santos and Kimo Kaneakua, sang several numbers including her wonderful “Song for Mama” and invited all the hula dancers in the audience to come up on stage for “Hanalei Moon”. I recapped 25 years down memory lane with a DVD capturing some of the best photo memories....have to wait another 25 years for my ukulele and hula numbers.
Spirituality is the keystone of Kaukahi music

As the first EKK Monday of the 2008 season ended and joyous participants streamed out of the main hall at Island School, a gentleman visiting from Seattle stopped and said to me with tears in his eyes, “This evening has brought so much love into my life.” He wrote on his sign in sheet, “EKK was the best experience I had in my month on Kauai.”
A lady cornered me at intermission and said, “I love this! I thought only the ukulele folks could participate and I’m so happy that we could all sing!” As she and her husband left, he said, “This is just unique and wonderful to be able to participate with the musicians!”
Local folks and snow birds chattered happily greeting each other after months of life in their respective corners of the world. Visitors asked a lot of questions about what to expect. “Expect the unexpected,” is all I can answer. Each week unfolds in its own way.
The evening began with an hour for those with ukulele and guitars. Walt worked with the large ukulele group for the first hour while Kawika and Dean sat outside with the guitar players and shared their instrumental styles and secrets.
Kawika Kahiapo, Dean Wilhelm and Walter Keale shared stories about the group KAUKAHI and the songs they love or composed. It all started with a barbecue in Dean’s garage among friends just getting to know each other. Music is always a part of such barbecues so when they began singing song after song, they could each hear and feel that something very unexpected and special was happening. They kept looking at each other in surprise, wondering “What’s going on?” The music that night in the garage “....was so close to what you heard on the stage,” said Kawika.
Family members suggested, “Wow! You should form a band!” Going with the flow, these three musicians and upright bass player Barrett Awai, who was also present, got together as “Kaukahi” -- translating into Unity in Purpose -- and the rest is history.
“Life In These Islands”, the first song they taught us, won the 2007 Na Hoku Hanohano award for “song of the year” and was written about ten years ago by Kawika in the performance style of the Makaha Sons of Hawai’i, musically and lyrically, as it was his intention to share the song with them. The opportunity never arose for them to get together so when the Kaukahi group was formed, they sang it as the title song for the album which garnered them also the “Group of the Year” and best CD cover design at NHH awards.
Kawika, who I have met at a few gatherings of musicians in the past, is a soft spoken man of few words, but I always noticed that other musicians really listened when he spoke. On Monday, his eloquence with words was evident as he described the love and appreciation of life in these islands that motivated the song. He summarized it as, “...the melting pot of Hawaii has become this ‘Stew of Diversity’....”. A minister of nine years he conveys the spirituality that he sees in the very ordinary things in life.
Walt, fun-loving and always full of stories, views the audience as active forth graders (his regular charge in his day job) and engages everyone with hand motions that are akin to hula motions. It certainly helps one to catch on to the Hawaiian words. “Ku’u Kumu” written by the teachers of Aha Punanaleo is the song that he taught us, complete with hand and body motions. When Walt sings, there is a unique quality and style that reminds me of warm spring water flowing over river rocks...smooth, very smooth.
Dean says music is just a part of who they are. Just as content with playing music in the garage, recognition is not something they strive for but is much appreciated when received. Sharing their music and having it so gracefully received and appreciated is the most important thing to them. He taught us “E Na Punahele” by Mary Boyd, an auntie from the Big Island. It is the last song on their CD as Aloha is one of the primary expressions that they wish to convey.
At EKK questions by the audience often trigger responses that give insight into the artists. Kawika, who won the prestigious “Kiho’alu Artist of the Year” at the 2007 NHH awards was asked how he started in music. When he was 8 years old, his dad stuck an ukulele in his lap and strummed it; the vibration of the instrument sent a spiritual charge through his young body and he started to play the ukulele. When he was 10 years old, his dad did the same thing with a guitar, and the vibration of the guitar went through his body and he was hooked, thirsting for lessons from his Dad and uncles. No need to say more.
As they taught their songs, they demonstrated the various slack key tunings and strumming techniques. Kawika related the hilarious Portugee version of how the comb fell onto the strings and created a rippling sound which became one of the kiho’alu strums. At one point in his performing life, he even brought several guitars on stage each with a different slack key tuning so that he could just switch guitars for different songs, but it did not work because he forgot how each guitar was tuned.
So many mainstream musicians like Keith Richards, Steven Stills, and Jack Johnson are influenced by and incorporate slack key tunings into their songs. It was an evening of fun, lot of laughter, and genuine interaction between the artists and the audience.
The last third of the evening, which went by in a flash, was filled with their beautiful singing. Kawika shared a heartwarming song he learned at age 12, written by legendary composer and cultural practitioner Keola Beamer about the process of learning and passing on the culture, “Real Old Style.”
Dean spoke about his own experiences growing up in Hawaii. Earlier in the evening, one of the participants wanted to know his background and how he came to be part of this group as outwardly he appears very haole (caucasion). He is the child of a Hawaiian mother, who felt she had to play down her Hawaiian-ness as she was growing up, and a father who was a chef from Switzerland. Growing up during the resurgence of Hawaiian music and dance known as the Hawaiian renaissance and attending Kamehameha School, Dean said, “I grew up not looking Hawaiian but having great pride growing up Hawaiian...,” because the haole boy going to Kam school did not have to deal with what his mother experienced in her youth. He spoke about his Hawaiian grandpa who grew up in Nanakuli Hawaiian homesteads, who referred to Dean as “my haole grandson”, something Dean did not understand until later as being Grandpa’s terms of endearment toward him. Choking with emotion as he told his story, it was very evident he felt great pride and recognition in who he is -- Hawaiian.
“Ku’u Home O Kahalu’u” by Jerry Santos and “Waimanalo Blues” by Liko Martin (later sang as “Nanakuli Blues”) are two songs that most inspired Dean Wilhelm, so he sang “Ku’u Home O Kahalau” much to everyone’s delight.
Walt explained the significance of the words in “Waianae” which speak of Hawaiian geneology, being a chosen one when you hanae into a family, the birthing grounds in that district, ancestors and Ke Akua. So much information in a song.
“O O’e I’o” comes from a Maori chant. Full of metaphors, this song describes the purposeful migration of the early Polynesians who sailed with the stars and the guidance of a greater spiritual being. Kaukahi started the concert with this song and ended Monday night with it.
Having heard their individual stories, the songs became all the more meaningful to everyone there. Closing with “Hawaii Aloha”, everyone could feel that intangible spirit of unity in purpose conveyed by the Hawaiian gentlemen of Kaukahi.
The second EKK Monday, January 28, will feature Dean Keola Alalem, Sanoe Duarte and Jed Hanada of Kaua’i . . .”Expect the Unexpected!”
Send out January 24, 2008