NahenaheNet Essays
Aloha mai kakou....We all have favorite, classic songs. We relate some songs to particular times in our lives, people we knew or loved in younger days. Hearing those songs can bring fond memories, or make us cry. I don't blame people for getting nostalgic about the song that was playing on the radio while they were doing the horizontal mambo for the first time in the back seat of their dad's 57 Chevy. God bless them.
My formulative years, as a music fan and as an aspiring musician, were the 1970's, considered by many to be a wasteland in the history of music. The 50s gave us rock and roll, the 60s gave us the Beatles, Motown, and the Summer of Love. The 70s gave us....disco? I never saw "Saturday Night Fever." Promise. People who grow up with me in this era try to convince me that it wasn't so bad. There was Steely Dan, Earth, Wind & Fire, and....The Bee Gees? They never seem to get much deeper than this, and then quickly change the subject.
At this same time we here in Hawai'i experienced what is now known as the "Renaissance of Hawaiian Music." The Sunday Manoa and other groups of the era led an avalanche of new, innovative, and creative music that lasted through the 70s. In the mid-70s, contemporary island acts like Cecilio & Kapono, Kalapana, Country Comfort and others showed that musicians could record music that was not Hawaiian and still be very successful here. For the most part they recorded original music, and it was well accepted by both the public and radio stations.
I don't know exactly when, but somewhere between the 70s and today something went very wrong with the the local recording industry. Someone recorded a remake of an old tune, a cover tune, and apparently did very well with it. Of course there were cover tunes before this, almost everyone recorded a golden oldie on at least one of their albums. C & K recorded covers of Stevie Wonder's "All In Love Is Fair" and Boz Skaggs "We're All Alone" on their early albums, but these covers did not catch our fancy the way some of their original tunes like "Friends", "About You", and "Sailing" did.
Nowadays it is difficult to find a locally produced album that does not feature three, four, even seven or eight cover tunes. I've seen local albums that were all cover tunes. Why? Its easy, you don't have to compose anything. Second, its an easy sell to radio stations. The DJs already know the song, it probably was a hit for someone during the past 40 years, so people will probably relate to it and like it. Selling an original song is a bit harder, people don't make that connection to a particular time in life when they may have heard it before. They have to listen, analyze. They have to use a bit of grey matter to decide if they like it or not. For many, it seems, this is too much to ask. Give me something I've heard before, maybe with a reggae beat. Sad.
We may not know what we like, but we like what we know. Stuff we've heard before.
This extends into traditional Hawaiian music as well. We all have our favorites, and when a group goes into the studio to record their first album, of course they want to record the song that an ancestor might have written, or that their father taught them to play, or that is their mothers favorite. More power to you. The problem I have with this is that these days people seem to be recording all of the same songs, over and over again, and forgetting the huge amount of beautiful, but woefully under-recorded Hawaiian songs. If another version of Pauoa Liko Ka Lehua is released this year I am going to be violently ill. It is a wonderful, beautifully written song, but we've gone to that well a few too many times this year, OK gang?
Fortunately there has been some very nice original music this year, much of it by new artists like Harold Kama, Jr., John Cruz, Kawika Kahiapo, and others. Lets hope this trend continues, and Cover-Mania gets put to bed permanently.
If you can't write original music, and don't know someone who can, that may be a good sign that this is not quite the right time to be going into the studio and recording a CD. Go back to the garage, the back porch, or your club gig for a while, and when the creative juices flow the time will be right. Give than demo tape to someone who will be objective, not to your auntie with the bad right ear. You'll be glad later if you do. You won't find yourself the subject of one of these essays. And please, Mr. Program Director, don't cop out and play the only cover tune on that new release first. Listen to the whole disk and give the original material a chance. If the originals don't cut it (or they're aren't any), why don't you go outside and play a bit of frisbee? Preferably with the neighborhood pitbull.
'O au me ka 'oia'i'o,
Keola
Feedback to keola@maui.com.