NahenaheNet Essays
Aloha mai kakou,Its been a strange week since the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, almost as strange as the awards themselves. Those of you watching comfortably from home missed much more than the chance to see and and maybe meet your favorite musicians, you missed a very weird vibe. I couldn't figure it out then, and I still can't quite put my finger on what it was about that night. I missed the Tuesday night function, where past winners gathered and the technical awards were given. A lot of people were not even aware that there was anything going on Tuesday night. I ran into a good friend from Hilo who did attend Tuesday night, and when I asked what that it was like, his answer was "Strange." Hmmm.
Things did not return to normal the night of the televised awards. For myself, it was a hectic, nerve-wracking two hours finding the right cable for our computer monitor, fixing a broken modem, and getting a net connection to work so that we could do the live chat. Once everything was working, I joined my wife at our table, and assumed that things would return to normal. Wrong.
By the time the awards were over, there were a considerable number of us chatting in the reception area with dazed looks on our faces. Some eschewed the chatting and simply walked around with the dazed look. What happened to Kekuhi Kanahele? Have the voting members of HARA lost their collective minds? Though this is a distinct possibility [g] , I think there much is more to it than that.
For quite some time now, a very good friend has been asking me (OK, pestering me) to write an essay defining what Hawaiian music is. (I won't mention names, but she does do an excellent semi-monthly Hawaiian music report that can be found here.) I don't claim to be an expert on Hawaiian music, but do have some strong opinions on the subject.
To me, the difference between Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian music is not black and white, it is various shades of brown. Why brown and not grey? Brown is woody, earthy, natural. Brown is an ipu slamming into the ground, and the shuffle of the feet of hula dancers. There are a lot of colors in this spectrum, from the palest cream to dark chocolate brown. Hawaiian music and musicians cover the same spectrum. A lot of musicans cover quite a bit of the spectrum themselves. The Makaha Sons can do the deep, truly Hawaiian tones, and frequently wander off to the paler shades. So can Keali'i Reichel, Keola Beamer, Ho'okena, Willie K. and many other artists. Sometimes they can completely move off the brown spectrum and jump into the white zone of pure, western pop. That's not necessarily bad, mind you. Some artists feel the need to expand into new realms, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Also, please understand that when I talk about the "white zone", I am not referring to nationality or skin tone, I am using the analogy to point to one extreme of a spectrum.
What is a bad thing, and what really bothers me, is when an artist from the "white zone" tries to appropriate elements of Hawaiian language, chant, hula, and culture to provide ornamentation to their music. The most glaring example of this demonstrated at Na Hoku Hanohano was Sunland. Their misappropriation and misuse of Hawaiian language and hula in their performance was absolutely repulsive. I know a young lady who was once a member of the halau that accompanied Sunland in their performance of "We Are Only Human", and she was utterly embarrassed and ashamed of their participation in the farce. My one happy thought at the end of the show was the knowledge that they did not win anything. Toot-toot. Beep-beep.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have Kekuhi Kanahele. Here is a woman who is born to one of the most storied 'ohana in Hawai'i. The contributions of the Kanaka'ole family, from Kekuhi's mother Pua, her aunt Nalani, uncle Parley, grandmother Aunty Edith Kanaka'ole, and on back into the many generations that came before, are matched by few others. She speaks Hawaiian, teaches it, dances hula, and composes (with her husband Kaipo) almost all of the music that she performs. She is a uniquely talented and inspiring woman.
Kekuhi does not polish her voice or recording the way that has become the norm for us. She projects a mana, a power that is drawn from the depths of her lineage, and thank the Good Lord that Keali'i, Fred, and Jim have the taste and the fortitude to record and release this. A lot of people say Kekuhi writes and sings songs the way that they used to. No she doesn't. Nobody I've ever heard sounds like this. Like the many alternative rock bands of recent years who tired of the sheen and polish of modern rock, she has created a new idiom, and it is going to take some gifted and brave individuals to try and follow in her footsteps. My guess is that it is going to be a while before anyone else goes there.
Lets go back to our little brown spectrum of Hawaiian music. If we have a dark chocolate on the left and pale cream on the right, Kekuhi is way off to the left somewhere near the deepest, darkest ebony. I get the feeling that there are many voting members of HARA that have a hard time seeing or hearing this color. They want the polish, the ear candy, the perfectly chosen reverb. They want a songstress who produces crystal-clear, shimmering tones. They don't want to crawl into the dirt, the earth that gave birth to the roots of Hawaiian music and all Hawaiian culture. Until they are willing to do this, truly original Hawaiian music like Kekuhi's will continue to be pushed off into a dark corner by the awards that were originally created to shine a spotlight on it.
Some people think that HARA is a closed brotherhood, controlled by a few powerbrokers who trade votes in some categories to gains votes in others. I think that exact opposite is true. The problem is that it is so easy to produce a CD these days, that anyone with a guitar and a couple thousand dollars can qualify for the recording credit that is the one prerequisite to becoming a voting member of HARA. And as the Hawai'i recording industry grows, much more of the music being recorded is meant for local and even mainland pop markets. This means that the voting base, which once was much more strongly controlled by "Hawaiian music" artists, producers, and executives, is now shifting toward ears with more of a "pop" tuning.
How do we refocus Na Hoku Hanohano to avoid a debacle like this year's awards? Some members of the recording industry take issue with a mainland company (Dancing Cat Records) participating in Na Hoku Hanohano and its artists winning awards. Hey guys, Dancing Cat is recording Hawaiian music with Hawaiian musicians. Who gives a rip if they're located in Santa Cruz, Lithuania, or Antarctica. I don't. People who care about Hawaiian music don't. Who does? Recording industry people here who ignored ki ho'alu for years, and now want a piece of the action.
So whats the answer? I don't know if there is a single answer.If I come up with any ideas, you can read about it here.
'O au me ka 'oia'i'o,
Keola
PS, A million mahalos to David Lassner for coming through with the cable, login info, and the tools that got our modem working again, and thanks to Susan J., Kory K., and Auntie Maria for helping provide tag-team coverage during the course of the night.Feedback to keola@maui.com.