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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
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Pua Kai
Ha`aha`a
USA
1007 Posts |
 Posted - 09/30/2005 : 08:09:24 AM
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Aloha Keith!!
Who's that white-haired guy bending over helping people?
Auntie-hood and uncle-hood usually happens when you're in your twenties and your siblings and friends start having babies..... Purely a guess, but I'd say very few in our taropatch ohana have not yet reached their twenties.
Happy birthday to your Dad. My little kid made 35 yesterday... which just makes me old.
We'll miss you at the Ukulele Festival in Cerritos tomorrow!!
Much aloha, Uncle Keith!
auntie n
or
aunty n
I"m not particular because it's really the spoken word that counts. |
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slkho
`Olu`olu
740 Posts |
Posted - 09/30/2005 : 09:05:31 AM
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Saaaaaaaaaaaaay, isn't that Keith sitting behind Jesus in the 3rd grade???? Oops! sorry, that's some other old guy. ha ha ha... just kidding Kieth, love you bro. I may be the youngest of the group, but I'm still an old guy (sigh) but you know in dog years I'm only 7 !!!
Are we still on this Auntie/Uncle thing? Yikes!! Look-final word, in Hawaii its a sign of respect. This is a Hawaiian Slack-key forum. The term applies and thats that. I love Auntie Nancy, and anyone who I respect in Hawaiian spirit will always be Auntie/Uncle. Nuff said. Those who can't deal with it in this forum then just don't say anything - move on.
You go Nancy, give him hell.
-slkho |
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Mika ele
Ha`aha`a
USA
1493 Posts |
Posted - 09/30/2005 : 1:38:08 PM
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ahhhh..
but is it
Auntie
as in . . . ONT TEE
(proper English if you are from Rhode Island)
or
Auntie
as in . . . ANT TEA
me I prefer not to think of those pesky bugs in my back yard.
And I prefer SEM --- IRE --- TIRED
(that same old look you get when you roll over and look at yer spouse with a twinkle in yer eye) |
E nana, e ho'olohe. E pa'a ka waha, e hana ka lima. |
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Sarah
`Olu`olu
571 Posts |
Posted - 09/30/2005 : 2:02:13 PM
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Aloha e Keith,
Ho-kay! I'm intrigued and will listen to Leonard and check out what you are referring to. Downward slides on the bass strings are something that really lends character to playing, but doesn't seem to be "explained" a lot. Reid and I have noted that George K uses them a lot, and on his 12-string they seem to help define his style of playing. Mixed congrats on becoming chair. I just admire that you have time and talent for both academic and slack key excellence. Perhaps you need only 5 hours of sleep a night? :-)
E Julie, your air-bag project sounds very beneficial. I've known of people who have suffered through worse physical trauma due to air bag detonation at slow speeds than would ever have happened to them if they'd not had an airbag at all. One woman just plain could not see where to drive, with the airbag in her face, and went off the road, which caused quite a bit of damage and injury. We need your kine stuff!
E Pua Kai, I agree that auntie and uncle are terms of respect. I am surprised, but honored, to be called auntie from time to time!
Aloha,
Uncle Sarah
...no kidding; a dear niece called me Uncle Sarah once years ago, before she was old enough to understand there was a difference. It's what's in the heart -- I knew what she meant.
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2005 : 09:32:51 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by slkho
I may be the youngest of the group
Youngest of what group? SoCal Slackers? I turn 44 next week so I take honors there! Besides, Rachel has honorary membership so she puts us all to shame...we're all Uncle and Auntie to her (except for me, of course!).
Thought for the day: In order to be retired, don't you have to have been tired before? |
Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can. |
Edited by - cpatch on 10/02/2005 9:02:42 PM |
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2005 : 12:27:17 PM
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eh, rachel does put us to shame, but it's not by being younger =)
yesterday was my dad's 90th birthday, and we had one great party! he's getting around fine. when he was asked "how did you get so old" he said "by not dying..."
aloha no,
keith |
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2005 : 12:56:36 PM
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| Saw Bill Tapia last night at the Southern California Ukulele Festival...97 years young. Makes you want to grow old. |
Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can. |
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Mika ele
Ha`aha`a
USA
1493 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2005 : 07:58:12 AM
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Keith,
Your Dad and I share the same birthday -- he had a forty year head start. I love that quote - may use it one day.
You should start a new thread "Tales from School". Interesting comments and quotes from your new ukulele students. Your comments from last class were amusing AND interesting. |
E nana, e ho'olohe. E pa'a ka waha, e hana ka lima. |
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Pua Kai
Ha`aha`a
USA
1007 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2005 : 10:52:37 AM
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Aloha Mika ele -
Thank you for sharing your birthday with us in Cerritos. Wasn't that a wonderful fest and fun to see/hear everyone? Lots of taropatchers were there, including Kona Bob and the Mrs with walking stix, Rik and Donna with ipus, Doug and associates with ukuleles and other goodies; and then of course the rest of us like Craig and Rachel, Dusty and Sheila (Shela got a stick!!), Mike, Susie (from AMC); all enjoying the workshops and entertainment - cannot list all. Good to see Herb, I missed seeing Daniel, but others saw him; Of course I enjoyed Uncle Chuck and Auntie Iolana Ka'imikaua - Mahi Serenaders. Note here than several of the group are firefighters and were up in another county helping fight our wildfires, so band was filled out by folks from Uncle Henry Kamae's group. The music, the hula - all so nice. And it's good that others will be able to fill this out with the names since I don't remember. Don't ever doubt that there is a lot of aloha here along the west coast, and it's open for all to enjoy. Such a good feeling. . .
aloha!
n
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2183 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 04:26:47 AM
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Jus' checkin' in. Plenny fo' talk story about.
Too much work, not enough sleep, an' never enough music. Unclehood is accentuated by the ear hairs turning gray. |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 07:34:55 AM
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My time has been divided between scribbling and traveling, so I've been in lurk-and-peek mode for a while. We went to Stratford (Ontario) for a week to see our niece do Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, then I spent most of last week at Djangofest Northwest on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Now I'm scrambling to catch up with my writing schedule so I can minimize the size of the apology I'll have to offer my editors. Haven't even played much guitar (except some gyspy swing at DFNW), and I'm feeling out of shape.
The topic of what constitutes "real" slack key and who gets to say so is obviously one that has been much on my mind for, oh, the last decade or so, and I've been warming up this morning by sketching out a few ponderous, pompous notions. I'll burden you all with them a little later.
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Edited by - Russell Letson on 10/06/2005 07:35:45 AM |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 11:15:26 AM
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Maybe this belongs in a thread of its own, but when the topic of "real" slack key came up earlier in this one, I scratched the itch this way:
When I was an English teacher, I would tell my students that grammar is part of what defines a language (I didn't confuse them with the issues of vocabulary or phonemic systems), and that it is (within certain limits) obligatory: bad/wrong grammar interferes with function, so that the comment "That's not English" does mean something. "Style," on the other hand, operates in the area of other variations permitted by the language--it is the sum of all the things you can do to an utterance and still have it remain intelligible. (This doesn't address issues of good or bad style, just the coarse distinction between grammatical and stylistic traits.)
I'd say something like this applies to music (and probably any art), with the understanding that "intelligibility" isn't the issue--instead it's something like how we perceive distance-from-the-center, with the center being a set of traits that lead us to identify a piece as belonging to a particular category: a tradition, school, genre, historical period, whatever. That notion of center and periphery is crucial to dealing with any genre issue, since just about *all* the elements that make up a work of art are matters of choice, and artists are always free to stretch the supposed boundaries of their esthetic spaces. (Of course, some artists remain right in the center and work only with elements that are unequivocally inside the boundaries. That's their choice.)
But when a tradition or genre evolves within a particular group of people, we get interesting issues when "outside" audiences and practitioners start to enter the system. Who gets to say that Work X is or isn't the real thing? Who gets to say who belongs to a core group of authentic artists (or to a social group, for that matter)? Can a white man play the blues? Can a haole play slack key? Can a Native Hawaiian play slack-key-like music in open tunings that nevertheless doesn't sound like "real" slack key to a haole audience? At what point are we talking about politics or social issues rather than art? My training (in a now-unfashionable critical tradition) tells me to separate the esthetic issues from the others, but I know that these matters don't decouple that easily--note the flap when Daniel Barenboim conducted Wagner in Israel a few years ago.
But enough of this dry academic stuff--I can't really put it in the book, so I burden my friends here with it. These matters are on my mind a lot as I trace the branches of various Hawaiian traditions from the roots out to the twigs and little green buds. Now I'd better get some paying copy written.
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Edited by - Russell Letson on 10/06/2005 3:33:24 PM |
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RJS
Ha`aha`a
1635 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 2:11:33 PM
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Russell - I'm going to say some things, but I first want to state that I am not specifically referrig to you. Over time your postings have show that you are dealing with these issues in an intellectually and aethetically supple and integral manner. That said ....
I get real nervous with the "orthodoxy police" start popping their heads up. For my 2 cents, defining a movement usually happens at one of three times - when people are starting something new and need to make a break with an existing movement. When people are getting frightened by the changes going on in their world, feel out of control and need to assert an illusion of control (which they believe is no illusion.) Finally, when a movement is nearing the end of its creative life span. Clearly slack key is not in the first category.
I'm much more comfortable having people just put their music out, and letting the "marketplace" decide. Will they get an audience or not. People who have read these postings for a while know that I would much rather listen to someone trying to push the boundaries or trying to develop their own style, as opposed to someone who is repeating stock licks, stylings, etc. (Not that that isn't fun at times, or isn't a good learning tool. It is both.)
Now, I am not Hawaiian, and I do not have to deal with the cultural identity issues relative to slack key. And they can get intense. And we all know stories about how a "club/group" mentality hurt some very good slack key players.
Finally, one of my teachers once challenged me by asking if I felt that when I performed I was representing slack key accurately and well. Good question. Maybe I'm coping out, but most of the time I don't say that I play slack key. I say that my style is influenced (very heavily influenced) by slack key. Cop out? Yeah, maybe. But it saves me from dealing with the orthodoxy police.
In the end, if at all I think of playing the guitar on my death bed, I don't think it's gonna matter as much if I played slack key, or whatever, as much as it will matter if I developed my creativity and played beautiful music which entertaineed and moved others. |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 3:57:57 PM
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Raymond--I think we're in agreement on the place of orthodoxy enforcement in art: creators need to worry about creating first and worry about whether and how their work fits into other folks' schemes of things second (or third or Nth). Of course, this ignores non-trivial matters like whether one will have an audience, who that audience will be, whether said audience will pony up enough money to provide a living, whether there will be people who object (on political, economic, personal, or other non-esthetic grounds), et complicated-real-world cetera. I have run across these concerns in each of the folk-based musics I've cared about, starting with the class and regional tensions that were mildly present in the Great Folk Scare. Currently some of the same questions of authenticity, cultural ownership, tradition, and innovation are haunting the middle-class American players who have fallen in love with "gypsy jazz" (which may be a double misnomer, but that's part of the discussion). Look at the posts for the last couple weeks on the Yahoo! gypsy jazz guitar group for a sample: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gypsyjazzguitar.
Myself, I'm comfortable enough in my own skin and Anglo-mongrel-American cultural identity (which seems to mean mostly that I eat beige food and listen to Guy Lombardo) that I just enjoy what I enjoy, play what I can manage, and don't pretend to be anything other than a gringo gadje gaijin goyische damnyankee haole guy (why couldn't the Hawaiians and the rednecks come up with G-words for my pipple?), a middle-aged, middle-class, middlebrow middle American with a midriff bulge and a mid-life crisis. (You have no idea how long I've been waiting to use those lines.) So aloha, latcho drom, mazel tov, and y'all come back, y'heah?
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