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Mark E
Lokahi
USA
186 Posts |
 Posted - 01/19/2009 : 9:54:36 PM
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Just got back from seeing O'Brian Eselu and Kenneth Makuakane live at the first E Kanakapila Kakou of the season. They were just sooo good! I saw them on Pakele Live a week and a half ago and, although I am a confirmed fan of P.L., there was just no comparison with tonight. I guess one really special part of EKK is the ohana feeling with the performers. I was again blown away by how they were so informal and willing to just chat and be on the same level with anyone who came up to talk with them. Such a good feeling! I felt Kenneth was truly pleased that I had seen him on Pakele.
For anyone who visits Kaua'i, it is definitely a MUST experience. I am sure Auntie Maria can say so much more about it, also.
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Auntie Maria
Ha`aha`a
USA
1918 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2009 : 04:21:08 AM
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Mark -- mahalo for posting this! Kaua`i is truly blessed to have this annual weekly concert series on our little island. So much wonderful talent, presented in such an "only in the outer islands" environment (folding chairs, in the cafe-torium of one of our schools). We gladly make the one hour drive every week, because it's always such good fun.
Bring your guitar or uke for the 6-7pm session with the artists -- then from 7-9pm it's "everyone play; everyone sing; anyone dance hula!" portion of the evening. And it's FREE (donations VERY welcome at the door). Here's this year's schedule. Hope more TPers can make it!
E KANIKAPILA KAKOU 2009
Island School -- Puhi -- FREE
Mondays 6-7pm for guitar and/or `ukulele workshops
7-9pm kanikapila!
January 19 - O'Brian Eselu and Kenneth Makuakane
January 26 - Chanel Flores and Friends
February 2 - Peter Apo and Zanuck Lindsey
February 9 - Palani Vaughan and The King's Own
February 16 - Nathan Aweau and Keale
February 23 - Kupaoa
March 2 - Na Kama
March 9 - Leilani Rivera Bond and Halau O Leilani
March 16 - Leokane Pryor and Friends
March 23 - Lopaka Bukoski, Kelly Love and Naniwai'ui Kanahele
March 30 - Gordon Mark and David Kamakahi
Fundraiser concert for our Garden Island Arts Council (which puts on these shows) is Sun Feb 15 at Kaua`i Community College Performing Arts Center 7pm; tickets $25-$35 -- featuring Napua Greig (2008 Na Hoku Hanohano Female Vocalist of the Year), Nathan Aweau (multiple Na Hoku Hanohano Award winner), and (Walt) Keale. Great venue, fabulous line-up of talent!!
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Auntie Maria
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My "Aloha Kaua`i" radio show streams FREE online every Thu & Fri 7-9am (HST)
www.kkcr.org - Kaua`i Community Radio
"Like" Aloha Kauai on Facebook, for playlists and news/info about island music and musicians!
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Auntie Maria
Ha`aha`a
USA
1918 Posts |
Posted - 01/27/2009 : 05:53:12 AM
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All who attend the weekly E Kanikapila Kakou, are asked to sign in -- including email addresses. Once on the email list, attendees get a weekly newsletter from organizer Carol Yotsuda, with her review of the event. This is such a treat! Sometimes we can't make the one-hour drive on a Monday night, so her reviews make us feel like we didn't miss anything.  Here's her review of last week's performances by O'Brian and Ken:
EKK: Eselu and Makuakane Set the Bar High
In one long Hawaiian breath, we greet the 2009 season: As I watched the muffler-overcoated-cold-weather-garbed crowd disperse on the television coverage of the inauguration, my phone rings at 8:30 a.m., and the cheerful voice of O’Brian Eselu, the first presenter at EKK Monday Night last week, is on the other end; he asked if I could pick him up for our scheduled visit to Lawai Kai as guests of Chipper and Hau’oli Wichman because his companion presenter Ken Makuakane already left for the garden with his hosts, Phyllis and Marty Albert, and he needed a ride to get there, so I told him it was not a problem as I was just about to leave to meet them at the Kaua’i Inn and show them how to get to NTBG Garden for the visit to Queen Emmalani’s summer cottage near the beach at Lawai Kai, but O’Brian wanted to share both over the phone and later in person that he got up at 4:00 in the morning, probably because he was so high – thrilled and ecstatic - from last night’s presentation that, upon waking, he burst into the Mele Inoa for Pohaku Nishimitsu, demonstrating to me his singing in a high falsetto voice, until he heard this loud pounding on the wall and remarked with a look of surprise, “I didn’t know the walls were so thin! and when I looked at my watch I saw that it was only 4:00 in the morning and I could not sleep from the excitement of the night before, so I turned on the television and watched the inauguration of Barack Obama – Oh, how exciting – and it just finished so can you pick me up now.”
Last Monday night was the beginning of the 26th season of E Kanikapila Kakou. What a perfect pair to jumpstart this exciting program for the “buzzing” standing-room-only crowd that showed up. “Only on Kaua’i!” quipped Ken Makuakane as members of Pohaku Nishimitsu’s halau showered the artists with garlands of maile li’ili’I, Kaua’i’s flower.
It was homecoming with so many of the “snowbirds” showing up on Kaua’i earlier than usual so as not to miss the wonderful music, stories, dancing and fellowship; new visitors from as far away as India; and a record crowd of local folks not wanting to miss a rare opportunity to meet and learn from the eminent kumu hula O’Brian Eselu.
You could tell right away that he was a kumu hula as he wasted no precious time and took charge immediately telling the participants that he was not going to walk to the ukulele circle; …he wanted the ukulele circle to turn around and face him so everyone with instruments wrapped around him and those without ukuleles just joined in the singing as he had them learning the melody and properly pronouncing the words to “Kalaeloa” and “Lanikuhonua.” He even spotted Joyce and asked her to sing a solo in her beautiful voice.
Kenneth Makuakane sat with the guitar circle on the lawn outside and the stereophonic harmony of the verses from inside and outside made one feel like it was church.
O’Brian shared his history with Ken that goes back 30 years to the days when Ken was scared of the kumu hula, but over the years they worked together and O’Brian credits him for his genius at putting the magic into the songs. One could see and hear what that magic was as O’Brian sang his songs and Kenneth with his deadpan expression and amazing musicality not only accompanied O’Brian but created the mood of the song as he riffed and strummed and made his guitar sing along with O’Brian. “So sassy, yeah?” applauds O’Brian. Well deserved compliment. Having produced over a hundred albums and composed thousands of songs; twelve of which earned him Na Hoku Hanohano awards, Ken has etched himself a significant place in Hawaiian music.
O’Brian encouraged everyone to get Ken’s new CD, “The White Bathtub”, because at age 53, he was going to be a new Daddy and could use all the help he could get. Kenneth talked about the white bathtub, which could be found in every home in the old days, as a symbol of the existence of all the kupuna that came before him and influenced his music. It was a metaphor for the celebration of his own life. He talked about his Grandmother, born in 1900 in Ka’u on the Big Island with whom he spent every summer. He spoke of how she described her life in Honolulu from ages 12 to 15 and the way that Queen Liliu’okalani would ride by in her carriage to visit the Queen Emma cottage in Nu’uanu. All of this is embraced in and celebrated by his new CD. “I Breathe” is the song he shared, injecting some musical techniques that sounded like the Chipmunks singing.
O’Brian’s sharing of his own musical development made everyone laugh, cry, cheer, and applaud as he took us on a musical tour back through his years of musical matriculation. Although renown as a kumu hula, his passion for songwriting will be his legacy.
O’Brian felt that he was basically a singer, but the music teacher always made the fat guys do the comic hula or be in the choir but one day his teacher asked him to do the solo. Even when he started to participate in the Merrie Monarch hula competitions, he liked to sing the songs for the hula until one year a halau mother told him, “O’Brian, no sing; just chant!” and the second year she would find him the singers, and indeed she did; five singers showed up at practice -- Aunty Genoa Keawe, Val Kepalino, Peter Ahia, Aunty Waileka Lilikoi, and John Piiano…. “No wonder they no like me sing” he thought. And thus began a lifelong friendship between Genoa and O’Brian.
Each time he had a new song, he would call her and let her hear what he came up with. She was pure aloha and really encouraging, always saying, “Uh-huh …. Nice, O’Brian, nice …. Keep it up … JUST KEEP PRACTICING!” He said that she, too, never stopped practicing right up to the time of her death.
Finally after ten years of Merrie Monarch, he sang for Tracy Farias (daughter of Karen Keawehawai) and felt really good about the singing. He called her from Merrie Monarch and asked her if she saw him on TV, and he knew he had “arrived” when she said, “O’Brian, you get ‘um…but keep practicing!” He began crying on the phone and Aunty cried along with him.
Whenever Genoa was performing, she asked him to come up and sing with her, so Genoa would sing the Hawaiian and O’Brian would sing the English, He then sang “You are so beautiful to me” in English and Hawaiian and asked, “Aunty Genoa, you hear us?” He knew she was around listening. When he would hit and hold the high falsetto notes, she would fondly tease him with, “You SO show off!” He is so dramatic in his singing - his pure lovely voice brushing along the rafters as his fluid hands, always in hula motion, tell the story of the song.
He took his sister and niece to visit Aunty Genoa the evening before she passed away, telling his niece that she was going to meet someone very special. He spent the whole evening serenading Aunty Genoa with all the songs she taught him. When he was singing “Nani Kawena”, he realized she never taught him the fourth verse, so she took the ukulele and spent half hour teaching him the last verse.
It was truly an Aunty Genoa song.
O’Brian spoke of Pohaku Nishimitsu of Kaua’i who studied hula with O’Brian while matriculating at the University of Hawaii in Hawaiian language and history, but he wanted to return to Kaua’i to share his hula with the dancers here. When O’Brian was celebrating 25 years, he asked Pohaku to chant with him and Tracy at the Merrie Monarch, and after it was over, Pohaku confessed that it had always been his dream to chant on the Merrie Monarch stage and he expressed his gratitude to O’Brian for the opportunity. Overcome with emotion, O’Brian had to take a moment. Some years passed and he called Pohaku to perform with him at Kilohana but learned he was in the hospital; he later tried to contact Pohaku and learned that he had lost his battle with cancer. He sang the Mele Inoa that he wrote for Pohaku – “Pohaku O Kaua’i.”
Pohaku’s students were in the audience and they came up to honor O’Brian with a chant. One of the students, Alohalani, danced “Kipu Kai” and others joined her for “Kaulu Wehi O Kekai” a fast-paced hula about seaweeds by Edith Kanaka’ole.
With everyone in the hula mood, O’Brian stood up and ordered everyone to stand; he got everyone to dance a simple hula, shouting out “Kaholo!” “Hana hou!” “Smile!” Amazingly, even in such crowded quarters, there were no fisticuffs as everyone moved their bodies in unison.
O’Brian asked Kenneth to sing the song he wrote after his Dad’s passing which was not a sad song but a rock-style song. Kenneth shared the importance of the dash that comes between the birth date and the death date of his father because that dash represents his life. He wanted to make his life count. He called up world class percussionist Cary Valentine who he met at the Kauai Music Festival to accompany him with his Jimbei.
O’Brian to Cary, “ Stay for next half hour!”
Ken to Cary, “ When Kumu says, you listen”
So Cary played his kahong to accompany Ken’s very upbeat version of “These Dreams”. A jimbei drum solo encouraged by O’Brian got everyone into a jumpy mood.
With the music taking on such an upbeat and rhythmic turn, O’Brian’s intro to his next song was a story of his Halawa Housing days as a young sixth grader when he was a total “nut case” about music. He drove his sisters and brothers crazy with his poster-plastered walls and got all his siblings to be his backup singers as he sang songs by Motown, Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin. His football player brothers were not too happy about being backup singers, but even at his young age, a bit of the kumu was already there as he ordered them to “Just do it!”
O’Brian got carried away and off he rocked with an upbeat “Do You Want to Dance”…it was a cut-loose number with Cary on the kahong, Kenneth riffing away and singing backup and O’Brian orchestrating everyone in the audience to join in and others irresistibly boogieing in the fringes. “Now we know who the born-again virgins!” laughed O’Brian as everyone tried to catch their breath.
O’Brian kept trying to squeeze more songs in but, as always, the evening melted away into the cool night air as elated participants joined hands to clinch the musical fellowship with “Hawai’i Aloha” and folks found it difficult to leave because the early evening buzz has turned into an energy field that had folks floating out the door with smiles etched on their tear-streaked faces.
It was indeed another unforgettable EKK Monday that by early Tuesday morning had already pulsated through the Kaua’i coconut wireless along with the excited reactions to the inauguration of a new President of the United States.
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Auntie Maria
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My "Aloha Kaua`i" radio show streams FREE online every Thu & Fri 7-9am (HST)
www.kkcr.org - Kaua`i Community Radio
"Like" Aloha Kauai on Facebook, for playlists and news/info about island music and musicians!
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