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rossasaurus
Lokahi
USA
306 Posts |
 Posted - 08/19/2006 : 6:45:26 PM
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Wow, what a fabulous workshop we had today in Berkeley at Uncle Kems Temple bar!
George Kuo, Martin Pahinui, Aaron Mahi and about 25 of us haumana.
George started us off with the basics in Taropatch and on to running through the scales, with us following along. Our next menu item was some 'C' Mauna Loa and some "Drop 'C'" for Hi`ilawe.
For his finalé, George picked-up Martin's guitar, in Atta's 'C', and showed us some more goodies, then showed us all these variations of Atta's 'C'; 'C' wahine etc, that had me losing track of which 'C' tuning he was in at any given time; I just know they all sounded sweet!
George also told a funny story of how gabby, at some Honolulu club, had played-around with these two still-wet-behind-the-ear slack-key-performing brothers who were playing at the club, all night telling them they were 'flat', even though their tuning was probably OK! Talk about intimidating!
Then came Martin who started with "Blackbird", the first slack-key mele he ever played for his dad, Gabby. It was great to hear Martin solo as I've only heard him in the trio before. When martin had finished-up, George joined him to demo some duet playing, and we got to sit back and enjoy some more.
Aaron took us on a linguistic tour of some mele, demonstrating the intricacies of some Hawaiian words, the importance of context, variations in usage amongst the Ali`i and common classes of old Hawai`i, all with his usual sense of humour and kolohe gesturing.
We all learned 'Mauna Loa' like we hadn't before, I reckon ;)
Oh, and his delicately-chosen commentary on Noho Paipai was hilarious!
Next time these guys come your way, see if you can get a workshop set-up, it was a wonderful way to spend the day.
I haven't been playing much for a month or two and this was just the inspiration to get me kick-started again; I've even recovered despite having plugged my microphone into the headphone jack the whole workshop, auwe, lolo-head.
Mahalo guys! and Susie too! who left her little-one at home to come get us set-up at the workshop today. Ask to see her pictures; she doesn't have them pasted on the back of a guitar like some people I know, but she does carry a discreet photo album at all times.
Ross
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Temple Bar Workshop Debriefing
