 This week’s guest on Pakele Live! with Tony Solis is Keahi Conjugacion. A Grammy-nominated international jazz recording artist, Keahi is a member of the well-known Conjugacion family (Tony C and Brother Noland). Growing up, her home was filled with music and dance, and at a young age Keahi fell in love with the sounds of Dinah Washington and other great jazz vocalists like Sarah Vaughn, Billy Holiday, Carmen McRae, Etta James, and Phyllis Hyman.
She started her singing career at the age of 17, singing with local Top 40 and R&B bands and recording as a background vocalist. In an effort to expand her musical horizons, she moved to Seattle, where she began appearing and recording as a jazz artist, and performed with some of the Northwest's finest jazz musicians. She returned to Hawai’i for a time, but in 2003, Keahi was asked to be a part of “Hawai'i's Legends” and to perform in New York City's Carnegie Hall. During her visit to New York she also performed in some of Harlem's legendary clubs. Inspired by the response of the audiences there, she moved to New York in 2004 and lived there for one year, performing in many of the clubs in Harlem and the West Village.
Keahi has a distinct musical personality: a true jazz singer's spontaneity and freedom mixed with a reverence for the music of Hawai`i and the bluesy stylings of the classic singers she loves so much. Her love for Hawaiian music can be heard in the way she sings a lyric and in her sensitivity to the nuances of the Hawaiian language.
Please join host Tony Solis for Pakele Live! this Thursday, July 2 from 6-8 p.m. HST at the Pakele Lounge in the Ala Moana Hotel (410 Atkinson Dr., Honolulu). It’s free, and free parking is available next door at Ala Moana shopping center. Drinks are available for purchase, but as I’ve mentioned previously, the hotel is no longer serving food.
You may also watch live online at: http://www.pakelelive.com/
Those in Japan can watch at: http://www.j-wave.co.jp/
(If you watch online, don’t forget to email the show at pakele @ lava.net to say hi and let us know you’re watching – and from what part of the world!)
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Keahi Conjugacion on Pakele Live
Posted - 07/01/2009 : 9:35:01 PM
