(Read Part 2 for the meaning and my full translation of this song.)
I was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, and though I live currently in Seattle, Washington, I still very much think of myself as living in my home town. I go back frequently to catch up with my extensive ʻohana (just in our “nuclear family” — my parents, my siblings and me, our spouses, and my siblings’ kids — there are 23 people!) and in general reminisce on living there while dealing with how life is constantly changing. But a recent and meaningful event for me and my family has really made it seem like I’ve gone back in time to circa 1996 when I was still attending Hilo High School (class of ʻ97!). You see, my brothers DJ and Nathan and our cousin Riki Masaoka are in a band with some renown in Hawaiʻi called Kaleo Maoli (“The True and Native Voice”) and last week Friday their first big single “Leo Poinaʻole” was played on Hawaiʻi’s premiere Hawaiian-centric radio station KAPA F.M. (As with everywhere in the world, Hawaiʻi also has many radio stations that play American Top 40, as well as Hawaiian Top 40, referred to by many as Jawaiian music, which has a heavy Reggae influence.) (Here I want to insert a shout-out to Ace Loughmiller of Beyond Paradise for the recording and making this happen!) This is a major achievement for Kaleo Maoli and my brothers and cousin because it was written more than 20 years ago by our friend ʻIlima Bright Kela and composed by my brother Nathan Keawekāne Sr. shortly thereafter.
I want to share two things in these posts: Part 1 is a short account of my experience watching and helping (a little) my brother Nathan with the composition and, Part 2 is a deconstruction of the lyrics with a little bit of meaning behind them. Both of these demonstrate ka mauli Hawaiʻi — the quintessential Hawaiian experience — or at least they do to me.
The Composition
Being a Hawaiian from Hilo, I was, you can probably guess, quite poor growing up. At the time when “Lei Poinaʻole” came into being, I believe we were living on Nāhale-ʻā Street in Keaukaha. This was, at the time, my grandmother Pauline Palencia’s Hawaiian home land, a small tract of perhaps half an acre that started out as an overgrown morass of rainforest before it was bulldozed into a gently rolling bank of gravel and weeds. I’m gonna get all the details wrong, but I think it was around the summer of 1994 that Gramma decided she was going to live on that land and, since we were living at our church Ka ʻUhane Hemolelo o ka Mālamalama for the gazillionth time, we helped Gramma build essentially a modern-day shack. Where in antiquity we might have collected grass and wood to build our lean-to, in 1994 we got our hands on some wooden pallets, a big piece of carpet, a couple of camping tents and a tarp tent canopy over all of it. Eventually we build a sturdy shack with more wooden pallets, wood supplies and corrugated tin roof and kept the tarp tent canopy as a part-time living area, part-time garage for our car.
This time is personally very important to me for many reasons:
- I was a teenager so everything seemed meaningful.
- I met my best friend of now 22 years, Mikaele Kaili, who has helped me through too many things to name and is 100% family in my heart.
- My entire family was spending the bulk of our time working at the church to make Hawaiian food to sell at local events like the Merrie Monarch hula festival and county fairs. We made (and the church still makes) the best Hawaiian food in the world (in my opinion). I consider myself a poi, laulau and lomi salmon connoisseur having made this and so much more (kālua pig, haupia, squid lūʻau, lūʻau stew, kūlolo, etc.) with my own two hands for years.
- My sister Camille and I would mostly sing by ourselves, though we would occasionally sing backup for Kaleo Maoli and still do.
- ʻIlima Bright (no Kela yet) joined our church and started teaching ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. She wrote “Lei Poinaʻole” not too long after joining.
For those who follow my blog, the last point is significant: while I am Hawaiian and KUHOM church conducts everything, except for the sermons, in Hawaiian, I didn’t speak Hawaiian at home. But then again, at that time, no one did. My mom Malia had taken some classes before so she was already teaching us stuff, but when ʻIlima came along, many of us in the church became more serious about learning it. I absolutely loved learning Hawaiian and ʻIlima was a great teacher: she was teaching at Pūnana Leo o Hilo then. I didn’t know that this experience would really shape my approach to language learning in the future — and that has been really impacting, considering I’m fluent in two languages (English and Pidgin), conversational in five (Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese) and have studied countless other languages including Swahili, German, Italian, Māori, Korean, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia.
So that’s the setup. Now imagine this: it’s a cool day in Hilo, not muggy, and you’re setting under this tarp tent canopy with your brother who is fiddling around with his ʻukulele. Today I play a baritone uke (pronounced “yuke” not ʻuke), but on this day in the past I hadn’t picked up an ʻukulele since fourth grade at Waiākea Elementary School. Nathan is looking at the words that ʻIlima had written not long before and trying to find chords for it. Nathan is a strong singer and a great ʻukulele player: he is known in our family for his love of Journey (yes, he can sing “Don’t Stop Believing”) and the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau, and he can pick an ʻukulele like Troy Fernandez of the Kaʻau Crater Boys (an early idol of his). It didn’t take long for Nathan to find a melody and when you listen to the melody and consider the structure, you hear his inspirations. The Makaha Sons of Niʻihau are not as well known as their long-time lead singer, Israel “Braddah Iz” Kamakawiwoʻole. Two themes connect Lei Poinaʻole with the Makaha Sons’ style and many traditional Hawaiian songs:
- Three- or four-part harmony: lead, first high, first low and second high or second low (depending on range; I can sing both)
- Each verse is (usually) sung twice. The first time you sing it in mono, meaning no harmonizing. In the Makaha Sons, mostly it would be Iz singing alone, but sometimes they all sing the same melody without harmonizing. The second time each person takes their parts.
In “Lei Poinaʻole,” Riki Masaoka sings the lead and plays the ʻukulele. His major inspiration has always been Iz, and that is apparent in his delivery, in the timber of his voice and even his diction. Nathan (a mere eleven months older than me — thanks, Dad!) plays the upright base and sings first high (his voice is the highest in the song). Dowyne Keawekane Jr. (two years older than me and whom we call DJ) plays the lead guitar and sings first low (his voice is the lowest in the song).
A note on singing first low: it’s hard! Once you hear it and figure out how to produce it, you can’t unlearn that. But finding it is always a struggle. Being a singer since probably sixth grade (I wrote my first song in seventh grade), it has always been easy to sing along with the melody and/or jump up to the first high. (Apologies to trained musicians: I have no idea how to think of these in the traditional music theory way. Can’t make sense of the Wikipedia page on harmonization either. :)) But it’s only been in the last five years that I have mastered the ability to sing lows. (Second low is simply first high an octave lower, so that’s easy). Then there are “off-notes” but you just find those wherever and use them when it feels/sounds good.
With all this in mind, it’s easy to “see” that “Lei Poinaʻole” is a more Hawaiian-style song. Other songs that are like it (and that my brothers also sing) include:
- “Nōhili Ē” (a favorite of mine)
- “Ke Alaula” (which my nephew is named after)
- “He Inoa no Piʻilani” (another fave of mine, and which I often sing with my brothers — can you tell we love this album Hoʻoluana??)
At the time of this writing, “Lei Poinaʻole” was #23 on the iTunes World Music Charts! It is on a compilation album called Represent, Vol. 2, featuring other artists like Sudden Rush and Bruddah Waltah. You can purchase “Lei Poinaʻole” on iTunes (search for Kaleo Maoli). Follow Kaleo Maoli on Facebook!
(Read Part 2 for the meaning and my full translation of this song.)
Ryan Keawekane 