Kaleponi

It’s wonderful to be back in Kailua visiting friends and enjoying the exquisite fall weather, warm sun shining and trade winds blowing sweetly. I’ve been strolling around the neighborhood looking for a spot to shoot a video, and when I got to the rise leading into Lanikai I knew I had my location. The view across Kailua Bay from there is inspiring.

I’ve been playing Queen Lili`uokalani’s Ahe Lau Makani for a while now, enjoying the lilting melody of this charming waltz. A song about Hawai`i’s breezes seemed perfect for the location. (more…)

It’s been a while since I’ve added any new music here at Kaleponi.com, but I haven’t misplaced my guitar or had any mishap. I maintain another web site that usually focuses on the techie side of things like video cameras, microphones, and guitar accessories. But of course whenever I play music on that channel it’s slack key, and every now and then I do a complete piece that might fit in here. (more…)

I’ve been hearing and playing Hanalei Moon quite a bit over the last few years. The Bob Nelson classic is fun to sing, fun to jam to, and fun for hula as well. There are lovely versions in many different tempos and styles, you can find quite a few examples on YouTube.

I set out to create a video featuring our deck, our olive tree, the accent lights, and the moon. It took quite a few tries to bring it all together, it turns out that photographing the moon is a tricky task. (more…)

Playing along with Ledward Kaapana while sitting on the deck is a major treat – one of the high points of my musical life. And I was really happy to be able to share a bit of video from one session: http://www.kaleponi.com/2012/06/24/backyard-jam-in-kaleponi/ But the next level in fun is the classic kanikapila, a party dedicated to playing music, singing, dancing, sharing food, and talking story.

We have musicians and dancers over nearly every week, but several times a year we have a bigger session, often when we have guests visiting from Hawai`i. With Ledward in town we knew the party would be something special. We filled the cooler, baked some cookies and some teri chicken, and counted on our guests to fill out the menu – which they did in fine fashion. (more…)

The tour is over but the fun continues. Mike Kaawa has returned to Hawai`i and his busy schedule, but Ledward and his wife Sharon are taking a little vacation in Kaleponi, visiting the stores and the sights, trying restaurants and spending time with friends. We jam in the living room and up in the studio, but the best jam time seems to be on the deck, with the planes flying over, the kids hollering at the swim club behind us, and the birds calling from the trees all around. Here are a couple of video clips we captured during the quieter moments of a backyard jam.

With the lovely breeze keeping us cool, the most important audio feature was a good windsock. I have a nice Rycote mini windjammer for the Sony PCM-D50, so that’s the only thing I could use to capture audio. And with Ledward doing some vocal tunes I had to position the recorder right in the middle of the shot. Hearing Ledward sing Pauoa Liko Ka Lehua made it all worthwhile, though.

One of my favorite of Ledward’s tunes is an instrumental version of Aloha Ia No O Maui, an old song that tells of the beauty of various features of the Valley Isle. Ledward tells me that one of his uncles created this arrangement and played it every party.

I hope to capture a little more of Ledward’s artistry before he heads home to Kane`ohe, but I’ll treasure these two songs in the meantime.

We’re back in Walnut Creek after our too short visit to Kailua, O`ahu. I’ve posted a few videos I shot during the trip, but here’s one more – a celebration of the neighborhood where we like to stay when we can. Kailua Beach is one stunning place, it attracts visitors from all around the world, and they all pass Kalapawai Park and the Kalapawai Market on their way to the beach park. The store has been at this location for over 70 years, it’s part of Kailua’s history. The park is more recent, from the late 60s.

There’s a little shopping center a block mauka, where pizza and shave ice, real estate and emergency medical services, sunglasses and bikinis, kayaks and bicycles and Segways are all available. Traffic jams are common when a class of kayak beginners crosses the road, and many of the trucks and cars are carrying canoes, paddle boards, kite surfing rigs, or kayaks.

This little corner of Kailua seems dedicated to fun, to enjoyment of this beautiful place. The spirit of the place seemed to match the feel of a song I’ve been working on for a few years, so I gave it the title Kalapawai Swing and set up cameras to record the song in its namesake park.

When we head to the beach from our friend’s cottage in Kailua, we pass through a hedge of naupaka kahakai, beach naupaka. This salt tolerant plant produces seed pods that float and can survive for a year in sea water, so this naupaka has spread to beaches throughout the South Pacific.

It features a flower that appears to have half its petals missing, and the naupaka kuahiwi, the mountain naupaka, shows the same “missing” petals. Naturally there are long ago stories told of the ill-fated lovers represented by these widely separated half-flowers.

I’ve been developing an instrumental piece using the name Naupaka Kahakai for several years, and recently I came up with a something I’m ready to call done. The beach at Kailua is the only location I could consider for doing a video of this song.

The recording uses the pickup through an effects box, because the tradewinds and waves drown out the guitar. My shots of the beach fail to do justice to this beautiful place, but perhaps they give you a bit of the flavor.

One of my favorite slack key instrumentals, Black Sand, was written by George Kaapana, Ledward’s father. Ledward used it as the title track for a wonderful CD, one I highly recommend. I managed to capture a video of the song in the Kaapana backyard, with the Ko`olau range in the background.

Playing duets with Ledward is a wonderful combination of inspiration and intimidation. I hate it when I mess up in front of my hero, and sometimes he plays such amazing stuff that I can only watch. But Ledward plays so solidly that it’s easy to get swept along and play beyond one’s limits, and he’s always generous in sharing his ideas, his licks and tricks.

It was a few years ago that I seemed to suddenly hear this song everywhere. It’s a familiar pattern – we learn a new word or concept and suddenly it appears all around us – but I was really grateful and excited about this discovery because the song was both so charming and so mysterious.

The melody is absolutely infectious, and one version in particular, Gary Haleamau‘s vocal featuring western swing fiddles in the hook, had me bouncing around and humming and grinning while Sonny Lim‘s solo slack key instrumental inspired me to find the notes for my own arrangement.

But the lyrics and translation were so mysterious, so puzzling. A shining steel cable? A cliff connected to a rooster or chicken? A land that looks like California? What can be going on? My search for understanding was made more difficult because the usual name of the song has been compressed into one word – Paliokamoa. Eventually I stumbled on a source, an essay by a relative of the composer that explained some of the mystery (but introduced a bit more).

The title refers not to the appearance of the cliff, or the presence of a chicken flock, but to the demands made on the workers at the sugar mill located there. They were expected to be at work before the rooster crowed at dawn. And the steel cable going down to the sea was part of the local transportation system – with no anchorage in the area and a strong offshore wind, sailing ships would be tied to a steel cable dropped from the cliff, and passengers and freight were winched up and down the cable. The “land that looks like California” turns out to be a literal description of the area around Upolu Point, where the vegetation and terrain appears strikingly similar to forested areas on the mainland.

I’ve worked on this song for years, it was one of the tunes that compelled me to learn to use Leonard’s C or “drop C” as it’s often called. This clever tuning is one string away from taropatch open G, and is reached by lowering the sixth string one whole step from D to C. The result is a tuning that is not “open” – not a major chord without fingering, but a very useful tuning nonetheless because it allows an easy switch between the keys of G and C. By using a capo and these two tunings the whole range of keys is readily available.

So here’s Pali O Ka Moa performed under the mango tree in the backyard of our friends the La`a family in beautiful Kailua, O`ahu, HI.

A couple of weeks ago I linked to some videos of Uncle Sonny Chillingworth performing and mentioned how much he has influenced me. One of his contributions to slack key was what he called the “Spanish bass” which takes a syncopated approach to a 4/4 rhythm. Sonny brought that innovation to slack key and it has become an integral part of the style.

One of the simpler tunes he composed with the Spanish bass is his Slack Key #2, which he recorded on his Dancing Cat CD, Endlessly.

I’ve been playing this tune for a few years now, since Lynn suggested I learn it. I usually play it with a lot of my own variations, but for this video I tried to stick pretty close to Sonny’s original.

This is a great tune for practicing the Spanish bass because it develops gradually with only slight changes from verse to verse, but it’s also a fun one to listen to, with the hypnotic repetition of the bass and treble speaking and answering.