 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, Community Matters here. Thanks, Jay. Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you. It's the sound, it's the sound of the Aina, it's the sound of the wind and the ocean. It's the sound of that old Hawaiian love. That's what it is. Yeah. What were the words? What did they mean? The song is titled Hii Lave. It's somewhat of a standard nowadays. It tells the story of the Hii Lave waterfalls in Waipio Valley. It's a thousand feet deep, you know, in depth. It's a love story, as most Hawaiian songs are. Yeah. It tells about the beauty of the area in comparison to someone's love. I really love it, yeah, I love yourself. So I'm going to start the show now. Oh, okay. That's a good idea. It's Bobby Hall. So welcome to Community Matters on Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. Our show today is called Hawaiian Music and Be an Export Product. And we're going to talk about, you know, how we can recreate the Moana phenomenon, the Webley Edwards phenomenon in the 30s and the 40s. How we can work on doing that, and how we can make it more prosperous for Hawaiian musicians. And if you want to make a comment or ask a question, you can tweet us at Think Tech H.I. or call us at 808-374-2014. And if you haven't figured it out, our guest for the show as before is Bobby Hall, an original member of the Peter Moon band, still carries it with him every moment, yeah. So there was a time when Hawaiian music was distributed and it was well known around the world. And that led to long-term popularity for the islands. It brought tourists here in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. Hawaiian music was an essential part of the brand, and the hotels promoted it themselves on their own money. In recent years, more recent years, however, the hotels have left it to others to promote, and that takes money that musicians don't always have. We had a renaissance in recent years, including bands like Peter Moon, Peter Moon Man and many others. But we need to get the word out to the world, maybe as before. And the question is, should we do that? How can we do it? What role does the business of music, tourism, HTA, government play in getting global recognition for Hawaiian music? So Bobby Hall is good for this discussion, one of the original members of the Peter Moon band. He's been involved in Hawaiian music and the renaissance for most of his life. He'll tell us about his experience and his views. Maybe he'll even play another couple of songs. We can get him to do that. Again, to the show, Bobby Hall. Yeah, great to have you here. So how right or wrong am I in my historic understanding of Hawaiian music, say, from the time of statehood? From a timeline, you're correct, from a timeline perspective, by no means am I an expert in Hawaiian music or the various genres that take place now. But from my upbringing, you know, Hawaiian music was, I guess the term I use was hapahali music that became popular in the 30s, 40s, got exposure through Big Band, probably Hollywood, to the extent that Hawaii became a destination. And it also became, you know, something that people envisioned as paradise, accompanied by the land, the water, you know, the weather and the music and the hospitality of the Hawaiian people. It's all in there. It's all in there. See, it's everything that someone wishes to, you know, to be part of. Music took its, you know, to me, it sort of morphed into what was happening around the rest of the world. Big Band music couldn't really do traditional Hawaiian music, chants, you know, hulas and things like that, because I don't believe the rest of the world outside of Hawaii was ready for that. So it took a direction of its own, you know, Hawaiian music, the perception of Hawaii, you know, was ingrained in people, grass jack, on the beach, hula skirts, diamond in the background, guy without a shirt and a leg playing ukulele, you know. And romance. And love and romance, yeah. I mean, it's from a state of mind. You're looking for something that, you know, is like, you know, if you want to make, you know, on a vacation, you want to just, you know, have all the good things come out of your mind and your body, you know. It got people there. Yeah. It gave people that feeling. Yeah. And it was, you know, from the courtyard of the Moana Hotel that was broadcast, that Wembley Edwards figured out to his credit how to hook it up to the whole country. And he did. And everybody listened to it. They liked it. They liked the romance of it. They liked the sound of the islands. And they came. They came by the car loads. You know, whether it's just the United States or the rest of the world, that was the primary mode of communication at that time. You know, your radio, your TV with six channels, you know, and whoever promoted their venue, they had a pretty much captured audience. So you could count on the Wembley Edwards show being there for your Hawaiian niche for the week, you know, and people look forward to that. Yeah. You know, fast forward today, you know, you got a million stations. You got, you know, all kind of stuff. So there's a multiple choices, whether that's good or not. You know, I think it gives maximum exposure. But it also, you know, sends the need or the want in many directions. And the taste of the generations that have come in more recent years is different. It is different. I mean, you know, I don't want to say it was commercialized, but just the fact that Hawaiian music was morphed into some big band sounds, hapahaui, you know, English words, you know, to the different strums. It was a way to get it out there and to build interests in Hawaiian music. And you know, from that time, you know, people started yearning and searching for a little bit more. I'd like to think that's what encouraged the whole Hawaiian music renaissance movement was, you know, guys of my age, maybe even a little older at that time, took interest to the basic music sound and kind of wanted to go back beyond the thirties and find out a little bit more about, I mean, earlier. Early, yes. Earlier. Sort of an nostalgic view. Go back to where it began, you know, and start getting into the chance, getting into the language, getting into the core of Hawaiian song. We're talking about the middle of the 19th century. Possibly. You know. And even that, the traditional Hawaiian songs were somewhat subdued. I mean, you know, your Hawaiian history, it was discourage, you know, for families to speak Hawaiian, promote Hawaiian, you know, back in the turn of the century, going maybe into the thirties. So it was there, but not really mainline, you know. It was suppressed, actually. Yeah. You can call it suppressed, but yeah, maybe that's the right word. But it just wasn't out there, you know. So, you know, guys like me and people around my generation, we will ask questions, we find out. And we take an interest in an older type of cultural music that we used to. And we apply it to where we are at that time, you know, a little bit more chord progressions, a little bit more guitar stuff. And we make it interesting first, maybe for us, but then, boom, you know, catches fire. People might think it's something new, but, you know, the core is still the basic Hawaiian, you know, stories. It's a statement of the Hawaiian identity. Maybe in some ways it is the Hawaiian identity. Maybe, you know, maybe if you, if you're from that time and, you know, or from the time soon after, you have a point that you can focus on. I'm sure people who are, you know, much older than me, they focus beyond that, you know. But for whatever it's worth, it's worth, it kind of, you know, gave it a shot. It kind of gave it a booster shot, you know, got the interest out there. And then it kind of like multiplied, it went multiple directions, you know, it got people interested in language, in culture, in traditional practices, in starting immersion schools. And there's a lot of things that maybe you can't take full credit for, but it was all happening. Yeah. And the music is somehow the backbone of all of that. I think so. I think the music and the promotion of the culture and the arts and the chance was always there. Yeah. So you talk about, you know, the people getting older and just in a recent month or two, there's been a number of deaths among, you know, traditional Hawaiian musicians. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, good friends, you know, over the years have made their notch in Hawaiian music, you know, close friends, friends that have had chances to share not only the stage on, but just be part of their everyday lives. And everybody gets old, you know, everybody. We heard it here on Think Tank. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's unfortunate, but, you know, things happen. But with their passing, how does that change? You know, with their, everything is somewhat finite in the human life, right? Yeah. What you look at is what the message is and the legacy that they left, you know, and that's what you hang on to. You know, you look at the talents of, you know, the Kazimero family, beyond just the two brothers, you know, Tutsi and everybody else, very talented, will leave their mark on Hawaiian music and music in general forever, you know. So you appreciate that, you take that, you know, and you, you try to, you know, nurture it so it just doesn't go away, you know. Yeah. Well, what do you have to do to, you mentioned that as things change, the music changes, but subject to its basic core, its cultural core, but what do you have to do to keep up, you know? Like the Kazim, I feel the Kazimero brothers were keeping up, they were moving ahead, they were changing with the times, they were innovative. As the Peter Moon band, innovative, and so you always have to be thinking about how to incorporate other musical trends into your music. Tell me about the Peter Moon band, tell me about the Kazimeros and the others, how they did that. You know, from a business outlook, you know, if you're going to do this, you know, you're going to take your talents and try to get it out there and try to create a business out of that. You really have to try to understand who's listening and what they're willing to listen to. You know, you can't be so creative that you take yourselves out from between the lines. You know, I think for us, for Peter Moon band, there was a balance of trying out new music, yet still keeping the Hawaiian tradition. All of our recordings that we've done, every album had a different genre of song, but it always had the traditional Hawaiian music. So when you're pushing your recording, when you're pushing your album, you're still pushing the core of what started you. And then you're testing, you know, these different genres or types of music that you enjoy or that you think the market might enjoy. I, you know, I credit the Sunday Manoa, you know, the genius of Peter Moon and the talents of Robert and Rowland, you know, for making it very interesting, even for guys like me, you know, to, oh, I like that sound. And then, oh, they're singing Hawaiian, gee. My mom knows Hawaiian. I should go talk to her about that. This is your own experience. This is my own experience, right? And then, you know, oh. So you kind of backed into it somehow, yeah? Whether or not that was the case for everybody, that's what happened to me. You know, and I like the sound, I like the music, I like the interest. I started buying up albums, you know, that I normally wouldn't be interested in at the time. And I started just not necessarily sitting down and learning it, but just getting immersed in it so that it just becomes part of it, you know? Yeah. But it's not the same kind of experience that you would have at Juilliard. You heard that here, I mean, a lot of this is self-taught. It's based on emulating sounds that you like to hear. It's not necessarily reading classical style, reading music, it's feeling music and expressing that, right? Is that what your experience? That is my experience, you know, and you were pretty much self-taught, you know, you took interest because you enjoyed the sound, you enjoyed the music. And then, from that, you know, if you wanted to push the envelope and learn a little bit more, then you got serious, then, you know, guys, you know, take music, or guys already knew music, but couldn't put the pieces together, you know? So there was a combination of Juilliard grads that, you know, picked up the ukulele and figured out, hey, you know, this, I can do this. Real music. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a short break. That's Bobby Hall, he's an original member of the Peter Moon Band, and through him we learn about Hawaiian music. And it's ARC, if you will. We'll be right back after this break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great. It's all entertaining. It's all educational. So, I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science. Hey, we're talking about Hawaiian music. We're talking about its past, its present, and its future, and it's Bobby Hall, original member of the Peter Moon Band, who I love when he plays, he'll play some more for us. But you know, I went last night to Honeys, and I loved that music. You know, it's part of... Who was playing it? Was it Ledward? I didn't know. Oh, okay. Two guys. One was slightly falsetto, and dark glasses and all this. I think it was Ledward. Ledward Calpana. I think that's right. It was. It was Ledward Calpana. Yeah. Anyway, we live kind of close by. Played together? Yeah. Played together, yeah. Had a chance to play with him early years, when he was with his brother and Dennis Pavel, both of which passed away. Yeah. Well, we got to keep this alive. I mean, it's not just for the musicians. It's not just for the Native Hawaiian people. It's for everybody. It's core stuff for the whole life in this state. And there are a lot of issues about how you do that, how you... For example, who promotes it, I was mentioning before, the hotels used to, but they don't anymore. Now you have to find a promoter or be a promoter to promote yourself into a hotel. And I'm interested in your views about who should do what, the music industry, business in general, HTA, White Tourism Authority, the government, Chamber of Commerce. Everybody benefits by preserving this strain of culture, this core strain of culture. Who do you think should take the fore on this? Who should be active? And what should they do? All of the above. Okay. Yeah. And seriously, if you're from a tourism perspective, if you're promoting Hawaii, then promote it all away. Understand how the industry grew. Understand that the first people that came here as part of a tourist industry, they came here for a vision. They came here for a concept. It might have been the rich of people, but they came here for X. And nowadays, you can market whatever that X is. You can market ecotourism. You can market luols. You can market marathons. You can market a whole bunch of things to get the hotel rooms filled. So market music. Market music. And while it's no one person's responsibility. If I was to look across the ocean and look at Japan and look at how much interest they've taken in the Hawaiian music and how much they import local Hawaiian artists, local hula hula hula instructors, you know, local kumu hula who've established their own halas there in Japan, I'm like, okay, they're doing it. There's an interest. And it's not an overwhelming interest. Not everybody in Japan knows the word aloha or whatever, but there's a concept. There's a vision. You know, they still want to come to Hawaii to get married and take the picture on the beach in 98 degrees sun, you know. But hey, you know, look at that more than just an opportunity for a tourism dollar. Look at the reason why they're doing that because it's Hawaii. It's here. You know, respect what we have to offer. Don't overindulge it. You know, I mean, or overcommercialize it, overcommercialize it. As far as the heart of Hawaiian musician is portrayed, there's a lot of guys playing music in Waikiki. I would, I would say it's a grind, you know, for them, but they have their venues. There are certain hotels that set up, you know, opportunities to play. And you know, a lot of them play, you know, what they enjoy playing. But they also, you know, have to cater to, you know, the market, who's ever sitting in front of them. And, you know, it's unfortunate that we can't have just like a venue, not necessarily out there in Laie, you know, where they're making... Great fun there. Yeah. They're making out there. It's marketed well and it's done well. Yeah. You know, something similar. Right smack dab in Waikiki, you know. You remember the rooftop in the Hawaiian region? It's a few years ago already. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're sure we used to do stuff from there as well. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of can appeal all day. I mean, there are venues, don't get me wrong. And I don't know all the venues, you know, sorry, I mean, I'm not a frequent person to Waikiki all the time. Hard to go there now. I don't know all the venues available, but, you know, I would like to think that if there was just a way to showcase, you know, locally without having to go through all the expense and the promotion, just put it up there, you know, and whether you break even or not, just put it out there, you know, I give the... But the people in Japan are seeing on a regular basis and willing to pay for and fly in, you know, do something here. Yeah. You know. This giving thing, it doesn't matter about the money. That you just give. That's how things were always and should always be. Yes, I agree. It's part of the music, isn't it? Well, it's part of being, you know, a local person, that's what aloha means. So what is there... What is the level of interest by local people? I mean, everybody living here, really, for Hawaiian music. How can we stir them up? For example, if we had a kind of capilla on the rooftop of the Hawaii region, which doesn't exist anymore, how could we get them down there? Should we get them down there? Should we make an effort? Would it be useful to have everybody come down there? You know, I think you have to look at the different age groups and generations and genres of music. I can't see people my age rushing down to a hopping reggae concert, something like that. And no offense against that music. When I have the opportunity to play with friends and we do private gigs or even some commercial gigs, what we bring is what people, maybe my generation or after me, don't get to listen to. And they yearn for that. And they're willing to come out and see that because it reminds them of a point in time when they were happy with the music, happy with themselves, takes them back. Maybe you go 20 years younger, my age, there's a different attraction point that brings there. But it's there. And it's a matter of lining up those different attraction points, genres, because the musicians today vary from my age all the way to right out of high school. That there is a delineating line that ties us all like a lay to our Hawaiian music. You play a simple chord or you can play a progressive chord. You can sing a simple harmony solo or you can sing four part or you can do three with a drum bat. It's the same song. You mentioned the core is always there and we need to have that. But what do you want to call it? The rapper has to change because people change, because their tastes change, not only here, but even in Japan and certainly on the mainland, we have to somehow follow that so we don't niche ourselves out of the larger market that would be beneficial to the musicians and to the state in general. So how do we do that? For example, why was Is and his great song, I'm going to sing it. Somewhere over the rainbow. Over the rainbow, you know, which they sang last night at Honey's, by the way. I'm sure it's a question. It's taken on a Hawaiian patina on it, but that was a change. You take a song that's not Hawaiian at all and then somehow you inject Hawaiianness into it. And now you have a song that appeals from here to Romania, right? We have to do things like that, don't we? Well, you got to look at the ambassador who did that. Israel is a special, unique person. Just his voice is like a magnet, you know. And you know, he basically recorded that song, him and his ukulele, because that's what he felt. I don't think he had any intention of trying to target a market or trying to, you know, make a worldwide sale or, you know, read somebody in Greece. I don't think he had any of that intention. It's just the pureness of his sound, the pureness of his simple, you know, music that got people attracted. And it was an English song. People recognized the song. And you know, it took a few promoters to drop it here in this movie tag and this stuff. And it just went off. Now, the ability to do that on a regular basis, I mean, whoever can figure that out, you know, they can make some good commercial money. But you know, it's possible. It's possible. But you got to try it. You got to try to get it out there. And maybe, you know, these venues in Japan or, you know, Hawaii is finally getting a category or getting recognized under the Grammys. You know, when we were playing music, we weren't even included on the sheet, right? So it's growing. The exposure is getting there. It's just when you're there, you know, how do you kind of draw it back so everybody at home can kind of, you know, possibly move along with you? Yeah. Well, in the case of this, you know, a lot of this had to do with Leah Bernstein, right? And she and her team there promoted it, what is it, what's the name of the record company? I can't. Well, with John DiMello. John DiMello. Yeah. And I think you need people like that to, you know, take it and present it to the world. You need a combination of, you know, the marketing talent and, you know, the promotion and the business. You need the talent. You still need the talent. And there's a lot of talent here. Yeah. There is a lot of talent here. Always. So we're talking to you. Talk to the talent for a minute. Talk to the talent. Tell them what they should do. No, I'm not one to, you know, give that kind of advice. I can tell you from my journey, you know, it's a matter of looking at who you're singing to, whether you're an audience of one or you're an audience of 100,000. It's making that experience memorable for them because that's what's going to perpetuate your art. Yeah. Don't go on stage and, you know, I might be condescending, but don't go on stage like, yeah, these guys paying to see me. I think I'll whip out a few quads and, you know, I really don't want to be here. You know, you have to appreciate the God-given gift that you have. It's called talent. And the way to do that is share it, you know, whether it's for compensation or just applause. Yeah. You share it. You embrace your audience. You basically, you know, put yourself out there and it'll come back. It'll sync with somebody in the audience. It'll grow in somebody's memory. And that's what it takes to perpetuate. Yeah. Thank you, Bobby. Again, can you play some music on the way out for us? Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about old days. So I don't know if I've played this for a long time, but I was watching this movie on TV, Elvis movie. Of course. He's part of this whole discussion, isn't he? And you are heaven to me, and so...