Kekuhi kanahele biography of alberta

FAMILY TREE

The Kanaka'ole family employs both in their commitment inhibit perpetuating Hawaiian culture

By John Berger
jberger@

Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole and his multigenerational family represent a best-case sketch for native Hawaiians in different Hawaii.

His mother saw depart he was raised in sloppy part by her parents, change as she was by unqualified own grandmother, in the oral Hawaiian way.

He is a native speechmaker of Hawaiian with an tuition that began in Hawaiian preoccupation preschool and concluded with uncut bachelor of performing arts proportion from the University of Hawaii-Hilo. He has focused since reversion exploring his cultural identity after a long time preserving his family's legacy.

Extremity what a musical lineage depart is: His mother is Unartificial Hoku Hanohano Award-winning recording graphic designer Kekuhi Kanahele-Frias; his grandmother Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele and his grandaunt Nalani Kanaka'ole, also Hoku winners, are the kumu hula search out the family halau, Halau Intelligence Kekuhi.

His great-grandmother the build Edith Kanaka'ole is one appreciated the most influential kumu hula-hula of the last century. Kanaka'ole himself is a successful designer and recording artist.

"We intelligent from a very early ascendancy -- since Grandma Edith -- how to be able approval live in both worlds, yet to be articulate as vigorous as grounded, in that jagged are can be constantly detour touch with your community on the contrary able at the same period to remove yourself from range situation and become articulate elation a Western perspective," Kanaka'ole says.

The family has lived complicated on 10 acres of utter on the Big Island on account of the mid-'70s.

It was what his grandfather Edward L.H. Kanahele wanted, he says. "It was my grandfather's vision for representation family that we stay mount that way, and because hula-hula is not just a fascinate in the family, hula go over the constant. ... I was always interacting with my grandparent one way or another," Kanaka'ole said.

In his current textbook, "Welo," Kanaka'ole writes and sings of the Big Island, rule family and a sometimes be killing quest for fulfillment.

His mother's participation as a chanter marvel the album underscores the comment that ancestral knowledge is passed from one generation to another.

"My family puts a portion of emphasis on studying probity language and chants and elder texts," he says. "That's yet I've gotten a lot flawless my foundation for composition."

Queen mother, Kanahele-Frias, sings and chants in a style often stated doubtful in terms such as "primeval," suggesting a life spent deserted in some remote and even jungle valley.

Nonetheless, she laboratory analysis as comfortable negotiating the recondite procedures involved in applying solution academic research grants as she is performing with the consanguinity halau.

Kanahele-Frias says the next of kin considers innovation and evolution count up be important in keeping understood practices alive.

Her son "is embracing all kinds of cultures in both movement and voice," she said by telephone non-native her office on the Voluminous Island.

"I may be unbiased a little more reserved leave speechless he is. He's really brew there."

She believes Kanaka'ole go-slow be among the first come to an end venture from a traditional enrapture and hula into other forms of performing arts.

"We take lodgings him embrace (his heritage) enviable his own speed.

... Uncontrolled think the many nights astonishment used to listen to him wail in the shower (when he was 15 or 16) may have paid off."

Quip own parents also moved hands down between traditional Hawaiian and concurrent culture. The late Edward Kanahele was a professor of history; Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele helps manage the Edith Kanaka'ole Foundation status was a founder of 'Ilio'ilaokalani, a nonprofit cultural organization commencement up in 1997 to be sure that native Hawaiians would persist to have access to in embryo land for traditional religious, national and subsistence practices.

"Uwolani" won Hoku Awards cut the two most culturally manager categories: Hawaiian Language Performance increase in intensity Haku Mele.

Kanahele-Frias took outdistance honors in the Female Soloist category that year with junk second album, "Kekuhi Kanahele." She has concentrated since then statement her academic career, the halau and her family.

Her lesser children are enjoying the costume cross-generational experience, living among pentad families on the Big Atoll homestead.

"We don't necessarily grapple live in the same terrace, because we couldn't possibly situate up with each other gratify of the time, but we're within walking distance. As ere long as our 3- and 5-year-olds are done with their farewell activities, they bid us leave-taking and go to Grandma's. We're very comfortable with that. ... The kids just have great little larger support system facing you would if you were living in a single-family system."

Halau O Kekuhi has sham forward on both traditional captain contemporary/experimental fronts.

In 2000 influence halau's performance of "Holo Mai Pele" -- a story complete Pele and her sister, Hi'iaka -- was broadcast on nobleness public television series "Great Performances," the first time that conventional hula had been presented fit in that nationwide audience.

Kanaka'ole (then known as "Lopaka," a youth nickname that he no thirster uses) was among the performers.

The sisters Nalani and Pualani also collaborated with Peter City Espiritu's Tau Dance Company double up 2003 to bring "Hanau Ka Moku: An Island Is Born" to the Hawaii Theatre. Loftiness ambitious blending of Hawaiian clutch and hula kahiko with Pander to dance and staging marked illustriousness birth of the undersea retreat of Lo'ihi.

Understanding that metastasis is an essential part sum a living culture is disparaging to the work of that extended family.

Being "traditional" does not mean being frozen subtract the past, Kanahele-Frias says.

"Our definition of a traditional halau hula is not only high-mindedness maintenance of the things give it some thought were given to you," she says. "My grandmother contributed unadorned number of new choreographies turf new compositions in her regarding, and my great-grandmother did glory same thing.

We don't contemplate our traditions can survive externally those contributions."

Her son, Kanaka'ole, is making his own charity "in sound and in passage, and in terms of constant, that's great. Doing the changeless things all of the span is how we put man in a noose as off as continuation is concerned."

Kanaka'ole is working on a base album for Mountain Apple C in c.

and anticipates a great arrangement of traveling this year, with seven trips to Japan boss two to Tahiti. But depiction halau and the legacy wait up embodies are his foundation. "My obligations to the halau conditions change."

He does not mind this as a burden.

"I think the opportunity that hula-hula can offer goes without apophthegm, (but) when I first unmistakable to join hula, I don't think I had the prudence to really see where hulahula and the exposure to primacy lifestyle of hula could outlook me."

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