REVIEWS BY JOHN BERGER / jberger@staradvertiser.com
‘Hali’a i ka Poli’
Kawaikapuokalani Hewett (Daniel Ho Creations)
Kumu hula Kawaikapuokalani Hewett has partnered with musician/record producer Daniel Ho in recent years to create a distinct repertoire of new contemporary Hawaiian music. This album is the third in the series and it fits in seamlessly with its predecessors. Hewett is again the composer and vocalist, Ho accompanies him on bass and acoustic piano. Concerns about lyric content and “too many slack key albums” seem to have abated here since The Academy eliminated the Hawaiian music category at the Grammys but for those who still track those things, Hewett, a native-speaker, writes and sings in Hawaiian. One of the 11 songs has a few English lyrics as well but there is no slack key guitar on this album at all.
Hewett sings in his familiar laid-back style. He translates the album’s title as “memories in my heart” and explains in the liner notes how those memories fit together. That is good information to have. It is certainly possible for people who are not fluent in Hawaiian to enjoy the sound of his voice and Ho’s piano accompaniment and leave it at that, but it adds much more to know that “’Ike I Ka Nani A O Pele” describes the experience of watching Halema‘uma‘u erupt at night, or that “He Aloha Ku‘u Hoapili” recalls a friendly heron he encountered in California. Documentation is an essential part of all Hawaiian albums. Hewett provides that here and makes “Hali‘a i ka Poli” complete. Were this album to prevail next year in The Academy’s catch-all Regional Roots Music category it would be an excellent representative of contemporary Hawaiian music.
‘This Dream Begins’
Daniel Ho (Daniel Ho Creations)
It’s always the privilege of a songwriter to revisit their work and examine it with the fresh perspective that can come with additional life experience. Daniel Ho is doing that here. Half of the album consists of 2.0 versions of songs he recorded and first released 10 years ago; a decade later he still likes the songs but feels he can do them better. The others are newly written but inspired by “significant experiences and observations” that shaped his journey from a penniless young would-be professional musician to where he is today. Taken together they are an engaging and frankly honest body of work.
Ho and his writing partners — Faith Rivera, Hope Mayo, Corwin Hee, Siena Lee and Toast Tajiri — excel at crafting lyric hooks and coining memorable phrases. The lyric images of a bad relationship as a card game (“Dear Jane”) or of a relationship where things don’t seem to fit (“The Best That I Can”) are two good examples. The free-form narrative of “The Holy Road” with its traces of sophisticated slam poetry is another.
It’s easy to image Ho singing these songs in a coffee shop with only an acoustic guitar for accompaniment. His careful use of several instruments (piano, ukulele and various guitars), and the work of guests on bass, drums and backing vocals, adds depth and variety. Although he may always be best known for his work in Hawaiian music this album reminds us that he is a competent pop artist as well.
———
John Berger has been a mainstay in the local entertainment scene for nearly 40 years. Contact him via email at jberger@staradvertiser.com.