Hula, vocalization, legacy, mahu, permeability: Kekuhi and Kaumakaiwa Kanahele

Kekuhi and Kaumakaiwa Kanahele. Watch them in a video interview-performance.
Hover over the image for a quote from that video about 'Permeability' 

On Valentine's Day Eve and Valentine's Day, 2015, Pete and I packed ourselves up, made sure I had a full tank of oxygen, caught a ferry, drove into Seattle prepared and excited to be in the Seattle Town Hall audience with mother and daughter Kekuhi Kanahele and Kaumakaiwa Kanahele. We were headed for two experiences with Kekuhi and Kaumakaiwa. One was a small(er) teaching talkstory event entitled HULA: our world consciousness. The second night, Valentine's Day, was the larger musical venue of dance and music.

We had hoped the audio record of the small talkstory event would be available to share. 'Aue, oh no, there were technical problems and that recording disappeared. We mourned the loss of that recording because its content was uncommon and powerful. That desire to repeat and re-hear the messages called. 'O kiha i ka lani. 'Owe i ka lani. Nunulu i ka lani. The effects of that night have woven into us, integrating in the na'au the gut the messages work on me, live with me, win me over. Two malama (months) have passed, and I have truly eaten the moons.*

Mahealani on Saturday night

While studying and researching, on the Mahealani Moon with the energy of the Lunar Eclipse vibing through me, I was rewarded with the discovery of this YouTube from Seattle's KEXP FM. An interview and recording with dj Darek Mazzone and Kekuhi and Kaumakaiwa fielding questions, folding exquisite, broadly poetic and cogent replies. Woven between the call and response of the interview were the vocalizations of primal, ancient and contemporary music. That interview and recording was from Friday, February 13, 2015. The mother daughter duo were in the KEXP studio not long before coming to the stage for their Seattle Town Hall presentation of HULA: our world consciousness. My kupuna were listening to my petition to hear the 'ohana for Keaukaha again. I mahalo you, my ancestors. And share the discovery below.

I have listened and watched this video four times over the weekend. It is early morning, Monday, and Hina is still bright in the northwestern sky, a Kulu moon. Hiding behind the tall bodies of the tree 'ohana in the sky of Scorpio's domain. Jupiter is already in the west, still in his retrograde motion the planet of luck will go direct on Wednesday. My astrologer says to be ready to jump forward with exuberance and positivity. Mining that with the spirit of  kilo practitioner I dig through the notes I have made as I listened and studied the mana'o of Kekuhi and Kaumakaiwa.

After their opening 'oli Ke Welina Mai Kei Kekini Lalo and incantation to Kane, Mazzone said, "Tell me everything. Tell me everything about what you guys are doing ... I wanna start with your grandmother. I guess the parallel would be she would be like the Cesar Chavez of Hawaiian Culture." That brought a roar of laughter from the Kanakaoles. Kekuhi begins to reply and describe her grandmother Edith Kanakaole. But a question pure and direct opens the way for the brilliant and esoteric program unfolding. "What is hula ... exactly?"


Kekuhi starts, "Hula is alignment of movement and vocalization. It's an environmental dance."
Kaumakaiwa builds, "It's the synchronistic form of man and nature in communion. Sometimes it parallels and sometimes it intersects. But what you can always see with hula is that awakening of the subconscious through the dance the voice through activating, the exertion of the physical body ... and the experience of transcendence."

The thirty-four minute interview is an education, a full meal deal of an offering and I will listen and dig, awakening more of me each time. It is why I love the dance that is my Hawaiian culture. So many levels and issues of hula, humanity and nature, and the power of the word, and music are encapsulated.  Kaumakaiwa blossoms with "Encapsulating [that] hum into a word ... You invoke the word. You become the word. You become the thing." Her mother punctuates, "And THAT is what our practice is all about. Kaumakaiwa concludes, "That's the basis for all our music."

Enjoy. Make room for a feast. Mahalo e na 'ohana Kanaka'ole o Kanahele.

Pele and Lohiau told by Kamokila Campbell

When I was a young girl growing up in Kuli'ou'ou Valley in the 1950's and '60's, I listened to the radio. One of the voices that captivated my young and imaginative Scorpion nature was that of Kamokila Campbell. Her voice and her stories were a sound that embraced me when confused about my place and my nature, inspiring me to learn and be fed by listening to the power of voice.

In those days, and only until much later in life, I did not know of the great contradictions Alice Kamokila Campbell would represent. The daughter of James Campbell, and heiress to the grand fortune of sugar  "... In the late 1930s and early 1940s, ‘Ewa was a sugar plantation with miles of swaying cane baking on the dry, flat plain. Kamokila Campbell’s father, James Campbell, pioneered the area years before, finding water and making the land prosper." Finding water really meant diverting fresh water from the Windward O'ahu wetlands of Waiahole and Waikane while spraying and applying chemical fertilizer and herbicides creating great strain on the natural environment and health of the people of the Island. Also included in the article Lessons of a Hawaiian Grandmother written by Kaui Goring, "Even though she was an heiress, whose family mingled with nobility of the time—Mary remembers her grandmother noting that King Kalakaua would play “poka” with her father at his Honouliuli ranch—Kamokila lived among the kiawe trees much of the time wearing a simple mu‘umu‘u made up of two pieces of fabric sewn together. She would even go into the water in the dress. At other times, done up in an elegant black holoku (that Mary still owns) wearing strands of lei reaching down to her knees, she would duck into her limousine, driven by her private driver, to an upscale function in town...For Judy, the youngest of the sisters, Lanikuhonua was a happy and spiritual place. She suffered from allergies at her Nu‘uanu Valley home and the dry climate of ‘Ewa suited her. From the very beginning of her time there, Judy felt the sacredness of the land. She suspects that the spot was a place her grandmother reconnected with the Hawaiian part of herself. For the most part, she threw off the lavish lifestyle she had enjoyed when she was younger and found peace and simplicity. Judy, too, remembers the simple mu‘umu‘u and her grandmother sitting at a picnic table just gazing at the ocean. She even drank her coffee made with brackish water, because fresh water had to be brought in large bottles. “I think the land grounded her,” says Judy, who sees the honor of her grandmother living between two worlds—yet in the end, tried to hone in on her Hawaiian nature."

The nature of being human is a balancing act that is not easily maintained. It is instead a daily and routine act that changes over time. Growing, changing, adapting. Listening, gathering, acting. I juggle the changes and ability to adapt with various degrees of agility. Age changes the speed at which I digest change. Softening the ground of my nature means distracting myself from being obsessed with perfection -- static, fixed perspective. Play a hand of cards, and laugh at how the game plays through. Notice how the wind makes the solid disappear. Today the wind brings rain. Tomorrow the weather man says 'expect snow.' If I were still a girl in Kuli'ou'ou I would not know how to expect snow. But. Now I am an old woman who lives with a man who was a boy who knew. He says "Today I'll wrap heat tape around the pipes." Contradiction. Complementary. Juggling. My taste for listening to voices continues to soothe and inspire. I give thanks for my large ears that can hear external voices, and listen, to the quieter, yet most powerful voice that is within. In hearing the stories from Kamokila Campbell's granddaughters I hear "e ho mai I ka maopopo pono" ... grant us understanding, e ho mai I ka 'ike papalua ... grant us insight still honing in on my Hawaiian nature.

Making space for voice

This spring in the woods I am wearing electric blue boots (waterproof, winter boots) with fuzzy orange lining and trim of that same vibrant color. My feet are short and wide and my ankles need extra support so shoes are a challenge. When I find a style and brand that works I go for it! The first winter in the woods I found a pair in a size and width that suit me; I've worn them 24/7 for three years. The backs of the boots are frayed from the many ins and outs as I put the boots on, take the boots off. We don't wear shoes or boots inside and to get from one room to another in our world one must go out into the woods.

Those electric blue boots are getting their initiation during the first days of June. Strange time for initiating a pair of winter boots, but they work just fine for me and I say, "thank you." Back inside with my feet bare and my toes freed up I'm happy to be blogging again. The break has done me good and the little gray cells and my navigational tools for crossing borders of the imagination are ripe like the salmon berries. I gobble the ideas like hungry Robin Woman and pin the energy of salmon berry magic to the page to remember them, and pass them along here.

When I was little one of the toys I relished as a girl was the phonograph. We didn't own one but my cousins did. My cousins would visit and sometimes spend the night while their mother worked. She worked at a record store, Thayer's Music in Honolulu. Along with a phonograph my cousins brought records, story records. Records, music and story easily transported me into worlds not yet known. I imagined and though it would be years before I found my own, I would learn that I had a voice. Those early records, and the time spent listening, really listening was priming me.

Writer Terry Tempest Williams said this about receiving her first voice lesson. In a talk given in Bellingham, Washington, Williams spoke about her parents and their influence on her (and her brother's) life. Williams was addressing the audience and speaking about her book When Women Were Birds. The link below takes you to the presentation. She says about her mother's influence as voice teacher "Mother had her own intensity but it was contained." Williams then describes how she and her brother sat in front of the phonograph and listened to the orchestra and narration of Peter and the Wolf. "We were introduced to the distinctive voice of each character...Within those 30 minutes I receized my first tutorial on voice. All of us has one, and each voice is distinct."

In a serendipitous connection with Terry Tempest Williams (whose books I admit to not yet reading) I inhaled the common influence of music ... making space for voice. Knowing how music can feed us the oxygen of inspiration. The mana necessary to grow where we are planted at the time to make use of space and transcend it, and time as well. Reopening my blog feels like freedom to me. Freedom opens up space in my lungs and fuels my heart to feed me 'ea ... sovereignty. The voices of fiction that tinker with my imagination love the feel of my feel in fuzzy orange lined electric boots. In those boots, my feet are ageless and agile. "Reality is what it is, but perception is King," my astrologer Satori wrote that the other day and I love repeating it. "However you frame reality creates your experience and the mind and senses are key."

And the electric blue and orange boots ... What you think?

Terry Tempest Williams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suPndViGWko

#4 The Safety Pin Cafe: Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation.-Wikipedia

"Did you know humans are the only animals who deny their own metamorphosis?" I was ill-prepared for the question though Raven had not left my side since the old Gypsy woman finished with her reading, and that comforted me. Was it just a reading? "It was just that," The Lady answered and motioned to Raven as she pat the empty seat next to her. I felt his gloved hand on my right elbow but remained where I was. "I want to think about what you asked, Raven." It was the first time I'd addressed him directly and meaning no disrespect for The Lady, this was another of those inordinate questions; not common I believed. I thought of my hens who were molting, dropping feathers rather than eggs. They were not so much changing as the caterpillar became winged, but my hens knew their place and their timing.

The faceless woman now wears a wooden heart dangling from a long silver chain. In place of a self? "Was that enough (protection) for her," I asked out loud surprising myself. "It may not be enough protection,but it's what she has." Raven neither released his gentle touch nor altered the pressure. "Can she stay here you suppose, here at The Safety Pin Cafe?" I noticed a small hallway behind an eyelet curtain the color of maple leaves at their final crescendo of Fall. Mottled oranges, gold and crimson, the eyelets let in a view of stairs leading somewhere. "So many rooms. Or just one?" His eyes were impossible to read, and I am good at reading eyes. Raven evaded my question and my eyes. How odd this day has turned. "More warm milk?" This time his gloved hand raised at my elbow. I thanked Raven but declined; my stomach not yet settled from the episode just finished. 

The kitties and ducks had become fast friends and lay huddled in a mass beneath the table. The Lady had a fresh plate of warm cinnamon toast. Fur and feathers mounded into a delectable moving rug. Irresistible, I ran my feet over them. Quack, quack, meow. The ground of me softened. Cut into wings, and glistening with chunky crystals of sugar the toast surrounded a large cup of steaming tea -- mint. "Peppermint will refresh you," this time The Lady spoke. Her voice was an odd combination of echoes. Each word reverberated. "It's ...It's...It's... an...an...an... annoyance...annoyance...annoyance," she laughed and pointed at her throat to finish. I felt her say, "The voice can be such a bother. I turn it off mostly, hoping the old spell has run its course. But no. Not yet."


Is there more? Oh yes, here it is. 

The Safety Pin Cafe is Copyright Protected(c), 2012
Yvonne Mokihana Calizar