At 7 I joined the Honolulu Boy Choir. My two most vivid memories of HBC are getting to meet Dolly Parton in her trailer in Waimea Valley, and being suspended for not smiling enough during a two hour concert in Laie. At 9 I joined Roy Sakuma’s ‘ukulele school. Never on a Sunday was my first solo, ever. I forgot my pick, so I folded up a piece of paper into a tight square and used that instead. 2 years later, while watching a local TV show called Portraits of Paradise, I heard kī hō’alu (Hawaiian slack key guitar) for the first time. “Wow,” I thought, “that’s beautiful.” Shortly thereafter my parents and I attended the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival at McCoy Pavilion in Ala Moana park. Nānākuli slack key master Raymond Kāne and his young protégé Bobby Moderow Jr were performing. I was mesmerized. After they finished, my mom found her way backstage, grabbed Bobby by the ear and said, “you gonna teach my boy.” He was scared so he agreed.
I learned from Bobby for two years. We became brothers. I would spend weekends with him, playing at his Roy’s Restaurant gig in Hawaii Kai, eating at Zippy’s after, and sleeping at the foot of his bed on weekends. We were featured together on SuperKids, a local TV show about young talent in Hawai’i.
By chance, slack key legend Sonny Chillingworth was watching. When I met him, he looked down at me and said, “young man, I’ve been looking for you.” I was speechless. He offered to teach me, and Bobby graciously passed me onto him. I was 13. We were awarded a grant from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. I became Uncle Sonny’s last protégé. He passed away less than 2 years later.
I turned to old- and new- slack key recordings. I learned every audible detail: chimes, bass runs, tunings, tricks, old classics, various family styles, new hybrid styles, even mistakes made on live recordings. I wanted to create my own style, but I knew I had to build a foundation from what had been created before me. When you’re part of a legacy, it’s not about you; it’s about doing your part to grow that legacy without losing anything along the way.
I jammed with friends: Ty Cummings (grandson of legendary Andy Cummings, composer of Waikīkī); BB “Blind Boy” Shawn, Jake Shimabukuro (‘ukulele superstar), Steve and Bobby Hall, the Pahinui Brothers, Ledward Ka’apana, Dwight Kanae, Fiddler Joe (Gabby’s favorite haole), Gordon Freitas, Willie K. At age 14, record deals started coming (I turned them down). By 15 I was playing 4 nights a week around O’ahu. At 19 I released my first record. Doc McGhee, manager of Kiss, Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe, offered me a management contract. I asked him, “will I be able to play the Hawaiian music passed down to me by my teachers?” He laughed and said, “sure, if you have any free time, but not professionally! There’s no money in world music son! We gonna make you a pop star!” I thanked him for believing in me, and politely declined. Major label deals came. Publishing deals too. I said no to it all.
What drove this madness?
I value the freedom to listen to my na’au. My gut. My inner voice. The mobility to respond from empathy, passion and pure inspiration, unbounded by worldly markers of success. This principle has guided my art, career and life from day one. Rather than list accolades and awards- which should be reserved for scientists, soldiers and civil servants- allow me to share a few highlights from my unorthodox journey of using my art to inspire the change I want to witness in our world. For it is said: giving never leaves one with less, and the principle of Makana- a gift given freely- has brought me a richer life than I could have ever dreamed.
My first nationwide tour was opening for Jason Mraz on his Curbside Prophets tour. He was doing yoga in a private session with our mutual friend Denise Kaufmann. She happened to be playing one of my albums in the background. The lyrics “from behind, or on the stairs, or on the table” wafted through the air and caught Jason’s attention. Who would sing such crazy things in such a sweet, unassuming fashion? he wondered. I got a call to go on the road for 6 weeks.
Zac Heileson, who has for years produced videos for my art, and I were talking about Hawaiian music one day. He couldn’t understand why Hawaiian music always sounds happy. After our chat I started to wonder the same thing, and I ended up writing a deeply evocative instrumental called Deep in an Ancient Hawaiian Forest. I kind of forgot about the song until one day I got a call from Dondi Bastone, the music supervisor for a film called The Descendants. The film’s director Alexander Payne had mandated that the entire soundtrack be Hawaiian slack key; only problem was that the final scene was very sad. Dondi had gone through virtually every existing recording of slack key without coming across anything that would work, until he heard Deep in an Ancient Hawaiian Forest. It worked perfectly. The soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy, along with two other albums I contributed to: Hawaiian Slack Key Kings Volumes I & II.
In 2009 I played at The White House. The Obamas were gracious enough, and I guess appreciated my offering so The First Lady invited me to perform at another event two years later: a private World Leaders Dinner in Waikīkī with 21 presidents and prime ministers. It just so happened to coincide with the release of my song We Are The Many, which I wrote during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The music video came out on 11/11/11, and I was to play the dinner the next evening. It started to go viral and within a few hours I’d received hundreds of messages and emails from fans asking me to sing it at the World Leaders Dinner. I was terrified at the thought but couldn’t help wonder at how everything was culminating in such a providential fashion. The morning of the dinner, a friend handed me a Hanes t-shirt with permanent marker scribbled on the front: OCCUPY WITH ALOHA. It was a brilliant double entendre: a nod to the occupy movement, and a demand to the government, who had- in the name of security for those world leaders- put up barbed wire across Waikīkī Beach, spent $750,000 on rubber bullets in case of citizen protests, and even murdered- through an off-duty, intoxicated special agent in town to protect Obama- a friend of my hanai family.
During the 2.5 hour performance, I revealed the t-shirt and sang my song. Because the Obamas were entirely focused on the Chinese premier, the rest of the officials were forced to listen to lyrics like “you enforce your monopolies with guns/ while sacrificing our daughters and sons/ but certain things belong to everyone/ your thievery has left the people none” over and over. The next morning we sent footage and the story out on the AP wire. It went viral, becoming the number one story on Yahoo for two days straight. I was on CNN, BBC, Fox, ABC, Democracy Now!, Hannity, and dozens of other media outlets. Rolling Stone called We Are The Many the “Occupy Anthem” and most importantly, I was able to get out my anti-TPP message and inspire millions of people around the world. The State Department threatened me and three Hawai’i senators attempted to have me blacklisted. They failed.
In 2013 I was invited to present at TEDx Maui. Contrary to the rules, I pretended to prepare an entire lecture and performance, but in actuality forced myself to walk onstage completely blank, without even a seed of a plan or idea to share. I was so scared right before they called me onstage that I was shaking in the wings. But I wanted to see if I could create something that inspired the audience without any preparation. Even the words to the song were made up right there. You can watch it here.
I’ve used my music and platform to fight biotech firms like Monsanto and Syngenta in Hawai’i; to raise funding for services for those without homes; to protect crucial coastline like Kaiwi Coast, reef health through Reef Check, and to support land trusts across Hawai’i; I’ve worked with Surfrider, Sierra Club, KAHEA Environmental Alliance, fighting to mālama our islands; supported Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I set a piano on fire in the desert and played it in this music video); traveled to Moscow to sing in a nuclear bunker to raise awareness around nuclear proliferation; rode the Shinkansen across Japan to interview hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings) in their 80s; donated my music to television campaigns in support of marriage equality for our LGBTQIA community in Hawai’i; fundraised for schools across pae ‘āina and brought musicians, poets and dancers into schools after arts funding was cut; advocated for the protection of Hawaiian monk seals and Mauna Kea; funded voter initiatives like Got Kuleana; served as spokeperson for mental health advocacy campaigns as well as Kaiser Permanente’s Suicide Prevention Program.
Lately I’ve been working with Facebook and Instagram to create music for people like you to sync for free to your own videos uploaded to those platforms. I’ve produced over 150 songs as part of their Creator Studio Sound Collection. My main focus- a dream of mine, on the verge of coming true- is the near-completion of an original musical I began composing nearly 15 years ago!