Nuclear Wakeup Call — MAKANA MUSIC

January 13, 2019 / Cynthia Lazaroff / Nuclear Wakeup Call Earth

Makana is a singer, composer and master of the native Hawaiian “Slack-Key” guitar tradition. The New York Times called him “dazzling.” His guitar playing has been featured on three Grammy-nominated albums, including the soundtrack of the Academy-Award winning film “The Descendants.”

Makana toured Russia for two weeks as a goodwill ambassador to share the Aloha spirit of Hawaii and the gift and healing power of his music. He gave concerts, taught Slack-Key guitar in music academies, played for school kids, jammed in popular clubs and more.

After a week in Russia, Makana said,

“I feel like I started unwrapping a gift. I’ve taken off some of the paper. And I haven’t even opened the box, and it is already changing me. It’s like I met another part of myself that I didn’t know... I’m writing new songs. I’m coming back here—again and again.”

Makana was the first musician ever invited to perform at the All-Russia Forum for governors, mayors and municipal leaders across Russia. He was featured during the opening plenary session and premiered “Aloha Russia,” a song he composed while in Russia that combines elements of both the Hawaiian and Russian melodic traditions and cadences, inspired by Russian classical & folk composers as well as popular bards. Irina Karelina, Director General of the St. Petersburg Leontief Center who convenes the Forum said, “It was great to receive this fantastic gift of Makana’s music.”

“I wanted to experience Russia directly. Not just through a film or a book, or through stories from others. That is what brought me here. I needed to know…What is it like here? Why have some of the greatest minds come from here? Why has some of the greatest music, the greatest melodies, the greatest philosophy and art come from here? What is it that shaped it, what were the pressures that turned out those diamonds? That’s what I’m curious about.”

Makana’s tour of Russia concluded with a concert at the Trialogue Club founded 25 years ago by Dr. Vladimir Orlov, Head of the Center for Global Trends at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Makana performed after an hour of substantive discussion on nuclear dangers among representatives from the Russian military, political, and arms control communities, international diplomats and presentations on the Hawaii false missile scare by Bruce Allyn and Cynthia Lazaroff.

Afterwards Vladimir Orlov said, “This is the first time we’ve ever had a serious dialogue on nuclear security together with music playing in the halls of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry.”

“I wanted to experience and create art and relationships that I can share with the public on both sides of the ocean that will inspire people to remember to humanize one another, to dignify one another, to remember mostly just to be curious about each another--because the conversations that get broadcast are political conversations, of threat, of geopolitics. But those conversations have virtually nothing to do with the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people in each of the nations. We need to create direct relationships. It’s the only way that we will ever maintain peace.”