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If you are fortunate enough to have lived in Hawai`i in the last decade, you might have caught a rare performance by Hawai`i’s “Three Tenors”: Robert Cazimero, Les Ceballos, and Aaron Sala. Modeled on the format made popular in the 1990s by a trio of more instantly recognizable opera stars – Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti – Hawai`i’s version of the “Three Tenors” features gentleman who – while they spend most of their…

September 8th marks the anniversary of the birth of Helen Desha Beamer whose influence on Hawaiian music and hula are still keenly felt nearly a century-and-a-half later. Ho`olohe Hou Radio devoted an entire week of educational segments to this grande dame of Hawaiian culture. Those on air pieces have since been transcribed as blog articles with sound clips to illustrate Beamer’s vocal and composing style and her continuing influence on Hawaiian music and culture. Ho`olohe Hou Radio will celebrate “Sweetheart Grandma”…

Google “Sonny Kamahele” and the first search result is indeed an oddity. In an entry on “The Best Luxury Hotels on Oahu,” the online version of Frommers travel guide is quick to point out that although most cannot afford to stay at the “money is no object” Halekulani Hotel, one must still drop by some evening at sunset and sip a mai tai at the House Without A Key while Sonny Kamahele serenades them. Uncle…

Stuff to write [mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/hwnmusiclives/hoolohe-hou-the-show-hawaiian-music-101/ width=100% height=120 hide_cover=1]

Remembering the Godmother of All Hawaiian Music…

In over nine years or blogging and broadcasting about Hawaiian music, I have never done a feature on steel guitarist Barney Isaacs. Nobody is more incredulous at this realization than I am since Barney has been my favorite steel guitarist for over 40 years – a propensity (or a habit) which was promoted early in my indoctrination in Hawaiian music by my father who is also a steel guitarist and self-professed “biggest fan” of Barney…

Emma Maynon Kaipuala Veary Lewis started her music career somewhat inauspiciously – singing with the E.K. Fernandez circus at the tender age eight. But after winning any number of talent and singing contests, Emma was singing at every major Waikiki nightspot while still in high school. She went on to study opera and perform in the stock companies of such Broadway shows as Carousel, Showboat, Pal Joey, West Side Story, The King and I, andFlower Drum Song….

I hesitate to tell the story of Don Ho yet again since almost any fan of Hawaiian entertainment in the 1960s and 70s knows it backward and forward and could tell it equally well. The reallyshort version (and to set straight the oft-inaccurate Wikipedia)… James Ho and his wife, Emily “Honey” Ho, opened a bar and restaurant in Kane`ohe on the windward side of O`ahu in 1939 and raised their six children in the house…