Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [32]
Missionaries introduced quilting to the islands in the 1800s. As Hawaiians adapted their kapa-cloth designs to appliqué quilts, they created a distinctive, beautiful quilting tradition. As with all traditional crafts, designs held symbolic meaning and quilts were imbued with the spirit of the crafter.
Hawaii has been home to a number of lauded painters, such as Herb Kane and Madge Tennent, among others. For a proper introduction to contemporary art, visit the Honolulu Academy of Arts (Click here) and the Hawai’i State Art Museum (Click here) in Honolulu, and the Isaacs Art Center (Click here) on the Big Island.
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One of the most highly regarded traditional Hawaiian quilters, Poakalani Serreo (www.nvo.com/poakalani) runs a website that has everything: classes, shops, patterns, history and more.
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LITERATURE
Until the late 1970s, Hawaii literature was dominated by nonlocal Western writers observing Hawaii’s exotic-seeming world from the outside; favorites are James Michener’s well-researched saga Hawaii and Paul Theroux’s caustically humorous Hotel Honolulu.
Since then, local-born writers have created a true Hawaii literature that evokes island life from the inside. Leading this has been Bamboo Ridge Press (www.bambooridge.com), which for over 30 years has published contemporary local fiction and poetry in a biannual journal, Bamboo Ridge, and launched the careers of many Hawaii writers.
In 1975, All I Asking for Is My Body by Milton Murayama vividly captured sugar plantation life for Japanese nisei (second-generation Japanese) around WWII. Murayama’s use of pidgin opened the door to an explosion of vernacular literature, particularly since the 1990s. Lois-Ann Yamanaka has won widespread acclaim for her poetry (Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, 1993) and novels (Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, 1996), in which pidgin embodies her characters like a second skin.
Indeed, redeeming pidgin – long dismissed by academics and disparaged by the upper class – has been a cultural and political cause for some.
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MODERN MELE
Ideally, this guidebook would come bundled with a CD and ukulele. Instead, here’s a list of essential Hawaiian music, past and present:
Genoa Keawe, Party Hulas – ‘Aunty Genoa’ and her signature falsetto epitomized old-school Hawaiian hula music, and this sets the standard.
Raiatea Helm, Hawaiian Blossom – The Village Voice compared young Helm to Diana Krall with a ukulele, and her soaring falsetto is Aunty Genoa reborn.
Gabby Pahinui, Gabby – No self-respecting slack key music collection is complete without this seminal album.
Dennis and David Kamakahi, ’Ohana – Father Dennis and son David are two of Hawaii’s best musicians, here combining their talents on slack key guitar and ukulele, respectively.
Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Facing Future – ‘Braddah Iz’ touched Hawaii’s soul with songs like ‘Hawai’i ’78,’ and this has become Hawaii’s all-time best-selling album.
Jake Shimabukuro, Walking Down Rainhill – Check out Jake’s ukulele cover of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ on YouTube, then buy this.
Keali’i Reichel, Kawaipunahele – Charismatic vocalist and kumu hula (hula teacher), Reichel combines ancient chanting and soulful ballads.
HAPA, In the Name of Love – Cross a New Jersey slack key guitarist and a Hawaiian vocalist, and you get HAPA’s contemporary yet traditional, pop-flavored fusion.
John Cruz, One of these Days – Cruz is a classic singer-songwriter crafting modern, blues-tinged Hawaiian-style songs.
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The most notorious ‘pidgin guerrilla’ has been Lee Tonouchi. A prolific writer and playwright, his hilarious stories (Da Word, 2001) and essays (Living Pidgin, 2002) argue that pidgin is essential to understanding local culture and is a legitimate language. Other great introductions to pidgin are Growing Up Local (1998), an anthology published