The Brothers Cazimero are some of the sounds of my childhood. I was born and raised in Honolulu, and despite the nagging sense that I didn't really belong there (my parents settled there at the end of my dad's military service, so we had no relatives, and everything in Hawaii is about family), I consider myself to be a true local girl.
Last year, Roland Cazimero died at the age of 66. NPR ran a lovely story about the brothers and their music, as well as their commitment to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Local Hawaiian culture is complicated; nowhere in the U.S., save perhaps in Nashville, will you find a more vibrant musical tradition. I regularly attended live concerts as a kid. In high school, our jazz band was actually hired to perform at various venues. We even performed at one of our snazzier local restaurants, and were given access to the open bar afterwards (oops). We were good, and standards were high.
But the story of Hawaii is a sad story, and the tension between modernity and the story of the lost culture of the Hawaiian people is evident in its music and dance traditions. Despite a possible view that the music of the Cazimeros is somehow tourist-oriented, or perhaps a whitewashing of “real” Hawaiian culture, it's not that straight-forward. I'll be touching on these themes of race, inclusion, identity, and art throughout my blog and probably for the rest of my life in my writing, but for now, I'll just open the conversation by noting that the beautiful video above really isn't my favorite way to present the local music scene to people who don't know Hawaii. It does sound (and look) a bit like it's been massaged to be palatable to mainstream (tourist) ears and eyes.
The truth is, the Hawaiian story (and by this I mean the story of people who call Hawaii home, people like me who really don't have any other place that we can say we are “from”) isn't about beautiful landscapes, but the poignancy of the Cazimeros' “sound” tugs at the heart of any Hawaii resident far from home.
A great place to appreciate the depth and beauty of musical Hawaii is the Hawaii Sessions YouTube channel. Here's a beautiful piece from Robert:
(My regrets that it was challenging to find an appropriate photo of Roland and Robert, as they don't appear to have a website; I'm displaying a photo from the fan website, HawaiianMusicHistory.com, in the spirit of fair use.)
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