“UA KUI A LAWA”

Josh Tatofi (Josh Tatofi Music)

The legacy of Kapena — the group founded in 1984 by Kaimuki High School students Kelly “Kelly Boy” De Lima and Teimomi “Timo” Tatofi, and Tatofi’s other brother, Tivaini “Tiva” Tatofi — takes another impressive step forward with the release of a third album by Tiva’s son, Josh Tatofi.

Josh Tatofi is already a two-time Na Hoku Hanohano Award winner, and his second album, “Pua Kiele,” was a finalist in the Best Regional Roots Music category at the 60th Grammy Awards in 2018. The 10 songs here display the warmth and range of his voice, and the expansiveness of his musical horizons, in impressive style. They show his skills as a composer and songwriter as well.

One of Tatofi’s consistent strengths as a recording artist has been performing as a R&B-style romantic balladeer. He opens in that style with three Hawaiian-language originals co-written with Keawe Lopez. Two are certainly love songs, the other one could be. Tatofi provides composes’ credits, song lyrics and their basic English translations but no additional information. However, Hawaiian songs that describe the beauty of a place sometimes also describe the writer’s affection for someone who lives there or refer to romantic events that took place there.

Tatofi shows his imagination as an arranger, and his appreciation of classic American oldies, by using the unmistakable melody of “Sleepwalk,” the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper composed by Santo and Johnny Farina, as the opening to his soulful remake of “Sweet Memory,” the Hawaiian standard written by Cyril Pahinui, Larry Lindsey Kimura and Brian Hussey for the Sandwich Isle Band in 1978. Tatofi’s remake is a worthy reworking of a great hapa haole song.

Tatofi goes hapa haole a second time when he applauds the culinary skills of OHA Trustee (and Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winner) Carmen Hulu Lindsey with “Aunty Hulu’s Beef Stew,” a rollicking celebration of Lindsey’s “killa beef stew” and some of its ingredients.

Two songs sung in Tongan, with Tahitian banjo heard prominently behind him, acknowledge his Tongan ancestry and his ties to other Oceanic nations. A plaintive remake of “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” a Grammy-winner for Dionne Warwick in 1979 that he recorded with her blessing, shows that he also has what it takes to score as a mainstream pop/R&B vocalist.

Tatofi returns to ‘olelo Hawai‘i to close the album with “For The Lahui,” a mele ku‘e (song of resistance) co-written with Hinaleimoana Wong that concludes with a call to “Be steadfast in your place. For the freedom of our land remains always in the truth of our people.”

Bottom line? Tatofi’s work here is Hoku Award-worthy in several categories. It would also represent Hawaii quite well next year at the Grammys.

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