“East West Players Presents: Daniel Ho & Friends Live in Concert”
Daniel Ho & Friends
Daniel Ho Creations
Daniel Ho holds a unique place in Hawaii’s music history with six Grammy Awards for his work as a record producer and recording artist, received during the seven years that Hawaiian music had its own category. Ho also received two Na Hoku Hanohano Awards as a recording artist for his work with slack key master George Kahumoku Jr.
His current album — “East West Players Presents: Daniel Ho & Friends Live in Concert” — is a 2022 Grammy finalist in the best global music album category.
Ho recorded it as the opener of the East West Players’ 55th season in November 2020 in the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles. His friends are Randy Drake (percussion), kumu hula Keali‘i Ceballos (vocals/hula), Kanani Toji (vocals/hula), and his wife, Lydia Miyashiro-Ho (“stand in bass”).
The set list is a retrospective of Ho’s work as a songwriter and recording artist, from his early low-profile days as a member of a mainland smooth jazz group to his current interest in world music and his recent collaborations with Mongolian, Kazakh and Indigenous Taiwanese musicians.
The project is also Ho’s first full-length live album and includes his introductions to the selections. Hawaii residents already know about the importance of Spam in island culture (“The Spam Song”), but his explanation of the complex, multicultural rhythms at play in a song titled “Na Pana ‘Elua (The Two Heartbeats)” will likely be new information for almost all listeners. That information is a good reason to hit replay at least a couple of times and listen attentively to what Ho and his friends are doing there with the various percussive rhythms.
Other selections will spark memories — “Off to Work” and “Pineapple Mango,” to name two.
Whether “Live in Concert” wins him another Grammy or not, Ho’s album is another significant milestone in his remarkable career.
Visit danielho.com.
“Kauai.. An Everlasting Beauty”
Various artists
Music of Kauai
Art Umezu was an important part of the team that developed the boy band first known as Bad Boys Club, then BBC, then The New Generation, and finally TNG, in the late-1980s and early 1990s. The group won a Na Hoku Hanohano Award in 1990 and was then signed by Reprise, a national record label that released a full-length TNG album. Thirty years later, TNG is still the biggest boy band to ever come out of Hawaii.
TNG is only one entry in Umezu’s repertoire. Born and raised in Japan, Umezu has made Kauai his home since 1975. He founded Music of Kauai as a record label and production company in 1981. For the last 40 years, he has provided recording opportunities for talents across the spectrum, from professionals to first-timers — and often written songs for them.
This limited-edition CD is a compilation of 11 of Umezu’s hapa-haole originals recorded between 1994 and 2013 by an assortment of individual artists — Sherieme “Mele” Glovasa, Robbie Kaholokula, Daphne Sanchez, Kahanu Smith, Kamika Smith and Doric “Kaleo” Yaris. Kumu hula Troy Lazaro performs the chant that opens the first song.
Umezu writes in the liner notes that the project is dedicated to Walter and Mokihana Smith, the owners of Smith Boat Tours, which has provided employment for musicians and hula dancers since 1946.
The most notable “ready for prime time” performances here are Sanchez singing “Mokihana,” Kaholokula on “My Lovely Hula Girl,” and Yaris in all four songs he took part in.
“My Sweet Maile Girl” also deserves local radio play. Arranged by Kaholokula and sung by Kamika Smith, the tune brings to mind the classic style of the Invitations, the popular local singing group of the 1950s and ’60s. Hawaii’s airwaves can certainly use more of that!
There’s more, of course, and proof that Umezu is “the man” when it comes to finding talent and recording it on the Garden Island.
Visit musicofkauai.com.
