‘Lahaina Ondo’ contains five songs honoring the Lahaina community. CDs and digital copies are available now online. Courtesy photo

The joys and struggles of the bygone days of the Westside’s Japanese plantation workers are celebrated with a new five-song EP, “Lahaina Ondo,” which features a new Bon dance song honoring the Lahaina community, a compilation of ‘Holehole Bushi’ folk song verses and Japanese language versions of “Ma’ema’e Līhau” and “Hawai’i Aloha.”

Produced by Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winning Maui attorney Lance D. Collins, the project was inspired by a discussion with Sumiko Tatsuguchi of Oahu’s Shinshu Kyokai Mission, about “in Bon dance music selections — there’s no Hawaii-made songs anymore,” Collins explains. “I wanted to do one about summer in Maui. For a couple of years, we were sort of working on it and she was working on the translation. Then the fire happened, and we said this might be a good thing to give to the community next year.”

The music of “Lahaina Ondo” was composed and performed by Italian musician Paolo Cotrone, the first non-Japanese Holder of the Shihan Natori Title in Japanese theater music, and Hōkū Award winning UH Maui College music instructor Joel Katz. It was sung by retired attorney Colette Gomoto and Brian Nagami, former president of the Japanese society of Maui and taiko instructor with Maui Taiko.

The song and dance were performed publicly for the first time at a special Aug. 10, 2024, Lahaina Bon dance at the Lahaina Cannery Mall. An accompanying music video was filmed in Honolulu at the Shinshu Kyokai Mission by director Keli’i Grace.

Having successfully produced one Japanese song, the artists were eager to create more material. “We were talking about maybe there should be a little bit more because we all know what Bon dances are about, but it’s one of these things where memory fades. Bon dancing started in the plantations. People identify it as a Japanese thing, but it’s really more a cross ethnic, working-class thing. So from those discussions, we thought why don’t we do the ‘Holehole Bushi,’ which is these songs that plantation workers wrote and sang 100 years ago.”

Describing the hardships immigrant workers experienced on the sugar plantations, the song is performed by Gomoto. “In Hawaii, she’s known as a semi-professional Japanese singer,” he notes. “We basically took a number of the ‘Holehoel Bushi’ and created a story, and ‘Holehole Uta’ is about basically how hard plantation work life was,” he continues.

Gomoto and Oahu musician Hikariyama Torao teamed for a new version of “Hawai’i Aloha,” and Torao sang “Ma’ema’e Līhau,” which was composed in the 19th century by Emma Aʻalailoa Malo Kapena, the daughter of renowned Hawaiian scholar David Malo.

“After the American overthrow and sugar interests basically came to dominate everything about Hawaii and use race as a way to separate workers,” says Collins. “There really was never this very deep Japanese-Hawaiian connection. We thought what would be more appropriate than to basically restage Japanese-Hawaiian encounter, so we picked ‘Ma’ema’e Līhau,’ which is a 19th century Hawaiian song from West Maui and ‘Hawai’i Aloha.'”

With the project complete, Collins hopes that, “access to the song ‘Lahaina Ondo’ is made easier so that organizations and churches that have Bon dances will consider using it. The other thing is that the memory of how hard life was on the plantation, that as people get older, younger people aren’t necessarily interested in what their great grandparents were saying as they were treated as slaves. So it would be nice to remember these things and remember that’s how it was, and that was the basis for what flowed next and possibly think of other ways of living. And then hopefully with the Japanese stuff that might spur further interest in Hawaiian music by Japanese language speakers.”

“Lahaina Ondo” CDs are available at luckycat-exchange.myshopify.com/products/lahaina-ondo-ep.

Digital versions are available at wpalb03826422.hearnow.com/lahaina-ondo-ep.