Hawaiian music legend Keola Beamer will team up with Henry Kapono for the Artist 2 Artist series March 27 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. Photo courtesy Mustafa Bilal

Continuing his Artist 2 Artist series at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Henry Kapono will team with legendary Hawaiian musician Keola Beamer and Kumu Hula Moanalani Beamer on March 27 for a show which will touch on their decades of history as artistic pioneers in the islands.

“I love working with him,” Keola Beamer says about collaborating with Kapono. “It really brings me back to the days of working with my brother. The harmonies are tight and he’s (Kapono) quite a vocalist. We both have the sensitivity of all those years of working as individual duets, him with C&K and me with my brother. There’s a lot of underlying currents of cohesion that we managed to harness, and so it’s really quite joyful for us.”

With Cecilio & Kapono forming in 1973 and the Beamers in 1972, the two duos both found fame early on in Hawaii.

“We were working so much we never really had hardly any hang time,” he recalls. “We were just like work all the time. Occasionally we’d get a chance to see the other guys in concert or at a club. It was so rare where we would just sit down and spend time together.”

Keola Beamer and his brother Kapono Beamer were part of a wave of influential music happening in the islands. “We were major influences on what they now call the Renaissance of Hawaiian music,” he noted. “Back in that day, although it’s super hard to believe now, Hawaiians didn’t have a good self-image. So the music lifted us out of that sort of paradigm into the fact that it was cool to be Hawaiian. Our music is interesting, our culture is fascinating. We didn’t feel like second-hand citizens.”

Before the growth of Hawaiian immersion programs, artists like Keola Beamer and Henry Kapono were discouraged from speaking Hawaiian.

“My grandparents spoke Hawaiian fluently, but never to us,” he recalls. “They wanted us to learn English and to be able to compete in the white man’s world. We couldn’t even speak pidgin English. My mom would not allow us to speak pidgin English, speak proper English.”

Henry Kapono (left) will welcome Keola Beamer to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on March 27 for the next installment of the Artist 2 Artist series. Photo courtesy Mustafa Bilal

In early March, Beamer conducted his last Aloha Music Camp, in Kona, joined by his wife and fellow Maui musicians Jeff Peterson, Kevin Brown and Kumu Hula Uluwehi Guerrero. The camp debuted in 2001, guided by his mother Auntie Nona Beamer’s vision of creating a gathering place for people to experience Hawaii’s culture and music.

“We had 25 years of operating the Aloha Music Camp on three different islands and great, sweet people,” he says “I remember Ram Dass talking about the whole idea of contentment and I have contentment in my heart, and I’m interested in exploring that too, see where that goes. I have a happy, wonderful life surrounded by loved ones and beautiful places. As you get older, the question marks got bigger. I would like to think about those things and just not be on duty. Music has been great, but responsibilities are less significant with that kind of work. So time for some younger thinking in a new direction.”

Lahaina area residents living in the Wahikuli Hawaiian Homes community, the Beamers are still recovering from the impact of the fire. “It’s different, we’re still trying to figure it out, day by day,” he says. “I’m still dealing with my own feelings of loss. During that period after the fire we did a benefit with the help of some wonderful friends and raised almost $100,000. We decided because Moana and I were on the ground two houses away from where the fire stopped, we knew who was impacted. It was our neighbors, people that we loved and associated with for years. So we picked the people that we felt were the most severely impacted, people that we saw just struggling. We picked 6 families and provided them with a monthly stipend for a period of a year. What it did was it put food on the table so they could navigate the rest of it. One of our grantee families was one of the first families to rebuild in Wahikuli.”

His recent projects include playing with Honolulu Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Ignace Jang and world-renowned Korean violinist, Chee-Yun, on a moving tribute to Korean immigrants to Hawaii. The South Korean documentary “Songs of Love from Hawaii,” included their experience at Molokai’s Kalaupapa.

“It’s a tribute to Korean ancestors who moved into a new world and gave everything up and you’re hoping for the best and some doctor sees a little scar on your cheek and you’re diagnosed with leprosy and there’s no appeal,” he says. “You’re put on the boat and you’re completely turned upside down. Hawaiians too. It’s a tribute to the resilience of human beings and their ability to cope. The director, this lovely, beautiful spirit and intentioned Korean woman, created this work of love. That’s why I did it. I felt the aloha.”

For the Artist 2 Artist show, he says, “we’ll share a bunch of stuff. The shows give the audience a little peek at how artists work together and the fascinating history of some of the songs. It gives more context for people and I think that’s valuable.”

Kapono and the Beamers with Nick La’a perform on March 27 at 7 p.m. at the MACC’s McCoy Studio Theater. Tickets are $45, $55, and $75 plus applicable fees.