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Any biennial hula show produced by kumu hula Uluwehi Guerrero is always a spectacular event. This year, the acclaimed Na Hoku Award-winning Maui kumu will mount another major production at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s Castle Theater on Saturday featuring more than 100 dancers from Halau Hula Kauluokala and from Tokyo and Hokkaido, along with the Hawaiian music group Pu’ukapu, led by slack key virtuoso Sonny Lim, and a string ensemble.
Entitled “Ka Ho’oilina” – The Legacy, the latest production’s theme reflects Uluwehi’s reverence and heartfelt appreciation for his lineage of cultural teachers.
“This performance is really special for me,” he emphasizes. “All of my life, I have had the kupuna, the elders, to look up to whenever I have needed guidance. Over the past years, we’ve been slowly losing them, so I kind of move up a notch in the chain, and that changes my responsibility and where I need to step up to.
“We have a wise saying, ‘Nana I Ke Kumu, Look to the Source,’ and I’ve been very blessed with my parents and grandparents and all the kupuna who have shared their lives with me. I didn’t have to study at a university, every day was life experiences shared through them, and now they’re gone. I realized I’ve become the Nana I Ke Kumu for other people that are after me, they look to me as the source. So am I going to be as good as they were? What is the legacy that I leave behind? What is it that I leave behind for them?
Uluwehi began his hula studies with kumu Pekelo Day, during a time in the 1970s when few hula classes were offered on Maui. After meeting a fellow student, Keali’i Reichel, the two went on to form their own school, the award-winning Halau Hula O Ka Makani Wili Makaha O Kaua’ula.
During those early years, he honed his musical skills in halau performance, focusing on his artistry as a beautiful falsetto singer and talented arranger. His debut CD, “Ka Manawa Pono,” received three Hoku nominations, and in 2001, he was honored as Male Vocalist of the Year for his gorgeous recording “In My Heart.” In 2009, he released “Uluwehi Sings Na Mele Hula Aloha,” a majestic treasury of Hawaiian music that earned him Hawaiian Album of the Year.
Looking forward to releasing a new album next year, he reports, “I have all the material together and the concept, it’s just a matter of getting in the studio. I love to sing, but my life’s work has always been the hula and the music has been the accompaniment. When I came out with my second album, they started coining me ‘Hawaii’s Balladeer,’ because there was always a mellow, lush sound. I love love songs and that feeling.”
For the MACC concert on Saturday, he will be backed by the Hawaiian group Pu’ukapu featuring Sonny Lim, Wailau Ryder and Kevin Kealoha, joined by his longtime guitarist Robert Krueger.
“That’s who I travel to Japan with; they’re like my Hawaiian band in Japan,” he explains. “Gilbert Emata will play piano, and Pono (Fried) will do all the string arrangements for an ensemble of seven string players. I have a great fondness for classical music. Pono and I go to the Met in New York and catch opera, and that’s where I get inspiration for staging. And I enjoy listening to Jack de Mello’s beautiful orchestra arrangements of Hawaiian music. I want to bring that back.”
In keeping with the show’s legacy theme, Uluwehi will be joined at the grand event by his teacher Pekelo Day and one of his own students, Pomaika’i Krueger, who just graduated as a kumu.
“We just gave him an ‘uniki graduation rite to become a kumu hula,” Uluwehi explains. “He was my first student to go through the rites. Some of the songs, chants and dances will reflect the three generations of us in the show. There will be lots of singing, lots of hula and lots of pageantry. I want people to come away not just saying that Uluwehi had nice music and costumes and leis, not just the visual, but I want them to walk away with the feeling of the evening. I want to make sure that we dance with the passion that brings us to hula classes every week, and we can share that passion with everyone.”
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In major music news, it’s been around eight years since multi-Na Hoku award-winner Keali’i Reichel released a studio album. The wait is finally over. The acclaimed kumu hula/musician will release “Kawaiokalena” in late October. As one would expect, early word is that it sounds amazing.
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One of the most distinctive voices in American music, Mavis Staples will make her Maui debut in the Castle Theater on Sept. 25. As a member of the seminal gospel/soul group The Staple Singers, she sang on hits like “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself” and “Let’s Do It Again,” and she later pursued a successful solo career.
Prince once hailed her as “the epitome of soul,” and an NPR review praised: “To hear Mavis Staples sing is to experience divine inspiration.”
Staples began singing with her family as a child at local Chicago churches in the 1950s. Led by their father, Pops Staples, the Staple Singers would perform at places in the segregated South that few African-American artists dared go.
In an interview with U.K.’s The Big Issue, she talked about the impact of opening rallies for The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Pops told us that he liked this man’s message and that, ‘If he can preach it, we can sing it.’ From then, we began writing freedom songs. We started marching with Dr. King; we’d sing ‘Why (Am I Treated so Bad)’ before he spoke at meetings.”
In the early 1960s, the Staple Singers adopted a more folk-oriented sound, recording contemporary, message-oriented songs by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.
“We got known for singing protest songs,” she told Clash Music. “There was a struggle going on. People just had to accept we were fighting for our rights. We had one song that the white disc jockeys wouldn’t play on the radio, ‘When Will We Be Paid for the Work We’ve Done.’ They wouldn’t allow that to be played.”
When they later signed to the legendary soul label Stax Records, they attained major success with worldwide hits like “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There.”
“Stax Records didn’t even have to promote ‘I’ll Take You There,'” Staples told Gibson.com. “They just put it out, and people went crazy over it. Suddenly, the R&B stations were playing it, and all the kids were dancing to it.”
During the ’70s, highlights for the group included the number one hit “Let’s Do It Again” and collaborating with The Band, performing “The Weight” at “The Last Waltz” concert. In 1987, Prince signed Staples to his Paisley Park label and produced, played on and wrote much of the material for two memorable solo discs, “Time Waits for No One” and “The Voice.”
More recently, she collaborated with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. He produced her Grammy-winning album, “You Are Not Alone,” and the Grammy-nominated follow-up, “One True Vine,” in 2013, which PopMatters hailed as, “a rich, beautifully crafted and moving experience,” and the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: “Staples is reaffirming her place as one of the great voices of the last half-century.”
She’s still wowing audiences in concert, a Seattle Times review in June noted: “Just a few weeks shy of her 75th birthday, Staples has enjoyed a remarkable, well-deserved renaissance as a solo recording artist and concert headliner. She’s never less than exultant on stage.”
Talking with The Wall Street Journal about performing live, Staples declared, “I’m singing these songs to inspire you, to keep you going, to lift you up and give you a reason to get up in the morning. These aren’t just songs I’m singing to be moving my lips.”
* Mavis Staples will perform at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 25 in the MACC’s Castle Theater. Tickets are $35, $45, and $65. For tickets, visit the box office, call 242-7469 or visit www.mauiarts.org.
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Hawaii’s popular reggae band The Green will return to the Maui Tropical Plantation tonight and Friday to play The Mill House. Recently touring the Mainland with Rebelution and Iration, earlier in the year The Green won Group of the Year, Reggae Album of the Year and Favorite Entertainer at the 2014 Hoku Awards. Limited $30-tickets are available at the door from 7 p.m. both nights. For more information, visit www.mauitropicalplantation.com/shows.