Word: hawaiian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Well, his hair is blond. His eyes are blue. He could be standing next to an SUV with a surfboard and a smile, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts. Yes, he looks Californian. Very Californian. He's both. That is the beauty of his success. Of all the stories that will be spun from now until the end of the Sydney Games, his is one of the oldest and best success-story stories: the immigrant who has come to a new land and worked hard and overcome obstacles and found exactly what he hoped to find. The American dream...
...promoting her hit single, Another Dumb Blonde. The girl-empowerment anthem contains such coming-of-age epiphanies as "Lately I've just come to find/That you're not really interested/In my heart or mind." A devout Christian and onetime Tommy Hilfiger model, Hoku--whose name, conveniently, means "star" in Hawaiian--is uncomfortable with the pop star's prescribed role as sex kitten and refuses to flaunt her body to sell more albums. After her concerts, she says, "girls in tears have come up to me and said, 'Thank you so much for making it O.K. for me to not dress...
...expressed the verve and virtuosity of classic-era pop as smartly as Benjamin Keakahiawa Nawahi. The Honolulu native taught himself the acoustic slack-key guitar (resting on the lap, it is played with one hand manipulating the strings and the other moving a steel bar). He then adapted the Hawaiian style to almost every form of music percolating through vaudeville, speakeasies and grange halls. He was as comfortable playing Broadway songs, New Orleans jazz and country laments as he was his native tunes. And with versatility went a distinctive instrumental voice, one that smiles at the extra few notes...
Nearly as astonishing as Nawahi's achievement is his obscurity. He is not to be found among the 3,300 musicians listed in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. A thrilling new 23-tune set, Hawaiian String Virtuoso (on the Yazoo label), gives ample aural proof that King Bennie deserved his royal honorific as much as jazz gents named Duke and Count. One listens to the set, culled by Armstrong and Sherwin Dunner from rare originals, and the '30s guitarist in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown comes to mind--the one who was right up there with Django Reinhardt...
...timing was perfect. The uke, inexpensive and easy to learn, had become the prime accessory for jazz agers. Hits like Ukulele Lady, Hula Lou and My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua made the Hawaiian sound, in its perky pop mutation, the hottest "world music" of its time. Nawahi, a showman as much as an artist, aimed to please. He could run through Kitten on the Keys at warp speed, or play Turkey in the Straw on the steel guitar using his foot as the steel...