Accompanying himself on his acoustic guitar Henry played the aforementioned “Home in the Islands”, which he had composed. Kapono also performed some of his solo hits. (Santa Barbara-born Cecilio David Rodriguez is actually of Mexican ancestry and has served prison time for child molestation.) The duet recorded at least three albums for Columbia Records and Kapono serenaded the Broad audience with some of their hits, such as the mellifluous “Sailin’”, which Henry preceded with some spoken recollections of his father, who had inspired the melodious song. Henry had actually attained success in the 1970s as half of Cecilio & Kapono, which infused Hawaiian music with contemporary genres such as rock and soul. Despite Kapono’s being, according to press notes, pure Hawaiian, his garb and solo set were more in the pop than the Polynesian mode. Holy Delilah there, Samson! The last time I’d seen him was back in the 1990s, when I still lived in Makaha, and my daughter, the Samoan songbird Marina Davis, and her then girl group trio Ma-V-Elle played at Honolulu’s iconic Aloha Tower with Kapono, whose thick hair then was chest-length.Īs he began playing onstage at the Broad Henry actually commented on the length of hair, although this of course had no bearing on how well he performed.
Henry looked fit but I was shocked that his trademark wavy hair had been shorn. This set the stage for the concert per se inside of the 500-plus seat auditorium, which was nearly sold out as Kapono opened the show. The barefoot performers in long white dresses, feathers and kukui nuts regaled the throng with songs about shells from the island of Niihau (a privately-owned isle near Kauai inhabited mostly by Natives and where Hawaiian is the main language) and more. “Mele” (traditional chanting) and hula was performed by two female dancers accompanied by a male pounding an “ipo” (gourd) on the steps above the Broad Stage’s lobby. The concert, which took place on the final night of their three week tour, got off to a great, authentic and early “chicken skin” start. For a couple of hours we were able to imagine ourselves, as Kapono eloquently expresses it in one of his most famous songs, as being back “Home In the Islands” and experience that ineffable, loving, welcoming “Aloha Spirit” Hawaii is so well known for. The concert by the legendary musicians Keola Beamer and Henry Kapono provided isle “expatriate” Californians longing to return to Polynesia with an opportunity to dust off our Aloha shirts and bask in a cascade of “ono” (delicious) Hawaiian music at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center Eli and Edythe Broad Stage. One way transplanted indigenous and local people, former tourists and residents have for replenishing their roots and love of those far away islands is by attending Pacific-oriented cultural events when they are available. I still regularly dream of Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii and Micronesia and am constantly patting myself on the back for having had the foresight at the tender age of 21 to move to Oceania. Those who have been lucky enough to visit the Pacific Islands and to even be blessed by the opportunity to live there (as this “Native” New Yorker was for 23 years) continue to frequently feel the lure of the isles.
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