Grammy Award winner Kalani Pe‘a will join composer and Kumu Hula Māhealani Uchiyama and Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award-winning artists Kamakakēhau Fernandez, Patrick Landeza, Ikaika Blackburn and Azure McCall to perform songs from the album “Pōpoloheno: Songs of Resilience & Joy,” which launched earlier this year. The performance will also feature Uchiyama’s Hālau Ka Ua Tuahineare.
“Basically, we're just going to have a bit of a celebration about the history that I think everybody should know about,” she said. “And I think will enjoy learning about.”
The album released June 13 and is a project that was years in the making. It tells a compilation of stories celebrating Black history in Hawaiʻi. It features original mele iona, or name songs, which honor historical figures and stories. Uchiyama got the idea for the album before the pandemic and sought grants for the project as a way of sharing history with future generations.
“And Hawaiʻi, of course, being Hawaiʻi, you want something to be really known and understood, you put it in a song,” she said. “But that song has got to be good so that people will want to sing it and maybe create hula to it.”
Catch a live performance of music from the album “Pōpoloheno: Songs of Resilience & Joy” at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 16, at the Leeward Community College Theatre. Get tickets.
As part of the performances, Blackburn and Kaulike Pescaia, who are both from Maui, will share a song Uchiyama wrote about Betsey Stockton, who grew up as an enslaved child in the household of the president of Princeton University and taught herself to read, a skill she later shared with children in Hawaiʻi.
“We're going to talk about her and why I named the song,” Uchiyama said. “I gave her the designation of the dandelion flower — Pua Laulele — because a dandelion in African American folklore represents freedom and being able to just sustain and go about where you need to be in your own time.”
There will also be a performance of “Kumuniu Cumbia,” by Pescaia, which tells the story of Peter Hose, known as the Hula Cop, “who moved like a beautiful palm tree as he was directing traffic,” Uchiyama said.
Landeza will share the song, “Ka Momi Hiwahiwa,” honoring the Hawaiʻi-born Barack Obama, who went on to become president of the United States.
Peʻa will also share a song he composed called “Kamakakēhau,” which honors his friend, Fernandez, who will be at the concert.
“He'll be singing that,” she said. “I'll be dancing to it.”
Fernandez was born in Arkansas and adopted by a Native Hawaiian family on Maui, where he grew up speaking ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. He went on to become a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award-winning artist who teaches ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and ʻukulele.
Fernandez will be present at the concert, where he will perform “He Mele Awaiaulu Nō,” which is also featured on the album.
The evening of music also includes a performance of “I am Where I Belong,” by McCall, where she celebrates years spent living in the Bay Area and Hawaiʻi and “considers all of it her home,” Uchiyama said.
“It's a really amazing jazz song,” she said. “It's going to be beautiful.”
Uchiyama will share two of her own songs from the album. One of those songs, "Wahine Hoʻōla," honors Alice Ball, who graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and developed a treatment for Hansen’s Disease, previously called leprosy, to help individuals exiled to Kalaupapa return home to their families.
Previously, much of Uchiyama’s music featured the mbira, a traditional musical instrument of Zimbabwe, or Tahitian music. But she took a special interest in Hawaiʻi as a child when she saw Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wearing a lei and wanted to learn more, she said. Eventually, she swapped ballet classes for hula ones and the rest is history.
Tickets are $40 for general admission, $30 for kupuna, $20 for keiki and $10 for students of the community college. Get tickets.
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Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
