Makana

Makes me smile thinking back on Makana's performance at the Kahilu Tuesday night. How masterful, yes, but how balanced, with a great deal of respect paid to Sonny Chillingsworth, his kumu. Makana sent out maybe four of Sonny's trademark songs, with a little talkstory explaining Sonny's other life as an opera singer and Sonny's nickname as The Waimea Cowboy, before giving us that extraordinary portrait of Sonny himself performing Kaula'ili with precise, clipped strumming and fretwork, whole-body waves, head-snaps, jerks, and the rhythm of the horse in the hammer thumb on the open bass string——and Sonny's heartfelt moralizing——this acknowledgment of Makana's own influences expressed with grace and humor, so Hawaiian... Meantime the rest of the concert filled to bursting——think of all those smile muscles and sprinkle in some tears of sheer joy——with songs like Pu'uanahulu, Hi'ilawe, Ku'ulei 'Awapuhi, Makee Ailana——how did he do it? Sometimes his head thrown back in song as his fingers danced like wave-chasing crabs, back and forth, up and down the shoreline of Evening Star, his guitar. Now his fingers fly over the frets——we know them now as the bones, the iwi——while his long, long notes rise up into the dark flying grid of the Kahilu.