My stepping stones of my research began from constant reminders when interviewing people in across Honolulu, Hawaii. The first day of exploring/interviewing consisted of people listing the same people in a seeming similar pattern when I asked the question “Who are local or favored artist in Honolulu?” People absolutely answered with good an precisely what I needed giving me a good bit of mentioned locals along with some like Mike Love, Ron Artis and Iz. An some alternative. The bands that occurred the most were through the roots & Rebelution. They are known in Hawaii and they aren’t even Hawaii Natives, but are respected like so, why is that is what I wondered? It was all the buzz during that day they were preforming and it was exciting. When I interviewed around briefly with the people of Honolulu they commented mostly with suggestive places where artist would preform. This is where I found the venue ‘The Republik’ and the people who performed at it.
Now ‘The Republik’ is a general admission bar that allows 18+ up age venue with a bar, which meant no drinking, but then again I wouldn’t wanna really want to have drunk anything alcoholic anyway. It’s stage was nice, wide and big enough for the crowd to see an the performer to resonant sound along the space. This venue truly had sound resonating from it! I mean you could hear the music from five blocks away. The bouncers were as tall giant troll’s off of some magical/fantasy genre like Lord of the Rings or something similar in that manner. I ended up in the middle of this big venue with young adults and adults of mostly the descent of White, Asian & Pacific Islander. To put it in perspective I was one of of few black individuals in the room. Although that’s not a major part of this it should be noted that most of the people in the club were older Asian/Pacific Islanders, but I gotta say this concert was neat.
I didn’t only observe the people in the club, but the music and how it affected them, how it moved them, what it meant to the crowd to hear this music. From what I gathered the crowd generally and excitingly loved ‘Through the roots & Rebelution’ with the same screeches and howlers which each song they played. To be apart of this was epic because the music moved the musicians & the crowd in a way where they were so comfortable enough to produce a natural emotion of presentation to give a good show while bringing in their own flavor of the indigenous roots. You can see the audience in the video above is feeling the beat & reacting in a calm moving flowing manner to the beat of the music. This came as a clear distinction that the citizen in Hawaii prefer this musical genre more than most. I’m not saying they predominantly listen to reggae and calming music its just seems like a preferred musical taste. Well maybe for just city standards, I believe the indigenous music of Hawaii would have a different take on this. I wouldn’t know enough of that to back anything up to form a opinion about it.
Now looking back on that concert experience, I actually miss it because as I was there I was talking to people left and right hearing things like “these band is so awesome” or “these guys need to just live in Hawaii and preform forever” with this I came to my own realization that these guys & girls are all different genders uniting over experimental indigenous music. It made me think does the type of music that Hawaii like cater to outside musicians the same way it caters to local musicians? Through the roots is from San Diego, California and Rebelution is from Santa Barbara, California which are outside of Hawaii, but both have treated Hawaii as a home. Hawaii has accepted them, and was also told by many of the adults that they tour and that they absolutely love the cultural aspect of Hawaii and all its inhabitants. They get when preforming in Hawaii. I absolutely would agree by just being in the energy you can sympathize with the musician on stage, his resonate sound becomes your resonate sound is what was thought as I confronted the dance and jig of the music moving through me.
I still think about it from this day…How wonderful it was…