Hawaiian music festival at Windward Community College

HONOLULU (KHON2) – If you’re looking for something to do on Saturday that is perfect for the entire family and you love music, Hawaiian music in particular, Windward Community College will have the 2nd annual Kani Kuola Music Festival. 

Now, there are two components: workshops during the day and a fundraiser concert in the evening. 

So, to find out more about this, KHON2 spoke with Dr. Kamuela Kimokeo who helped to put this on. 

“Well, I think we’ve learned a lot last year.  We learned that the community is still very interested in doing things with community colleges, especially when it has to do with music,” said Kimokeo.

Kimokeo had went on to explain:

“So, this particular year, we have quite a large Hawaiian focus on our workshops. So, we have ukulele workshops, we have hula workshops, we have workshops on how Hawaiian music impacted world music, music workshop on the music on the Hawaiian renaissance.  So, we have all these wonderful workshops, which by the way are free, and you don’t have to be a performing musician to enjoy these workshops. We will have ones that are participatory, but we also have ones that are more historical if you just want to learn about music. The workshops are followed up by our Hawaiian music concert that is a fundraiser for our Kanilea ‘Ukulele Hawaiian music scholarship and all the proceeds of that concert are going to go towards that scholarship.  It features Ledward Kaapana, Jerry Santos, Liko Martin, Jon Osorio, and Kawaikapuokalani Hewett.  So, we hope that people in the community will come and support us and support this wonderful event and support and help us provide scholarships for our students.” 

Hewett will not just be in the concert; he is also putting on some of those workshops. 

“So here at Windward Community College, I teach Mele Moo Olelo in Motion,” said Hewett. “These are the kinds of workshops that I will be teaching tomorrow about mele, how mele are composed.”

KHON2 asked why is it important that events like this are put on and what is the importance of mele? 

“I think they are very, very important because I truly support the hoomau ana, the perpetuation, o ka olelo Hawaii, of the Hawaiian language,” said Hewett.

Hewett then went on to explain:

“The proverb says, ‘Aia i ka olelo ke ola.’ In the language there is life.  The language is the mana, the authority of the Hawaiian people. Using that mana, that olelo, in the mele correctly is very, very important. So, people come because they want to learn how to do that, and I am more than happy to help them to learn how to do it.”

The event will take place on April 1 and will start at 10 a.m. — at least for the workshops which are free. 

The fundraiser concert will be at 6 p.m. 

There are limited in-person tickets available for the concert, but online streaming is unlimited.

For all the information and to get your tickets before it’s too late, click here.