Musical Autobiography

Music has never really been a big part of my life. We would sing “To market to market to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggidy jig” on the way home from shopping excursions and my mother liked to play tapes of Pavaroti and John Denver in the car but really that was it. There is no grandmother or aunt who played a musical instrument especially well and I myself have very little aptitude for music, which is one of the reasons I came to this institute. In high school choir, I was the one singing loud and proud but off key. And it wasn’t until years later that I figured out this was why the good singers were giving me dirty looks. My mother forced me to take piano lessons for seven years and I was still counting out my notes “Every good boy does fine” into my seventh year.
When I received the assignment to do the musical autobiography, I thought it might be interesting to do a greatest hits in the life of so here they are. There are some important artists missing such as the John Denver and Pavaroti I’ve already mentioned. What follows is basically a short list of albums and artists I’ve really identified with and loved.
Madonna’s first album I believe was the second album I purchased sometime in grade school. Though I wasn’t a big fan, it’s fair to say I was a fan. And I dutifully purchased her new releases well into my high school years.
As I entered my teen angst years, I connected with the emotional pathos captured in Robert Smith’s band The Cure. My favorite was “Close to Me” a snappy upbeat song, but I also loved songs which included nothing but four minutes of instruments with the only words being, “For how much longer can I howl into this wind. For how much longer can I cry like this. A thousand wasted hours a day just to feel my heart for a second. A thousand hours just thrown away just to feel my heart for a second.” I also loved “Lovecats”, another snappy upbeat song but with an insidious undercurrent.
I’m not sure when I was introduced to Tori Amos. A friend gave me her album to listen to in college. I love her fierceness, her voice (that is, the message and personality captured in her lyrics). I love her read hair. I love her strong arms playing the piano, the humor that’s there while she speaks of the occasional plight of women. I have not been a very dutiful fan unfortunately.
I have never been a big fan of Janet Jackson. She seems like a great girl with a good enough head on her shoulders but I loved her cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Got til it’s gone.” I feel like my love of this song captures the woman of color in me.
Tomas Rodriguez is a little known Spanish guitar play who I met in Brooklyn while I was living there. I had to interview him for an article for the Park Slope Co-op, a community grocery store there. He gave me one of his albums that I went home and listened to and thought was just amazing. I loved the delicacy and strength of the instrumentals. It was the pefect music for putzing around the house on a lazy Sunday morning.
I suspect that the Spanish guitar is related to Hawaiian slack key though I’m not sure about the technicalities of either instrument. And while I’ve been living back in Hawaii over the past eight years, I’ve come to appreciate Hawaiian music, particularly the slack key guitar, something I loathed and could not appreciated while growing up there.
Dennis Kamakahi is one of the big names in Hawaiian slack key. I appreciate the peace and serenity captured in Kamakahi’s songs. His son, also a musician, does not play the slack key unfortunately and prefers the ukulele because it is smaller and lighter and therefore easier to hold.
The last artist in my musical autobiography is Kealii Reichel. He gained his fame during the 1990s while I was in college and I remember buying his albums to try to stay in touch with my roots. It wasn’t until I got to see him play at the Neal Blaisdell Concert (in row 13 seats) that I got to really appreciate his talent. He was funny, telling his life story growing up in Lahainaluna highschool, a school started up by the early missionaries to Hawaii and one of the oldest schools in the United States. I combed through his albums to try to find a song for my wedding and I found it in “Akaka Falls”, a song which refers to one of the two big waterfalls in rainy Hilo on the Big Island. I love the absolute delicacy of this song. It is fraught with tension. It was a great moment for me when my father who is 94 and walks very very slowly was able to walk me down a sandy slope to Kealii Reichel’s “Akaka Falls” last summer at my wedding.