Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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Working Overtime
0May 10, 2018 by admin
On the ground, the daffs have faded, the tulips hang on, and the masses of wood hyacinth are mostly spent, looking like the spiky skeletons of fish. The first red rose opens low on the bush. In the canopy, the trees are green. Both chestnuts are in bloom. At Cherry Hill, above salmon and white azalea, a giant paulownia is bursting with purple flowers. For years I’d seen these trees blooming along the Henry Hudson, looking like purple chestnut trees. I looked up the name a few years ago. They were named for Anna Paulowna, daughter of Tsar Paul I of Russia.
Center stage at Bethesda Fountain looked like mine until I saw the old man with the accordion, sitting on the bench. He wasn’t playing; he appeared to be picking lint from his base buttons. “Are you done, or are you still playing?” I asked him. He didn’t seem to understand, or maybe he was hard of hearing. I asked again.
“One o’clock,” he said.
I went to the maple for 20 minutes, where I made nothing, returned at 1 and set up at the fountain. The old man kept pumping out chords, while I waited. At last he noticed me and stopped.
I continued my set where I’d left off. The fountain was crowded today. A large group of pre-teens from Central Islip, having picnicked on the lawn, started running around, from water’s edge to the arcade, in front of which the big bubble man competed with 2 snake handlers on segways for their attention. “Has this group got time for a hula today?”
The leader of the group, a rather rumpled 50-something, shrugged. Soon I had a line of kids squealing with laughter on their way to the hukilau. Between verses, they passed the leis to another line of dancers. Afterward, one of the kids came running back to me with a fiver from the leader.
I saw a woman recording me, so I gave her a good show, for which I received $2. An old man walked by and tossed me a buck. Two women slowed as they passed, then stopped 20 yards away. They were sorting through their wallets. One of them returned with 4 tightly folded singles.
Toward the end of my set, a 20-something from San Francisco danced a hula and walked away. The same happened with 3 young women from South Carolina. My 90 minutes up, I sang “Little Grass Shake,” sat down and started packing up.
“Would you mind?” said a 60-something man in a white shirt and name tag (Mike) on a lanyard around his neck. “I’ve got a school group here from Chicago, and I’d like to get the teachers dancing for the kids.”
I took out my leis, set up the yellow dancing girl, and spread the currency out in my case. Standing, I sang out “Honolulu Eyes” until Mike led his group to me and stopped. With a word to the kids about an opportunity for blackmail, he called out 4 teachers. Dressed in the same black tee shirts as the kids, they donned leis and, after very brief instruction, lined up to dance to “The Hukilau Song.” The kids howled as the teachers broke ranks, flapped their arms, spun in circles, and finally united like the Rockettes for a high-kicking finale.
Mike, grinning, handed me a fiver, and one of the kids tossed in a buck. That 6 from Chicago, added to the 12 from my 90 minute set, boosted me to highly respectable $18.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Eyes, Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
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In the Shade of the Old Maple Tree
0May 6, 2018 by admin
As predicted, the temperature in Central Park topped 90 on Thursday. I stopped at the water fountain, and glanced up at the wisteria vine, green and tendrilled. Off to the left, however, I was surprised by a glimpse of purple. A clump of blooming wisteria poked out of the underbrush and draped itself over the wall, hanging down over the old bridle path that parallels Central Park West at 72nd St.
Another surprise was an early-blooming lilac, about chest high. I stepped over a low fence to get a whiff. The jazz combo had moved to other side of the road, into the shade. To the south, towering above the greening trees, 3 construction cranes erect 3 more sky castles, to join the 2 already there.
At Bethesda Fountain, an English soprano belted out “O Sole Mio” to a recorded accompaniment. I sat on the bench, waiting for her finish, then approached her and said, “There are rules for busking in the park, and one of them is no amplification. I’m not a cop,” I added, “we’re a self-regulating bunch, but there are higher authorities, and you could ruin it for all of us – it’s happened before – so please consider a cappella, or something other than that.” Pointing to the offending appliance, I turned and walked away. On a day like today, I preferred to play under the maple.
My first dollar came from an aging hipster, along with a wink and a thumbs-up. A dad gave his young son a handful of change, then pushed him toward me. A 20-something couple coasted by on bicycles. “Have you got time for a hula today?” She, from DC, was all in; he, from Jerusalem, watched. After dancing gracefully to “The Hukilau Song,” she gave me a dollar and they rode off.
To the east, I watched a group of kids emerge from the tunnel under the drive. It was a large group of 50 or more highschoolers. I said to the leader as they passed, “Has this group got time for a hula dance today?” He stopped to consider, but by then the kids had taken the decision out of his hands. I distributed all my leis, got the dancers lined up on one side of the path and the spectators on the other, allowing people to walk by. The kids spoke French, but understood my instructions, so after one verse the dancers passed the leis to the next troupe of dancers. After 3 verses, everyone who wanted to had hula-ed. I collected the leis and the money poured in; there was no telling how much until the end of the set.
“Viva la France,” I shouted to the kids.
“We are Quebecois,” the leader informed me.
A 40-something woman opened her purse and dumped change into my case.
A little blonde girl and her tall blonde mother walked by. In a few minutes they came back. The little girl clutched 5 quarters in her hand. “She made me come back,” mom explained. They were from Norway, and the little girl understood Norwegian, English and Dutch. She danced a charming hula and I could see, as I sang, that mom was dancing too.
“Do you speak Hawaiian?” I asked. “No? In Hawaiian, the word for thank you is mahalo.”
“Mahalo,” said the girl.
“Mahalo,” said mom. “Now you speak 4 languages.”
My set was over. I counted $19.06. Merci beaucoup, Canada.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: O Sole Mio, The Hukilau Song
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Reflections on the Start of the Season
0May 3, 2018 by admin
A silver-white bottlebrush bush blooms behind the benches, beside the dog roses, whose lush green branches are tipped with red growth. At the Imagine Mosaic, I wave hello to Randy, the dobro player, who has joined the platoon of guitarists’ playing the Beatle canon.
Randy is one of the first buskers I met when I started in 2007. So many others have left the scene. Arlen, on dulcimer, and Meta, on harp, once mainstays of Bethesda Fountain, are no longer to be found there. Dominick, on guitar, also disappeared. For a while, he’d joined the Boyd Family Singers, who have semi-permanent possession of the arcade, but that didn’t last long. I saw him once at the 103rd St. subway station, then last year I ran into him and Kendra, another ukulele player; they were a couple now and played Union Square. Raheem, on sax, who once claimed he made $125,000 a year busking, has gone mainstream.
The blighted chestnut tree is showing small green catkins that will eventually form conical flowers and spiky fruit. The magnolias are in transition; the white pink-tinged petals rot on the ground, as well as in limp brown clumps high in the branches. Trillium masses in the shaded triangular plot near the Information Booth.
No one is busking at Bethesda Fountain. In fact, there are almost no people there. I played for more than 30 minutes before a couple of gay guys packed up their lunch and dropped a dollar each into my case. A fashionably dressed woman thanked me with a dollar.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
“It’s too hot to hula.”
A teenage girl from Long Island, who had already said no to a hula, walked by again and said yes. “How much is this going to cost me?” she said.
“Free of charge,” said I. Most of the time, people will cough up a buck for a hula. And if not, others, watching, might. After a single verse of “The Hukilau Song,” she returned the lei and walked away.
Two Korean women walked down the path from the boathouse straight to me. Each one smoothed out a dollar and placed it in my case. A tall thirty-something man who’d been listening from the path, in the shade, stepped out into the sun, opened his purse and poured out 73 cents.
A group of high school kids from Miami had been picnicking on the lawn behind the benches throughout most of my set. At one point they dispersed for a bathroom break, then straggled back in small groups. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
In the end, I wrangled 4 girls, 2 of whom could hula well; the others followed. A fifth girl took video. At the end of the dance, I collected the leis and the girls walked away.
When I gathered up my take for the day, $5.73, the change was too hot to hold. And tomorrow, I’m told, will be hotter.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
