Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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The Tough Get Busking
0March 24, 2016 by admin
It was another warm day for March. The park is slowly showing color: purply-white phlox divericata, red-striped ground tulips with golden yellow middles, deep blue wood hyacinth, yellow daffodils, baby-blue chindoxia and dusty brown hellebore. The rose bushes are bursting with claret-colored leaves, the magnolias have popped, the forsythia have flowered, and the fern-like leaves of the willows by the lake droop toward the water.
The buskers too are out in force. Benny and Griff still cavort at the foot of the stairs by the fountain, and the amplified cowboy sings along with his recordings. At my secondary location, near the maple on the path, the doo-wop ensemble, consisting of a bass viol, a lead singer and 4 backups, has gathered a large crowd around them. I crossed the road in search of place to set up. After wandering through the area around the Conservatory Pond, I circled back and found a place under a pin oak.
A young man started me off with a dollar, followed a few minutes later by an older man, who folded his bill into a tight aerodynamic package which he launched into my case. A trio of bicyclists from Denmark stopped near me, one of whom dismounted to give me dollar.
An older couple stopped to chat. I’d seen them before over the years. We talked about retirement; they wanted to know where the Meta the harpist and Arlen the dulcimerist had gone. I, of course, could not tell them.
A large school group came toward me from the east. “Does this group have time for a hula dance?” I asked the apparent leader. “Could be,” she said.
I handed out a dozen leis, my entire inventory, and off we went to the Hukilau. At the end of 2 verses, the dollars started rolling in. Usually a large group is good for $3-4, but these kids, from somewhere in Connecticut, kept dropping money in my case until there was a large heap of bills. I put my metal capo on top of the pile to keep it from blowing away.
Not long afterward, 2 girls from the Florida panhandle went to the Hukilau. One of them gave me a dollar, the second gave me $2, and a third, the designated documentarian, kicked in a fiver.
A steady flow of music lovers added to the pile until quitting time. Despite the competition, which had driven me to set up in this unfamiliar spot, it was a stellar day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
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Two in a Row
0March 11, 2016 by admin
On the Monday after the big storm in January, feeling something like a caged tiger, I set out for the gym, leaped over a snow pile at the corner, fell and broke my leg. I write this now to convey the sheer joy I felt yesterday, bound though I was by a walking boot and cane. Going out with my uke two days in a row approached bliss.
The park retained its overall earthen colors. The sky was mostly gray; warm, wet winds blew the occasional hole in the clouds to let in some sun. I saw more daffs than yesterday. The rose wood was greening, and when I looked hard I saw the nubs of growing tips. Except for the stray forsythia floret, nothing.
The guitar platoon at the Imagine Mosaic is back, if they ever left.
At the foot of the western staircase, where the acrobats work, 2 clown-like guitarists sang and danced to silly songs. They’d set up a cardboard bandstand reading Benny and Griff, and seemed ready to do their show all day. I assessed the situation for conflict. No amplification, no foul. “I play over there,” I told them, gesturing with my cane. They were very nice, they called me “sir.”
After I sang my openers, “Making Love Ukulele Style,” “Sunday,” “Fit as a Fiddle,” “I Saw Stars,” and “Ukulele Lady,” a man my age, who’d been sitting by the water to my left, came up and asked, “Surfboard accident?” He complimented my voice, gave me a dollar and encouraged me to keep up the good work.
A slim, beautiful black woman, close-cropped hair, flowing clothes and bare arms hula-ed toward the benches with her male companion. I encouraged her to put on a lei and do a proper hula, and she did. We went through both verses of “The Hukilau Song,” by which time she’d drawn a crowd. Even her friend was taking pictures. She gave me back the lei and returned to the bench.
An older Asian woman stepped forward and put a dollar in my case. She had been in the crowd and appreciated the expressive beauty of the hula.
The next dancer was a Dallas girl of 7 or 8, who pranced around quite freely while her mother got it on video. Then 3 more Texans, from a teenage tour from El Paso, gave their rendition of the hula. Quite a bit of banter and dollars were exchanged, as their classmates wanted in on what was happening. “You’re my second group from Texas today,” I told them. “Is this Texas in New York Week?”
“It’s a big state,” I was told.
With my final song, “Little Grass Shack,” I sat down to count the day’s haul, $12, then hoisted myself to my feet and started home. At the foot of the stairs, Benny and Griff were still at it.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Benny and Griff, Fit as a Fiddle, I Saw Stars, Imagine Mosaic, Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, Sunday, The Hukilau Song, Ukulele Lady
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The 2016 Season Comes Early
0March 10, 2016 by admin
In January I bought new strings for my tenor ukulele. My usual brand, Hilo, had gone out of business, so this year I’m playing with a set from Kamaka. It takes a few days for new strings to settle down, but with the arrival of 70 degree weather yesterday, I had no such luxury. Having been cooped up all winter, I wasn’t going to let such a beautiful day slip away.
Except for a few shiny hollies near Central Park West, and a sparse assortment of evergreens deeper in the park, the trees were bare. The park was bathed in hazy grays and browns. The beds at the entrance at 72nd St. had been raked; snowdrops shyly bent their faces to the ground. Tightly clustered tulip leaves pushed several inches high behind the freshly painted wooden benches. On both sides of the path leading away from Strawberry Fields, red dogwood branches stood taller than me. In the distance, I could see a single yellow daffodil. The magnolia near the drive was covered with furry thumb-like buds.
Past the statue of Daniel Webster, I could hear the cheers for the acrobats that work the northern end of the mall. At Bethesda Fountain, Rakeem played his saxophone. “Another 10 minutes,” he told me. By noon, I was spreading out my paraphernalia, solar-powered hula girls, multi-colored leis, an open ukulele case primed with 2 singles and 2 written messages, one reading “This is Culture,” the other “Got Aloha?”
After playing for 30 minutes or so, re-tuning my new strings between every song, a large contingent of Chinese teenagers arrived, neatly dressed in uni-sex blue blazers with red scarves, for the girls, and red ties, for the boys. When 2 of the girls applauded at the end of a song, I invited them to dance the hula. They giggled and whispered to each other, then walked up to get their leis. It was the first trip to the Hukilau of 2016. A young man dropped a handful of change in my case between verses. At the end of the dance, the girls returned to their stone bench, dug out their wallets and returned, each holding out a $5 bill. The girls were in New York for a special program at the United Nations.
Some time later, 3 girls from Wisconsin walked by, but only one would dance, for which I received a dollar.
A group of 11- and 12-year-olds came running down the path toward me. “Who’s in charge here?” I asked.
“I am, I am,” several announced.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Yeah,” they screamed, reaching for the leis.
“NO,” came the true voice of authority, a slender young woman with a clipboard and hell’s fury in her eyes. “I’m trying to teach a lesson,” she warned me, while a few adults wrangled the youngsters toward the rim of the fountain, where they overwhelmed my case and fidgeted as the teacher alternately shouted instructions and threats. The purpose of the lesson was to “daylight” the streams that flowed here in 1609.
So it was I packed up early, with a quite respectable $12.36 in my pocket.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
