Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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A Few Days Left
0October 8, 2015 by admin
“This tree is dead,” said the shirtless man on a blanket under the chestnut. He had a picnic basket, a book and a cell phone strewn about, so he probably was not homeless. I was squinting up at the high branches, looking for nuts. Most had already fallen.
“It starts to brown up like this every July,” I told him. “But look,” grabbing a branch and examining it, “growing tips. Every spring, this tree keeps coming back.”
“Until it doesn’t,” the man said.
I stomped on a shiny chestnut, crushing it against the broad ledge of Manhattan schist that rises out of the lawn there. The meat was white and moist. “Still good eating,” I said, tossing him the nut. “For squirrels.”
Distressed to find the cowboy back at the fountain, I moved on. It was cool in the shade of my maple, and hot in the sun. I found myself moving back and forth between them, trying to stay comfortable. A little kid of 7 or 8, asking his father for money, started me off with a quarter. A white-bearded man in his 70’s tossed 2 more quarters into my case as he walked by.
Two young women stopped to talk about ukuleles. One of the women, from Brooklyn, had just taken up the uke; she played the 2 chords she knew. The other woman was visiting from Switzerland. They happily danced a verse of “The Hukilau Song.” Afterward, the Brooklynite was very apologetic: she only had 20’s.
“Aloha,” said I.
A short while later, a mother of 2 had a dollar for a hula. At the same time, a passer-by stopped to contribute some change. For a moment, there was a veritable crush of people around my case, and then it was over. I practiced my new songs, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and “Down Among the Sheltering Palms.” In the shade, I focused on the baroque towers of the San Remo; in the sun, the art deco towers of the Majestic came into view.
Despite the calendar, the busking season of 2015 still has a few more days in it. Until it doesn’t.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Down among the Sheltering Palms, My Baby Just Cares for Me, The Hukilau Song
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Last Licks
0October 7, 2015 by admin
After a week of cold and rain, I returned to the park on the first nice day in October. Cleome, asters, begonia, and the fluffy purple button of bloom, which has been growing in clumps behind the benches since August, are still going strong, while the growing tips of the rosa rugosa have managed to produce yet another crop of papery pink flowers. Despite the rain, someone has ordered the sprinklers to be turned on, so water is pooling over the saturated lawns.
At Bethesda Fountain, a giant peace sign made of 40,000 mini cupcakes, compliments of Baked by Melissa, adorns the plaza. I’m told that it was created in honor of John Lennon’s 75th birthday on Friday, and has earned a Guinness World Record.
I set up at center stage and immediately broke into “Get Out and Get Under the Moon” for a toddler who couldn’t take his eyes off me. Mom allowed the kid to bop around for a while, then grabbed his hand and led him away. Other walkaways included 2 little girls, who, separately, put on leis and danced to “The Hukilau Song,” and a Dutch woman who informed me, after having her husband snap a picture of us, that her daughter had danced a hula with me 4 years ago.
A young man spent quite a bit of time in my face, taking pictures. “Did you get a good shot?” I asked. “Good, now come do a hula. A hula for a picture, it’s only fair.”
He begged off, until a group of 20-somethings, similarly dressed in t-shirts proclaiming “Top of the Rock,” egged him on. They were involved in some team-building exercise for the locale/event-space at Rockefeller Center. Under peer pressure, he danced for a few bars, then took off his lei and ran up the path to rejoin his friends.
After almost 1 hour, my first dollar came from a woman photographer, who took her pics and walked off.
Jim, the big bubble man, came by with 100 mini cupcakes in a pizza-sized bakery box. I ate one; it was rich and delicious, but another one, let alone another 99, would have sent me into cardiac arrest.
The Top of the Rock folks wanted a photo before they left. They put on leis and massed around me, a selfie stick appeared in the sky and we smiled up at it. After an abbreviated hula, they gathered up their stuff, including what appeared to be a jigsaw puzzle of Rock Center, collected $3 among them and added it to my case.
Two teens from Tennessee stopped to dance. They seemed quite tickled to be dancing the hula in New York. Their mom, who caught the act on video, tossed another $3 in my case.
An old woman walking by gave me a dollar. A mom with 2 young daughters, neither of whom wanted to hula, dug out 4 quarters for me.
What started out as slow day, picked up enough to bring my total to double digits. On my way out of the park, I started passing people with boxes of cupcakes. In fact, every person on the bench at the entrance had a box in his/her lap. Outside the park, along Central Park West, the Baked by Melissa truck was parked, and members of the peace sign crew, having boxed up 40,000 cupcakes into 400 boxes, were handing them out of the back of truck like aid workers handing out provisions after a natural disaster. People sitting on the benches along CPW, stretching several blocks north, tasted and traded cupcakes: lemon for vanilla, strawberry for chocolate.
From somewhere high above the Dakota, John Lennon must have watched the festivities and smiled.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Baked by Melissa, Get Out and Get Under the Moon, The Hukilau Song
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Rosh Ha-Hula
0September 15, 2015 by admin
After a week away from the park, I returned at the change of season. The weather was in the mid-70’s with cool gusts of wind. The sky was cloudless. The cowboy was back near my spot at the fountain, so I continued to the maple, setting up where I could easily move into the sun.
Shortly after I started my set, a family with 4 teen-aged girls walked by. Dad pulled out his wallet and gave a dollar to the eldest girl for me. She would not dance, nor would any of her sisters, whom I invited in turn.
A 40-something man, walking twin terriers, waited across the path, eager to tell me that he was on his way to meet his friend, who had colluded with one of the portrait artists on a marriage proposal scheme. Having given the artist a picture beforehand, his friend would bring his girlfriend to the park to sit for the artist, whose final product would include, voila, a diamond ring. He rushed off so excited, he almost forgot to give me a dollar. After 10-15 minutes I saw him again, walking back the other way. I stopped what I was singing and switched to “The Hawaiian Wedding Song.”
While singing “Fit as a Fiddle,” when I came to the lyric, “…how the church bells will be ringing/with a hey nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha,” a young couple stopped in their tracks. It turned out the woman’s name was Nonny; there was laughter and handshakes all around, then off they walked.
A woman in a head scarf seemed to like “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” She took a long video, then counted out 4 quarters. A woman with a screaming child in her arms walked by, just as I was deciding what to sing next. It was “Get Out and Get Under the Moon,” a cinch to make a child smile. Mom peeked over her shoulder at her happy daughter, smiled at me. All was well.
A tall man dressed in his high holiday best took out his wallet and gave me a dollar. His wife, on his arm, beamed up at him approvingly. He had started the new year with a mitzvah.
A couple of men and women, with 5-6 kids, were picnicking behind me, on the other side of the fence. They’d finished their lunch and some of the kids got up to run. One boy, about 10, found a break in the fence and was throwing his body against it until he could squeeze through.
“You want to hula?”
“Does it cost anything?”
“Not a thing.”
Soon his brothers and sisters were squeezing through the fence to hula too. I got them lei-ed and lined up, when the eldest sister, 15 or so, egged on by the adults, got up off the blanket and wriggled through the fence. She already knew how to hula, so I instructed all the others to follow her to the hukilau. At least 2 singles found their way into my case, along with an unknown quantity of change.
Two preteens on scooters raced by, dismounted, and prevailed on the adult in charge to let them hula. They pushed and giggled their way through both verses of “The Hukilau Song.” Each gave me a dollar and hopped back on her scooter. “That was fun.”
There was close to $13 in my case when a woman and her husband passed by, stopped, walked back and asked if mine was a tenor uke. She was a 1st grade teacher, living on the west side, who wanted an instrument to play in her class, so the kids could sing along. She thought the ukulele might be the answer. I assured her, while her husband put a dollar in my case and pulled her away, it surely was.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Fit as a Fiddle, Get Out and Get Under the Moon, My Baby Just Cares for Me, The Hawaiian Wedding Song, The Hukilau Song
