Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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Tuning Up
0April 3, 2015 by admin
I’d been keenly watching the weather reports, waiting for a day such as today: bright sunshine, temperatures approaching 60. Strapping my tenor uke, with low-G tuning ratcheted down to F#, to my back, I headed out to Central Park.
Not much plant life yet, the holly, rhododendron and juniper providing the only show of green. Clumps of snowdrops bloomed under a towering ginkgo and swept out along the path to Strawberry Fields. A guitarist played “Here Comes the Sun” from a bench. A big fat robin strutted his stuff on the lawn.
The park, however, was teeming with human life. Tour groups clogged the paths as I wove my way down the hill toward the road, where the artists have set up a table to sell their wares. Nearby, a magnolia pushed up its fuzzy buds, and, at the road, yellow croci bloomed on an outcrop of Manhattan schist.
Bethesda Fountain is still dry. I heard the wail of a saxophone. It’s Rakeem, to whom I tipped my hat as I walked by. John Boyd and his choir were hard at work in the Arcade, taking full advantage of the acoustics. The Bubble Man worked the plaza; he’d tied a grid of string on his dip-rope, so instead of one giant bubble, he makes clusters of bubbles that are lifted by the wind off the lake to the west.
At my second location, a young woman played the viola, so I walked to location #3, where I hung my hoodie on the fence and set up in the sun for my 90 minute set. They are doing work at the Boat Rental behind an 8-foot fence hung with opaque green netting. It’s ugly, so I keep my eyes focused on the bare upper limbs of trees and the blue sky.
A male couple, walking their dog, gave me the first dollar of the season. A little later, another male couple with another dog chipped in 50 cents.
“Has this group got time for a hula today?” Sadly, no, yet one of the teen-aged boys tossed a quarter into my case as he walked by.
“It must be spring,” announced a man to no one in particular, as if Mr. Ukulele, like robins and croci, were a vernal harbinger.
Some chord patterns to the old songs took a while to recall. I kept repeating the songs until muscle memory kicked in. During “All of Me,” a 60-something Spanish man stood next to me and sang along. We sang it twice while his female companion shot video, then off they went.
An Australian dad with a toddler on his shoulders, in a deft move, pulled a dollar out of his pocket for me. A lady walking by gave me a dollar too.
Three high-schoolers caught the aloha spirit. To the strains of the “Hukilau Song,” they gracefully waved their arms and swiveled their hips. “Can we do it again?” This time I played “My Little Grass Shack.” People stopped to enjoy the show.
As the teens walked off, a man who had been watching emptied his pocket of change. “You sure know how to bring out the best in people.”
Category Uncategorized | Tags: All of Me, Here Comes the Sun, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
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Something New
0October 28, 2014 by admin
With so few suitable days remaining in the season, I ventured out on Monday despite the cool temperature. It was just 60 degrees, and the sparse crowds at Bethesda Fountain wore hats, coats and scarves. Singing in the sun kept me warm.
A trio of Italians got off their bikes near me and started to take pictures. The boats on the lake, fall colors on the far shore, and crystal blue sky above complemented the brick, stone and bronze of the place. As the others remounted, a young man came toward me and placed a dollar in my case. It lay there alone for some time until a thin elderly woman got up off the bench to add a handful of quarters.
Barreling down the path came a large group of teenagers. “Have you guys got time for a hula today?” There was a scrum for leis, then the kids lined up and danced to “The Hukilau Song.” They were 8th graders from Gloucester, NJ, and were in no hurry at all. After the dance, the group colonized the grassy hill beyond the benches, tossing a frisbee, snacking, and generally slacking off until their next activity. Three times, a gaggle of girls broke away and asked to dance again. For variety, I played “My Little Grass Shack” and “Honolulu Eyes,” but the last group of girls wanted to go to the hukilau again. All told, I collected $2 and change. Two unaffiliated boys of the same age had been sitting by the fountain to watch the show. When the group finally gathered to leave, the boys each gave me a dollar.
Maybe because there were so few tourists today, I became aware of some new presences. A tall, muscular man in jeans and a tee shirt walked slowly around the fountain, asking loudly who had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior; he offered baptism right then and there. A man set up on the opposite side of the fountain with a microphone and tape recorder. He was lip-syncing to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”
I was packing up to leave when the saxophone player sat down near me. “Are you coming or going?”
“It’s all yours,” I said.
He rolled his eyes toward Frank. “There’s something new here every day,” he said, warming up with scales. As I walked away, I heard the sax’s rendition of “New York, New York,” a jazzy fortissimo. Frank didn’t stand a chance.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Eyes, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
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Last Licks
0October 25, 2014 by admin
A week before Halloween, the temperature crept just above 60 degrees. So off I went, under a heavy gray sky, hoping to get in what any day now could be my last for the season. Acorns crunched under foot; oak leaves rustled and swirled in the wind. The colors of the park were saturated in the diffuse light, yellows, browns, reds, greens. The dark purple leaves of the water plants in the fountain looked like cormorant wings drying in the cool autumn air. After tuning up, I spotted a bride and groom with their photographer, looking for a pretty background for their pictures. There were to be 4 sets of brides and grooms this day, 4 renditions of “The Hawaiian Wedding Song,” for a combined take of $0.
A teenaged boy made the walk from the water’s edge to toss a coin in my case. “Thank you,” I said, without looking. As he walked back to his friends, I glanced down to see he’d given me a penny. Continuing to play, I contemplated the thought process that led to such deliberate disrespect, before I turned my attention to a woman on the stone bench who was pulling something out of her purse. Nine out of ten times it will be a cellphone; this time it was a fiver for me.
Another woman strolled by and started dancing. “Have you got time for a hula today?” She seemed not to understand, so I stopped playing and pantomimed a hula. “Oh, no no no no,” she giggled, then later, returning with her daughter, she dropped a dollar.
Next up were 2 young girls who clasped hands and danced in circles to “The Hukilau Song.” A Spanish woman who’d been sitting with her kids got the idea. With the leis around their necks, the kids just stood there until I draped a lei around mom’s neck too. Following mom’s lead, they danced to both verses. At the end, the elder child was given a dollar for me, the younger a dime. Off they went to enjoy the day, but came back 10 minutes later to give me another dollar and another dime.
A light-haired boy of 12 or 13, in a bright green raincoat, made his way toward me with a dollar in his hand. We chatted about ukuleles for a while, then he told me he was from The Netherlands. “No kidding, I’ve been there many times. What city are you from?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “The Hague.”
“You mean den Haag,” pronouncing it as I was taught by our Dutch friend Eric, with a breathy guttural that sounded as if I were swallowing my own tongue. We shared a good laugh.
A group of a dozen or so teenaged girls came bounding down the path. About half of them were up for a hula. They lined up on either side of me, attracting a large crowd to watch the show. A young man stepped forward with a dollar. A little girl of 3 or so wanted to join the dance, but when one of the teenagers put a lei around her neck, the toddler ran back to hide behind her mother’s leg.
During the last third of my set, I heard a soft saxophone behind me. The offender had set up facing the arcade. Among buskers, setting up against another busker is the unpardonable sin. Yet, having heard this guy before, I could tell that he was holding back, for he could easily have blown me away. My set over, I pocketed $12.21, and left the sax to do his worst.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hawaiian Wedding Song, The Hukilau Song
