Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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Friday’s Record Haul
0July 26, 2014 by admin
I got a late start on Friday. My ukulele case, which has been falling apart for the last year or more, needed additional repairs before I could go out. While I wait for a new case to arrive, I keep the old case going with safety pins and wire garbage bag ties. It was well after noon when I entered the park. The usual Beatles repertoire was afoot around the Imagine Mosaic, while on the rock leading away from Strawberry Fields a 60-ish guitarist, with a harmonica holder around his neck, sang “You Know It Ain’t Easy.”
At the fountain, I assessed the cool breeze, the blazing sun, and decided to start the day on center stage. As I set up, a father and his two sons were tossing coins in the fountain. While little girls make wishes, little boys take aim at the Angel of the Waters. “How about a hula today?”
With their father snapping pictures, the boys waved their arms and shuffled their feet to “The Hukilau Song.” At the end, he gave them each a dollar to give to me, after which he himself put a fiver in my case. Seven dollars, and I hadn’t even put my own lei on yet.
The big bubble man put his soapy pail down in front of me. I was contemplating speaking to him about moving farther off when a young woman gave me 2 Susan B’s, and advised me to get out of the sun. So rather than confront the bubble man, I closed my case and carried it up the path toward the boathouse, to my shady spot under the maple.
A few minutes later, two 50-something men in aloha shirts wandered by. “How’re you guys going on this beautiful day?” I asked. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Of course,” said the shorter.
“Delighted,” said the taller. “Just last night in our hotel room,” the taller told me when the dance was done, “we were saying that we couldn’t be any happier. Now look. You’ve raised the bar.” I watched as he drew a twenty from his wallet.
“Hey, thanks a lot.”
“No, no, thank you.” Off they strolled, their feet just touching the ground.
At the end of my set, I heard the melodic screech of an electric violin. Walking back toward the fountain, I stopped to chat. “Amplification is not allowed,” I told the young man, “so turn it off, or at least turn it down, or you’ll screw it up for the rest of us.”
Back at Strawberry Fields, the harmonica-and-guitar man was gone, replaced by the accordion player, enrapt in her soulful rendition of the “Theme from the Godfather.” Another guitarist, from his bench near the mosaic, was singing from the Beatles songbook. Two pm, and the second shift had started work.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song, Theme from the Godfather
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The Return of the German
0July 11, 2014 by admin
It was a slow start on Wednesday. Although hot, the humidity was down. Over the lake, the towers of the San Remo on Central Park West stood out clearly against the blue sky. Almost an hour went by before I got a lei around the neck of a young German woman, who danced to “The Hukilau Song,” both verses, before thanking me and walking off. My first dollar materialized a short time later, when a hulking 30-something tossed it in without breaking stride.
A girl of 5 or 6, with long wavy red hair, grabbed a blue lei and danced up a storm, skipping, jumping and waving her arms from one side of the path to the other. She struck me as a theatre kid, born to play Annie, full of self-confidence, and just a little bit annoying. When we’d finished, she tossed the blue lei back into the case and pulled out a white one. “Different color, different dance,” she said, this time cavorting to “My Little Grass Shack.” Her father, who had been proudly watching the performance, peeled off a fiver and took her by the hand, preventing her from showing us her orange lei inspired hula.
A large woman in a red dress stopped to dance. She moved languidly, her arms undulating like gentle waves washing the shore. Next came a pre-teen boy who would not dance, but dumped a pocketful of change into the case to show his appreciation. A woman walking two small dogs showed some appreciation too.
The crowds were thin, the weather hot, time to bring the act to a close. A group of Germans stopped to listen to me sing “Honolulu Eyes,” then put a few dollars in my case. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Already did,” said a Fräulein, putting in her buck. It was the young woman who started things off today, returned to make things right.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Eyes, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
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Typical Tuesday
0July 9, 2014 by admin
A small group of Japanese people, the women sporting parasols, stopped to hear me play. “You have a nice voice,” one of them said, as the man put a dollar in my case.
“Domo arigato gozaimasu,” I said, bowing politely.
“Oh, have you been to Japan?” I nodded in the negative. “Have you been to Hawaii?”
“Hai,” I said, “many times.”
“Yes, we too, many times.”
Three college-age women stopped to hula. “Can you guess where we’re from?” one asked in impeccable English. I guessed Argentina. They roared with laughter. “Pakistan,” one told me. I took a closer look: light skin, thin noses, bare arms, legs and head.
“Can’t you just see this one,” I said, taking one of the girls by the hand, “dancing the tango?”
A couple pushing a stroller came by next, dropping a buck as they passed. Our exchange of a few words revealed Brits.
Next came a day camp group in orange tee shirts. “Have you got time for a hula today?” They did not. But the next orange-shirted group did have time; the counselor donned a lei and tried to show his 6-year-old charges how to hula. Unlike other groups of kids, who tumbled over each other trying to get a lei, this group was reluctant. Only 2 out of 15 or so wanted to dance. “That’s ok,” I said, playing the introductory chords of “The Hukilau Song,” “No one has to hula, it’s not a punishment.”
Two couples with 4 kids stopped to kibbitz. The girls played the uke, I was told, and had had hula lessons, although neither remembered them. “Do you know ‘Over the Rainbow’?”
I started strumming the Judy Garland version, but was immediately stopped. “No, no, can you play it like Iz?”
I couldn’t, but one of the young girls could; with a little prodding, a second young girl played too. I watched their fingers, then, taking back the uke, played the intro back to them.
Counting my take at the end of the set, $12.98, I came upon a postcard someone had dropped instead of money. It promoted The Peace Industry Music Group. I know them as the Boyd family, who set up in the tunnel, otherwise known as the Minton Tile Arcade, every day, all day, all seasons. The patriarch, John Boyd, would allow no other musicians to play in that acoustically well-endowed space, which led to some bad feelings, raised voices and veiled threats. In a compromise, he allowed a Korean tenor and a Ukrainian upright bassist to join in his particular mix of sacred music and pop spirituals, but he made no allowance for a solo act, like Arlen and his dulcimer. John was arrested several years ago for violating the Quiet Zone rules, although since that tumultuous time he has reigned uncontested.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Minton Tile Arcade, Over the Rainbow, The Hukilau Song, The Peace Industry Music Group
