Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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The First of July
0July 2, 2014 by admin
The deep summer season is upon us. On another hot day, I head into the park to bring the aloha spirit to the masses. The sprinklers are watering almost every lawn, including the one behind me on the path to the boathouse. The towering maple creates an umbral dry area about the size of my ukulele case, so I set up there and start to play. When I still get wet, I leave my case where it is and move to the opposite side of the path. People walking by look at me, look at my case, look at me; the situation is confused. Finally I slide my case out of the sprinkler’s orbit and start again.
A young woman with a complex camera around her neck breaks into a hula as she walks by. I invite her to dance. She demurs, and moves on, but not without first dropping a dollar.
A mother, pushing an empty stroller, walks by with her son in hand. The boy is captivated. “How about a hula?”
“I don’t know how,” he says.
“Maybe your mother will show you,” I say, slipping a lei around both their necks. As they dance to “The Hukilau Song,” the mother reaches for her smartphone to take a photo, but as soon as she stops dancing, the boy does too. This start-stop goes on a few times, before the mother gets her shot, and I get $2.
A gaggle of 8 high school girls comes by, one of whom carries a Happy Birthday balloon. “Is it your birthday?” I ask. “How about a birthday hula?”
Her friends think this is a terrific idea, but it takes some convincing. Fortunately I have lots of leis, so I eventually recruit 6 dancers, leaving 2 to take pictures. Their hula devolves into a free form arm-waving boogaloo, much to the delight of everybody walking by. Six dancers, $6.
“Do you do parties?” a man asks.
“I have in the past,” I tell him, although my party gigs amount to 1 birthday party for a 3-year old. We discuss his requirements: 20-25 adults in the fall for his wife’s birthday; 2 hours of music. I give him my card. “Let me know what you want and what you think it’s worth and we’ll take it from there.” I’m reluctant to name a price. I’d asked for $25 for the kid’s birthday party, and got $45, so out of touch am I with the price of party entertainers.
The sprinkler continues to swivel, wetting down inattentive passers-by. Young people seek relief from the heat by playing in the spray. A supervising adult gives me a buck after collecting her wet children and herding them along the path. I close up shop shortly afterward. Despite the heat and sparse crowds, it is a $14 day.
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Critics and Enthusiasts
0June 25, 2014 by admin
I entered the park at noon. The sprinklers were spritzing the lawns, which appeared lush and healthy under a hazy sky. Even the chestnut tree looks good today. On my way to the fountain, I saw my first female horse-drawn carriage driver. I set up at the fountain, but after about 30 minutes the sun burned through and it was too hot to stand unprotected, so I picked up and moved up the path.
At the crest of the hill a young man played his violin. He was too close to my maple tree to set up there; I split the difference between him and the fountain and started playing again in the shade. After a while, two forty-something couples slowed, listened, and examined my busking paraphernalia: a hula dancing doll, signage reading “Got Aloha?” and “This is Culture”, leis, business cards and a CD. One guy picked up my CD and turned it over to read what’s on it. He put it back, saying, “I’m in music for a living.”
Now, to be honest, music is not my living, but he couldn’t know that. I weighed my response, then let it drop unexpressed when I saw one of his companions reaching for her wallet.
“Has this group got time for a hula today?” Not today. It was a group of 30-40 elementary school kids heading back to the east side. I played “The Hukilau Song” as they shuffled by and got a number of thumbs-up. Surprisingly, one of the last kids to pass dropped a fiver in my case.
A young couple strolled by hand-in-hand. About 10 yards beyond me, the man returned to give me a buck. “What got you?” I asked.
“Tuning,” he said. Indeed, my uke was badly in need of it.
A trio of Jersey City high-schoolers selling candy came my way. I’ve seen them many times, purportedly raising money for a school event or after school activity. One of them got caught up in my song, started dancing with glee, and when I praised his taste in music, he emptied his pocket of change into my case. It was mostly pennies and nickels, but I saw a few quarters in the mix, and when I counted it up at the end of the session, the change totaled $2.73.
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Monday, April 14
0April 15, 2014 by admin
The park is quieter on weekdays, yet school groups still clog the paths. I was caught in the middle of a pack of teenagers when an adult (teacher? chaperone?) praised one of the youngsters for identifying Daniel Webster as the man who made the first American dictionary. “No, no, no,” I joined in, “that was Noah Webster. Daniel was a Senator from Massachusetts, representing the money interests, and a staunch anti-Jacksonian.”
“See,” said the adult, “every day is an opportunity to learn something new.”
Walking past Arlen and Meta, past Nick, I noticed how much more color there was in the trees, the red growing tips visible, giving the whole scene an air of expectancy. At location #3, no sooner had I tuned up than a little girl stopped to dance the hula. My go-to hula music is “The Hukilau Song.” I usually sing the first verse and chorus, and only if the dancers are into it will I sing a second verse. There were 3 dancers in all this day; only the last, an elderly tourist from South America, got the second verse. She, alone among her friends, evoked the Aloha Spirit.
“Why would I say no to a hula in Central Park,” she told me. “Why would you say no?” she asked her friends.
Leaving the park, with $7.86 in my pocket, I weaved my way back through Strawberry Fields. Since yesterday, the pheasant’s eye narcissus has bloomed. On a bench, a serious young man sat by his sign, promising he’d make me laugh for a dollar, or my money back.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
