Thursday, December 02, 2004

Highly Recommended

I love this CD -- "Call It What You Like," by Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu. Obviously, its Hawaiian music. If you like chant or indigeneous music, you will love this. He has such a great voice and nearly every song is a joy to listen to. And what you may think of as Hawaiian music is not at all what this is.

I was flipping channels one night and stumbled on a documentary on PBS called "American Aloha." Its about 3 hula masters who live on the mainland (more Hawaiians live on the mainland than in Hawaii). I only saw the part on Ho'omalu and thought he was just great, so I went on a quest for his CD. After reading more on the doc, I found out that he is part of a "back to our roots" movement in hula which rejects the commercialized ukelele strumming hula most of us know. I did not know until later that Ho'omalu also did two songs for Disney's "Lilo and Stitch," a film I saw and own and like -- I guess I just didn't pay attention to the music.

Anyway, my quest for the CD. I work at a bookstore that sells CDs and is in fact the number one seller of Hawaiian music in the country (not my store, the chain). The one CD we had in our store had been purchased in late October, so I attempted to order it and was told by one of the managers that it could not be ordered. So I ordered it from Amazon and paid $16.99. Yesterday, I found the CD in my store, obviously the replacement for the one sold in October. Our price is $15.99 and I would've been able to use my very generous employee discount to buy it! Man, was I unhappy to find that CD!

But it is really great music -- I listen to it all the time. Give it a try.


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