By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Irmgard Aluli will be inducted into the Hawaiian
Music Hall of Fame tonight.
Living treasure
Irmgard Aluli finds
By John Berger
a lost family and her place
in music history
Special to the Star-BulletinHISTORY will be made when Irmgard Farden Aluli is inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame this evening: It will be the first time ever that a living person has received the honor.
Aluli expresses modest pride at this accolade from her peers. But she's at least as excited that four of her "unknown" relatives will be there for proceedings at the Hawaii Theatre this evening.
"Unknown" relatives? The story begins over 100 years ago when Christoff Farden, Aluli's paternal grandfather, took his first son to Germany, never to return. A second son too young to travel remained here. Charles Kekuaoke Farden, Aluli's father, became patriarch of the large and talented Farden family of Lahaina. He died just after World War II without learning what happened to his father and brother.
More than 40 years later, an elderly couple was moving from New Jersey to Maryland and found among their household goods an old trunk that had been handed down unopened through several generations.
"It was my grandfather's (trunk) and they found all these records and documents. That's how they discovered that he had a family here in the islands," Aluli recalls.
The search was on, but there was a problem. Someone may have misread Christoff Farden's writing, or maybe the original spelling was "Jardin." Whatever the explanation, the searchers came to Hawaii looking for a German-Hawaiian family named "Jardin."
"The people at the Maui News hadn't heard of a family named Jardin, but someone in Lahaina suggested that the 'J' might actually be an 'F' and told them about the Farden family. They looked at the book "Sweet Voices of Lahaina: The Fabulous Fardens," and several things in there tied in to the information they had."
Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame
1998 inductees: Irmgard Aluli, John K. Almeida, R. Alex Anderson, Bina Mossman, David Nape
Contact was made. The two families exchanged information. Aluli and her Farden relatives learned that their grandfather had settled in upper New York, married a German woman and fathered four daughters.
The German-American children of Christoff Farden/Jardin eventually lost touch with their German-Hawaiian step-brother. His fate remains a mystery, but Aluli says the two branches of the family are searching for him.
Meanwhile, the Fardens can now trace their family tree back to Germany and from there to Huguenots who fled France in the 16th century (Christoff Farden/ Jardin came to Hawaii on a whaling ship).
"I've visited my grandfather's grave along the Delaware. I've seen his home and his daughters' homes. A second Farden family book could be in the works, written) by Mary Richards, who authored "Sweet Voices of Lahaina," and Ann Blackman, the daughter of one of Aluli's newly discovered cousins.
And so it is that Blackman, her husband Michael Putzel and their two children will be at the Hawaii Theatre tonight for Aluli's induction during the Third Annual Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame Concert.
"There's so much to this whole story and it's not even complete yet, but we recognize that we really are family, and we're all so happy."
Hawaiian Music
Hall of Fame Concert
