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Hawaii's Brooke Alexander says
By Rosemarie Bernardo
her easygoing island nature was
key to landing the spot on
CNN's 'World Beat'
Star-BulletinFOR two years, CNN "World Beat" host Brooke Alexander tried to convince her producers to do a segment on Hawaiian music. But her producers, automatically associating Hawaiian music with Don Ho, "weren't biting," she said.
Then opportunity came around. While one of Alexander's producers, Brian Streicher, was interviewing George Winston in Atlanta, Winston kept talking about slack-key music, which he promotes through his label, Dancing Cat Records. Streicher found out the 11th annual slack-key festival in Hilo July 16 was happening close to the time of Alexander's high school reunion, July 21 to 23.
So local-born Alexander found herself on her way home to attend her 20th Maryknoll School reunion and to feature local artists in her music program. She expects her feature to air the third week of August. The program will start with Bob Brozman talking about the history of slack key, followed by performances from Keola Beamer and Ledward "Led" Kaapana, who learned how to play simply by watching other musicians. Also featured will be musician and songwriter Dennis Kamakahi.
"It just all came together," she said. "For me, being a Hawaii girl and always wanting to actually show off my roots, I'm very excited about it."
Born and raised in Kailua, she grew up listening to slack-key at family parties and luau. "I think slack key is something that needs to respected, protected and preserved throughout the generations."Living in a brownstone on New York's upper west side with her cat Beau, she said her job requires her to travel to exotic places exploring new kinds of music, but "I miss Hawaii everyday. I try to live Hawaii everyday."
Her 1993 white Ford Explorer bears a "Live Aloha" bumper sticker.
"In Hawaii, people have a different flow to things," she said. "Every time I come home, the pidgin comes back."
While she's here, she plans to buy two pounds of li hing mui from Kay's Crackseed at Manoa Marketplace for her friends in New York who are also from Hawaii.
Breaking into show biz
At a slim, statuesque 5-foot-10, Alexander entered her first pageant, Miss Young International, while she was a junior at Maryknoll. An avid basketball player, her main worry at the time was the possibility of missing the pre-season basketball kick-off, she said. "I was able to do both."Representing Hawaii in the 1981 Miss World America competition, Alexander, at age 18, placed No. 7 out of 60 women. Presented with opportunities for modeling, commercial work and acting, she moved to New York that same year and started appearing in more than 100 commercials and had guest-starring roles in such TV series as "Blossom," "Love & War" and "One Life to Live."
She spent two-and-a-half years playing Samantha Markham on CBS's daytime soap opera "As the World Turns," winning the Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Female Newcomer in 1995. Then, she said, "It was time to see what the next step would be."
That's when she received a call to audition as a host for CNN's World Beat. A natural risk taker, she said, "Throw me in the deep end and I'll figure it out."
Part of her audition process was to do a mock interview with Elton John. After her audition, CNN immediately made her an offer.
"It's all in the roll of the dice," she said, crediting her local roots with her ease in interacting with people. "I consider myself a very lucky person to be able to combine my skill, background and on-camera work with my love of music.
"I'm meeting some of the top players in the field," said Alexander, who counts members of the group Bon Jovi among her friends.
"You get invited to some really cool performances," she said. Last October, Sting invited her to Las Vegas for the filming of his music video "Desert Rose."
"We got to hang out with him for three days," she said of the man she idolized when she was a teen-ager. "It was really cool.
"He's very intelligent. You get a very strong sense of his spiritual depth.
"You get lucky sometimes. You can hit a chord of people."
Her all-time favorite interview subject was David Bowie, who she spoke to last August. "Bowie was incredibly personable, very funny, very intelligent," she said. "He just pulls you right in."
On the other hand, her worst interview was with Lou Reed at last year's Woodstock festival. "There was at least six yards between us," said Alexander, adding helicopters flying overhead drowned out their voices.
"In his answers, Reed was throwing curve balls," she said. "I couldn't pick up the curve balls because I couldn't even hear them."
Jewel was also a difficult interview. Alexander said she was unresponsive and had an attitude.
She's found that in such cases, silence can be your friend. "I dropped my head to the left and cast my eyes downward. It took her about 10 to 15 seconds before she started talking and being a lot more open.
"What they don't realize is the camera's on them, and they'd better pick the ball up otherwise they end up looking bad," she said.
Later, she found out that on the day she interviewed Jewel, the artist had been slapped with a $10 million dollar lawsuit.
A global ambassador
"The best compliment that I get from people who've seen our show is that they always learn something new. There's an educational element."All the musicians love our show," she said. "So we're really grateful for that.
"We're not MTV. We're not VH-1. And yes, we are talking about an entertainment genre as far as music is entertainment. But there's another side.
"There're people behind it and what they're about and what they're doing and how it affects us and the rest of the world.
"We have complete opposite extremes of the musical spectrum. We've got these great world artists that have not had the benefit of a Western movement like MTV or VH-1 to sort of shop their work or promote them," said Alexander.
She has no plans to move on soon, having found that groove where life and career mesh.
"Some kids memorized stats on baseball cards, I used to take in all information from album covers. I used to read all the liner notes."
Although she hopes to return to Hawaii someday, for now she is content with the opportunity to promote Hawaii's music through her program.
"I like to think that I bring my own little aloha wherever I go. I tend to bring the Hawaiian spirit with me."
ON THE AIR
"World Beat": At 6 to 6:30 p.m. Saturdays, repeating at 10:30 p.m. Saturdays and 9:30 a.m. Sundays on CNN
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