Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Conjugacion releases
music video

"TC-2000" Tony C, The Mountain Apple Company

By John Berger
Special to the Star-Bulletin

---

Tony Conjugacion wasn't the first to combine Hawaiian lyrics with contemporary electronic percussion and sequencing but his "TC 2000" album is one of the year's landmark local albums. He takes the concept far beyond the precedent-setting 1997 "Native Grooves" album of Freddy Von Paraz and kumu hula Kawaikapuokalani Hewett as director Will Harper and executive producer Jon de Mello add a stark and striking post-modern visual interpretation of a song from the "TC 2000" album.

The annotation explains that "TC 2000" perpetuates a Hawaiian tradition in which songs and chants were created to commemorate the physical act by which men and women create offspring. The annotation does not include the Hawaiian lyrics and an English translation but the booklet from the previously released CD reveals that the song, "Pohutukawa," speaks of the burning felt for a "child of Aotearoa." Choreographer Peter Rockford-Espiritu explains in a "Behind the Music of TC 2000" interview that the video version portrays Conjugacion as an outsider "trying to get the women."

The interviews and images put "Tony C" and "TC 2000" in context as a bold and imaginative blending of Hawaiian tradition and 21st century urban culture.

Click for online
calendars and events.