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Henry Kapono is busy with many projects these days,
and not all of them have to do with his music.

'The Quiet One' is making
noise on many fronts

Review: A simple story,
told with great charm

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By John Berger
Special to the Star-Bulletin

ENRY Kapono Kaaihue was billed as "The Righteous One" when he performed solo in Waikiki in the early '70s and became "The Quiet One" when he and Cecilio Rodriguez were defining a new sound in island music as Cecilio & Kapono. Kaaihue is generally known as Henry Kapono these days, but a look at his diverse projects makes "The Multifaceted One" an appropriate new nickname:

Recording Artist: "Evolution of Poi, " released in October is his 13th solo album .

Author: His first book, "A Beautiful Hawaiian Day," is one of the year's most memorable local books for children.

Celebrity Guest Artist: Although not a Kamehameha Schools graduate, Kapono was enlisted along with several Kamehameha grads to add star power to the recent "Na Keiki O Kamehameha" album.

Good Citizen: Kapono helped out the Hawai'i Millennium Commission when he agreed to record a new version of "Home in the Islands" with Melveen Leed and Keali'i Reichel as the theme song for the Commission's "Hawai'i, Come Home" campaign.

Composer: A new song --written but as yet untitled -- will be heard on "Baywatch Hawaii" as a key romantic story line plays out.

Entrepreneur: His new nightclub encompassing the site of the Pier Bar and part of Studio 1 is scheduled to open in the Aloha Tower Marketplace in late March or early April. He is also active in e-commerce through his Web site (www.henrykapono.com), marketing his music to places it isn't otherwise available.

And there's more. Although he's never been a pop showroom song-and-dance type of guy, Kapono will be one of the "boyz" guesting with the Local Divas at the Sheraton Waikiki tomorrow night.

"I take (artistic) risks all the time and it's going to be a fun project," Kapono said of guesting with the Divas. One of the "risks" is being paired with Leed, as "Da Tita" is fast with the quips and Kapono is still generally a man of few words on stage. But the pairing makes sense because of their shared experience with the "Hawai'i, Come Home" project.

The CD-single was released in September with discount offers good through the end of this month. "The whole idea was to entice people who had moved away to come back, and so I did it in a more romantic way and I think everybody else felt it that way too. It was really easy," Kapono says.

And then there's the new book. While the CD-single came out of Kapono's public visibility, the tale of Kaleo and the mysterious boy she meets reflects the stories he used to make up with his daughters, Momi and Kaleo.

"I'd bring up an idea and then we'd name the characters and the locations as we went. After a while we had several stories and we'd start fine-tuning them. It was only our stories and they were a part of them."

"I never know what to expect in anything that I do. I just go for the best, but I wanted it to be simple and not preachy," Kapono says of the strong, positive response to the book.

He is quietly optimistic about sharing some of the other stories he and his daughters created -- perhaps even "Dreamerboy," the story he first shared when he recorded it with the late Rap Reiplinger almost 20 years ago. One of his dream projects is redoing "Dreamerboy" either as a book or an animated feature.

And but that's not all Kapono has going on these days. He tapes a segment in January for a VH-1 series scheduled to air in March or April. He's expanding his Web site and working on a cybercast project. He is also still supporting the cultural and political issues he first addressed publicly almost 10 years ago with "Broken Promise" and then with the "KAPONO" album that commemorated the centennial of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.

"I'd rather stand up as one person for everybody than have everybody lose out. In a lot of ways it hurt me (with the local radio stations) but I know I did that right thing and that's what matters to me."

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A simple story, told
with great charm

"A Beautiful Hawaiian Day,"
by Henry Kapono (Mutual Publishing)

Beautiful artwork enhances a simple but charming story in fresh and colorful style as Henry Kapono makes his debut as an author of books for children with "A Beautiful Hawaiian Day." The moral of the story is that we must all work together to preserve the beauty that remains here. The story is simple and easy to follow: A young Hawaiian girl named Kaleo finds a magic sea shell and then meets a mysterious boy who lives with his mother in a deserted valley.

Kaleo compares the beauty of the pristine area with the tall buildings, pollution, crime and homeless derelicts in the Hawaii she knows and starts to cry. She wants to stay with her new friend and his mother but realizes that without her own family her life would not be complete. The boy makes it possible for her to return home and asks her to remember him with the phrase "Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka Aina I Ka Pono" ("The Life of the Land is Perpetuated In Righteousness").

The information on the book cover explains that the boy is Kamehameha and that he grew up in hiding in such a valley. The boy isn't identified as Kamehameha in the story itself but it's his message rather than his identity that is obviously the key to the story. Kailua artist Susan Szabo's surrealistic art completes the package by making the story visually interesting. A great kids' book inall respects!

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John Berger

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