Reviving ACOUSTIC HAWAIIAN MUSIC and strolling musicians performing requests at table-side are two island traditions that are hard to find at any price in Honolulu these days. Puamana is reviving that old-time Hawaiian hospitality at Don Ho's each Monday.
old Hawaii
hospitality
Puamana revives the presence
of strolling musicians
at Don Ho'sBy John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com"We have a very Hawaiian gift, which is, we come to your table and sing very Hawaiian songs. It's the way our mom taught us," said Mihana Aluli Souza. "We get to share in a much more intimate way, and we get to sing three-part harmony -- bass, guitar, ukulele and harmony. We do have some contemporary songs, but we also get to share the romantic songs."
Souza and her sister, Aima McManus, are performing Hawaiian music in the style defined by their mother, Irmgard Farden Aluli, when she founded Puamana as a quartet more than 20 years ago. The group -- Irmgard, her two daughters and their cousin Luana McKenny -- played traditional Hawaiian music at the old Willows restaurant for 14 years. Shortly after the restaurant shut down in 1993 (reopening under new ownership in 1999), they started playing on Aloha Fridays aboard the Navatek. Aluli, 89, was an active member of the group until recently.
Where: Don Ho's, Aloha Tower Marketplace Puamana
When: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Mondays
Cost: No cover; dinner and pupu service available
Call: 528-0807
PUAMANA now performs as a trio, but don't expect to see the same three musicians every week. This past Monday, the lineup featured Souza, McManus and Douglas Tolentino (a distant relative through ancestors in common through Irmgard's mother's line). The week before last, Pakala Fernandes, another of the Aluli girls' Farden family cousins, subbed for McManus on bass. Souza is also the trio's dancer when a hula is appropriate.
The group's repertoire of more than 400 songs consists primarily of Hawaiian and hapa-haole standards such as "Blue Hawaii" and "Hanalei Moon," but the trio did a great job this past Monday with a request for "Tiny Bubbles." They performed it in a traditional-style hapa-haole arrangement.
"I don't have any qualms about singing that," Souza said. "Hawaiian songs, to me, are songs that sing of place, as well as Hawaiian (in language). As much as we love to sing Hawaiian songs, I really love to sing those songs, too, because they're part of the Hawaii that I love."
That said, local folks are more likely to request a song with ties to the Farden family. Irmgard alone has written about 400 songs.
"Puamana," which describes the old Farden family home in Lahaina, is a perfect choice. Nobody does it better or with more personal relevance than the group that is the home's namesake. Souza provides the English narration that accompanies the original Hawaiian lyrics.
"If (the audience is) from the islands, generally they know we're part of the Fardens, and they know our family song is 'Puamana,'" Souza said.
"If someone just asks us to do one of our favorites, we'll do one of our family songs. One of the ones that we do the most is the Hawaiian love song that Mommy wrote, 'E Maliu Mai,' because for most people who come here, the islands equal romance."
THERE ARE PLACES in town where the music is great but it costs the price of a gourmet dinner per person to enjoy it. Serving dinner is obviously what it's about at Don Ho's as well, but it's possible to sit at the bar and enjoy Puamana for nothing more than the price of a drink or two and maybe something from the pupu menu.
The trio plays for everyone in the place, and that includes the people out at the little bar in the shack outside the main restaurant. Add the view and the ambience, and it's almost like stepping back into a more appealing era.
Souza said that's the way it should be.
"There are so few places like this. The waterfront is like old Honolulu, and I love coming to old Honolulu. I've loved Waikiki ever since I was little, but it's nice to have other places that welcome local people as well as visitors as beautifully as this place does. It's not teeming with thousands of people, (and) it's like a special little place."
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