COURTESY PHOTO
Children get ready to play the kaekeeke, which are pipes known
in English as "singing bamboo."

Kids feel spirit of ancient
Hawaii in music

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By Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com

NORTH KOHALA, Hawaii >> The "singing bamboo" of ancient Hawaii have a haunting sound that carries on the wind, says High Priestess Leimomi Mookini Lum.

More than 600 fourth-grade students will hear the sound and use bamboo instruments to make music Friday, when the annual Children's Day takes place at Mookini Luakini Heiau on the North Kohala coast of the Big Island.

Lum is the kahuna nui, the guardian priestess of the Hawaiian temple, which has been under her family's guidance for 1,500 years.

In 1978 she transformed the rock-walled enclosure, once a place of human sacrifices, to a spiritual and cultural learning center, especially for the children of Hawaii.

At last year's Children's Day, she introduced fourth-graders to kaekeeke, bamboo pipes of different diameters varying in length from 2 to 4 feet. The children, as did the temple musicians in old days, hold one in each hand and thump them on the ground.

A North Kohala resident made about 200 kaekeeke for Lum. Under the guidance of a docent, the children will use about 50 of them and make them "sing."

It almost didn't happen this year. Busing students from all over the island and flying six docents from Honolulu to join five from the Big Island costs money that Lum didn't have until just a few weeks ago.

"Some little angel took care of us," Lum says with a bit of mystery. The angel wishes to remain anonymous, she says.

As many as 2,500 children have visited the heiau on previous Children's Days. The number has been declining, in part because air fares have become an obstacle for off-island children.

And the late arrival of the angel left little time this year for schools to get parents' permission and arrange for insurance, Lum says.

Others supplemented the anonymous angel. Hawaii County donated use of its buses, asking payment only for drivers. McDonald's of Waimea donated punch; the heiau's location on the dry side of North Kohala can be windy and hot.

It can be an eerie environment, one in which Lum teaches children's minds and spirits. "They feel it," she said.

And on Friday they will also hear it.