FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Big Mountain is, clockwise from bottom front, keyboardist Richard "Goofy" Campbell, vocalist and percussionist James McWhinney, vocalist and trumpeter Kevin Batchelor, vocalist and guitarist Quino McWhinney and drummer Paul KasticK.

Culture important
to artist

Big Mountain man
has praise for Hawaiians

---

By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

Quino McWhinney is sitting on the thick white carpet of a penthouse suite in Waikiki, surveying the urban sprawl of greater Honolulu, when the stark peaks and ridges of the Waianae mountain range catches his eye.

"I know a lot of the poor Hawaiians live over (on the Waianae coast), but why are they the proudest ones? What is it about that that causes so much art and music that defines the whole idea of being Hawaiian to come from there? Society has taken everything else away from them, but they still have their identity," he says.

McWhinney, spokesman and sole remaining founding member of Big Mountain, is an articulate and complex man capable of speaking at length on topics ranging from Jamaican cuisine to the reasons why Hawaii's self-styled island music stars face such long odds of hitting it big on the mainland.

Big Mountain Where: Kapono's, Aloha Tower Marketplace When: 7 p.m. today and tomorrow Tickets: $15 advance, $18 at the door (21 and over only) Call: 536-2161

"Hawaii and the mainland are completely different markets. In Hawaii, people like major keys and happy music, and they generally support our kind of music. But in the U.S., where the general population is not really focused on reggae the way they are here, you have to approach it a lot differently," McWhinney explained on Monday while his younger brother, James, and three other members of the group -- Richard "Goofy" Campbell, Kevin "KB" Batchelor and Paul KasticK -- worked on tracks for an upcoming Big Mountain album in another room.

The band has plenty of new music to share with their fans at their two weekend concerts at Kapono's. Hawaii may still be discovering Big Mountain's "Cool Breeze" album of 2001, but the follow-up album, "New Day," which McWhinney describes as "a lot rootsier, a lot darker and deeper," is ready for release.

McWHINNEY makes it clear during our conversation that he considers the cultural aspects of his music important, both in bringing elements of his Mexican-American heritage into reggae music, and also in learning more about cultures that exist outside the U.S. mainstream.

"It's interesting that, as different ethnicities in this society, the sort of identities that we take on to protect ourselves. I see Hawaiians as being in that situation, where they have such a rich culture that they've been able to maintain through hard work and struggle, and yet they are so good at being able to live within this dominant American system.

"And yet, the system is still a bit of a mystery to Hawaiian people the way that it is to people of color on the mainland ... but the idea of identity is really important. We have to always attack all of the contradictions that we have in our lives, whether it's ethnic or political or genderwise. These are the things that we need to be exploring as artists."

But it's been a rocky road for Big Mountain to maneuver on as artists. After getting a major-label record deal with Warner Bros. -- and the subsequent album "Unity" selling 2 million copies worldwide -- conflicts arose big time. McWhinney says they stemmed from "a difference in philosophy" between the label, various band members and their manager.

Those differences ended up, by 1996, with McWhinney as the only surviving member of the original lineup. Morale was so low that the group did whatever the label reps told them to do when they recorded the final album under their contract. To add insult to injury, the label didn't even bother to release it.

So, seven years and many hard knocks later, Big Mountain is again doing music on their own terms.

"Getting to this point took a long time in the sense of getting Big Mountain's business together ... and getting back to where we were before all the (trouble) started. But we feel confident now, even though we have a very small staff and we don't have a lot of money, but we basically make all the phone calls we can make ... and, for the most part, we're depending on our ability to talk on the phone and get people behind the product. We're gonna be consistent and just work twice as hard as anybody else."

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