Staying true
to his soul
"I never got into playing reggae music for finances," remarks Butch Helemano, the Hawaiian reggae icon whose recently released CD, "Soul Reggae," his 18th album overall, stands as testament to his dedication to his chosen genre. Though closing in on his third decade of music making, the island troubador has held fast to his career in reggae, through slim and bountiful times. "You have to make a decision: Are you in this because you love this music or is it just to make money? Well, I'm the former. I've been playing reggae and had doors slammed in my face in the last 30 years."
'Reggae in the Valley'
Featuring Butch Helemano and FriendsWhere: Pikake Pavilion, Waimea Falls Park, 59-864 Kamehameha Highway
When: 7 p.m. tomorrow
Admission: $10 to $20, 18 and over
Call: 638-8511
He's seen his music go from relative obscurity to commercial juggernaut as Hawaiians gradually adopted the sound as their own. These days, reggae and reggae-flavored ditties make up a sizable chunk of Hawaii's island music-formatted radio station playlists. In 1990 and 1991, due in no small part to his acceptance by local radio, he sold close to 100,000 units in the islands. But, as Helemano notes, "You can never expect to be on top forever."
While sales here have somewhat cooled in recent years, Helemano has found greener pastures abroad, in Brazil of all places. As Helemano understands it, visiting Brazilian surfers picked up on his music, returned home with it, and just as in Hawaii a decade earlier, positive word-of-mouth led to airplay on local stations. "It was a grassroots effort," said Helemano. "When I went there, we played in a town called Porto Alegre and there were 10,000 people that came there to see me. Almost all of them were singing my songs and they don't even speak a lick of English."
Helemano would love to see that kind of turnout Saturday for "Reggae in the Valley," the official CD release party for "Soul Reggae" at Waimea Falls Park's Pikake Pavillion. Performing alongside Helemano are like-minded reggae acts THC, Humble Soul, Dube Remedy, Kona & Adam, MC Rastafar I Haile Israel and DJ Liloa of Pacific Sounds OuterNational.
While airplay would contribute considerably to the success of his new album, during the making of "Soul Reggae," Helemano refused to kowtow to the industry norm of recording cover songs to achieve greater accessibility. In writing over 240 compositions in his career, he has recorded only four cover songs, as concessions to financiers' demands. "When an artist buys a piece of canvas to paint on, the store doesn't tell him what to paint," he says. "and this has been the problem with commercial business endeavors I've gotten into in the past."
Reggae artists new to the business can learn from Helemano, who is quick to share his views with aspiring musicians. "I tell them to walk into any record store, whether it's Jelly's or Tower Records, and look at the Top 10 in the window," he states. "Those are people who are making a lot of money and are on the radio all the time, but what about the full shelves of stock in those stores? Those people aren't reaping those rewards, but do you think they quit being who and what they are because they're not in the front window? No. I'm 53 years old. I've been playing reggae music since I was 26 and I plan on doing it for a while."
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