fresh pacific

Precious stories! Robert Cazimero, Kumu Hula and Hawaiian music legend, conjures up the Hawaiian Renaissance, the camaraderie behind the glory days of live Hawaiian music in Waikīkī, Sunshine Crater Festivals, his Halau Na Kamalei o Lililehua, and May Days at the Shell in this casual talk story. Robert Cazimero is currently the focus of Ke Kilo Lani, in Gallery ’Iolani at Windward Community Colleg...

Aloha kakou!  For elegance, utility, and design perfection, today, we’re honoring the coconut palm. The Niu, or coconut palm, Cocos nucifera L., is our beloved Hawaiian coconut!  Stately beacons, especially at the seashore.  The niu’s slender ringed trunk ascends to a crown of fronds, some up to 9 feet long. Coconuts form at the base of the fronds, and every part of the plant is used, it’s one  of...

This program is, uncharacteristically, about me. After two shows working with Honoluluʻs unsheltered community, I made some paintings now at Bās Bookshop in Honolulu through 11/26/2023. Wednesday 11/15, Erin Yuasa and I will be there at 5:30 to talk about work, and making. She’ll demo the handsome lei she makes from repurposed t-shirts. Please do come by. I feel like making the whole night about h...

“We’re the last generation that has a chance to solve the climate crisis.” Hear a Hawaiian view of where we are and how to proceed. Kamanamaikalani Beamer applies a Hawaiian perspective to our future on this planet, incorporating environmentalism, economic justice, and indigenous knowledge. Author, thought leader, professor in the Hawaiʻinuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and with the Richardson...

Aloha kakou! In this episode we are remembering a Hawaiian leader, Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli. A family physician and servant-leader, he shares valuable lessons about how resistance bears fruit and progress can be made. Among other things, Aluli was co-founder of a movement demanding that the Navy stop using a Hawaiian island for target practice.  Right now, Oʻahu is ramping up efforts to protect i...

 🌱Trying Plant medicine🌿 FRESH PACIFIC podcast looks at the possibilities of psychedelic therapies in Hawaiʻi. “I have certainly seen depression rise, suicide thinking go up, Iʻve had some of my long term substance abuse patients that had been sober, alcoholics, for a long time have relapsed. Iʻve been dealing with a lot of increased demand for psychiatric services. My colleagues around Hon...

Henry Kapono Kaʻaihue is a giant in Hawaiʻi, his music was on the leading edge of the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970ʻs. He opened the door for contemporary local music in the 1970's. With partner, Cecilio Rodrigues, C&K provided the soundtrack for an era. The music still conjures good times in Hawaiʻi for generations of people. I am not licensed to play the music on this podcast, but here’s...

Welcome to a different reality! Hear Kahu Roddy Kawailualani Kawehi Akau of Moanalua in a free flowing interview about Kapūkakī, Red Hill, and the surrounding Moanalua ahupuaʻa. He throws off ideas and cultural references like sparks as he explains the cultural and spiritual significance of the area. A few days ago officials found fuel chemicals in a monitoring well outside the Navy’s Kapūkakī/Red...

Aloha mai kakou! Contemporary Honolulu is such a vibrant mess! In this episode, you'll meet a musician who blends cultures and influences in a way that really gets at it. Multi-instrumentalist Ted de Oliveira is a performer, composer and music producer under the name: FRNT BZNZZ. Ted's dad is legendary percussionist Carlos de Oliveira---who once bested 499 others to be crowned the champion Pandeir...

Epic sunsets, sparkly surf, thatʻs summertime! Waikīkī stories this week on FRESH PACIFIC. Sit back and enjoy surf historian John Clark describing Waikīkī in terms of its water flow and its people. He describes the pivotal Ala Wai dredging, then the hotels starting in the 1900ʻs. The beach boys! WWII, then movie stars and statehood. Throughout, the amazing lacy surf breaks that attracted aliʻi (ro...

"There is no Can't, only How." Royce has been living on the streets in Chinatown for 22 years. She lives in a wheelchair now, youʻll hear how she got there. Sheʻs always brightly dressed, smiling, with flowers in her hair. We were first introduced by a wound care specialist who was treating Royce's recurring leg sores. Last evening, we met just off Hotel Street, sitting on the stone wall above Wao...

Lynching in Hawaiʻi--it's true, and few people even know it happened. Itʻs part of the weighty legacy we carry from plantation days in the islands. Thanks for sitting in on this episode with a lot of angles. 1889 seems so long ago, but this recent visit with Patsy Iwasaki reminds me that the famines, migrations, and worker exploitation we see around the world today happened before. Here. Universit...

Firsthand account right here! Honoluluʻs Chinatown was hopping with great players at Two Jacks, the Swing Club, and Brown Derby, where Louis Armstrong performed. In this interview, drummer Harold Chang talks about how military bands changed the scene, and how Hawaiian swing evolved. Pua Almeida, Richard Kauhi, Sonny Kamaka, Martin Denny, Chang played with the greats as part of Hawaiʻiʻs pumping mu...

Still buzzinʻ about the 59th Merrie Monarch Hula Competition in Hilo! Truth is, especially since the Covid pandemic, Hula masters in Hawaiʻi are looking to the future. In this episode of fresh pacific, we see the stirrings of a movement. Meet Maui Kumu Hula Hōkūlani Holt, former Director of Hawaiian programs at Maui Community College, first Cultural Programs Director at Maui Arts and Cultural Cent...

Post-pandemic, or just ʻcuz, toqa designs blow your eyes out with color and make you feel great. Aiala Rickard and Isabel Sicat source deadstock fabric in the Philippines. Thatʻs perfectly good fabric that is no longer produced, so every season has a finite amount of raw material. Toqa shirts, hats, blouses, bags, wraps, dresses, etc. feel great to wear. To cut waste, everything is made to order i...

Heading south from Honolulu today to Australia---like most places, a land still reckoning with its history. In 1972, four aboriginal Australian men set up umbrellas outside the old Parliament House in Canberra. They called it the Aboriginal Tent Embassy because they felt treated like aliens in their own homeland and were demanding land rights. That protest mushroomed, footage was viewed in 86 coun...

Aloha mai kakou! This podcast series is kicking off with four artists featured in the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022, "Pacific Century: E Hoʻomau no Moananuiakea." HT22 continues through May 8, 2022 at seven venues in Honolulu, so weʻve got to get cooking! Today, we meet featured artist, Beatriz Santiago Munoz, who lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She exhibits her art internationally. The works a...

Haunani Kay Trask (1949-2021) was a Hawaiian leader, an intellectual, an organizer, and a poet. She is a featured artist in the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022 at the Honolulu Museum of Art through May 8, 2022. In that collaboration, Trask provides commentary for Ed Greevyʻs explosive photographs of wrenching land, access, and identity struggles in Hawaiʻi through the 1970ʻs. With the publication of her bo...