![]() ![]() Soon thereafter his parents got jobs at Steamboats, a Waikiki nightclub that was at the center of the Hawaiian music renaissance. Family gatherings were musical affairs: his parents played and sang, and his uncle Moe Keale was a ukulele virtuoso, who was a member of Eddie Kamae’s legendary Sons of Hawaii band.Īt 11, Iz was accompanying his older brother Skippy on Waikiki tourist catamarans, playing hapa haole tunes for mainlanders as the sun set over the Pacific. The spirit of performance that overtook Iz that night was one honed through tens of thousands of hours of music, starting when he learned to play the uke at the age of six. Then he settled down, leaned into the mic, dedicated the song to the beloved Hawaiian musician Gabby Pahinui, and began strumming and oohing. He waited patiently while Bertosa called building security to find a chair that could support his weight. When Iz showed up, clad in sandals and an aloha shirt the size of a tent, he had nothing with him but that Martin uke and a song he was dying to play. He’d had a friend call Bertosa and beg for late-night studio time. He was using coke and meth heavily in those days, and while the engineer, Milan Bertosa, could barely keep his eyes open, Iz was raring to go. He cut the song in 1988, in one take, in a downtown Honolulu studio where he’d never played, with an engineer he’d never met, at 3:30 in the morning. ![]() The story behind this particular medley illustrates how much simply playing-in shows, at cookouts, and in one fateful impromptu recording session-was in Iz’s blood. And with the success of his “ Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” medley (released in 1993, and later featured on several TV and film soundtracks), Iz helped spark the ukulele renaissance in contemporary music. Iz played the occasional bum note-but in his nearly 20 years with the beloved group Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau, and in his short, but potent, career as a bandleader on his own, he wielded that Martin 1T with flair and good humor, coaxing songs from it that defined Hawaiian music for a generation of islanders. Even late in his life, singing and strumming with an oxygen tank by his side, his playing stood up to the virtuosos who joined Iz onstage, including guitarist Roland Cazimero and keyboardist Gaylord Holomalia. Kamakawiwo’ole-known to his fans simply as Iz-was intuitive and fluid on the ukulele. ![]() Set against his massive frame-by the time of his death in 1997, he topped 757 pounds-Kamakawiwo’ole’s ’60s-style Martin tenor might easily have been mistaken for a toy or a punch line, but in his capable hands, it was the perfect instrument to elicit the intricate flourishes that Hawaiian music requires. The tiny ukulele never looked so small as when it was played by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. ![]()
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