Lena Machado Week

You already know I am crazy about Hawaiian music. But how crazy am I? Already in the middle of tributes to Alvin Kaleolani Isaacs and Charles K.L. Davis, what would be crazier than launching a week-long tribute to Lena Machado at the same time?

I call it a “moral imperative” because Machado is without a doubt one of the most prolific and influential composers in the history of Hawaiian music. But through a comedy of bad timing, Ho`olohe Hou has never honored her. (I tend to honor Hawaiian music artists on or around their birthdays, and Ho`olohe Hou – for a variety of reasons – has never been fully operational in the month of October in its nearly eight-year history.) When examining Auntie Lena – as with Alvin Kaleolani Isaacs, Irmgard Aluli, John Kamealoha Almeida, and a scant few others – we have to examine two aspects of her musical career – the performer and the composer. The composer has been well chronicled by Lena’s hānai daughter Pi`olani Motta in the book Hawai`i’s Songbird (an essential read for any fan of Hawaiian music or Lena Machado). But except for one compilation CD which only covers two brief periods in her lengthy recording career, there is no other material chronicling Lena Machado the performer and recording artist. That is a wrong Ho`olohe Hou aims to correct this week during which we will offer up rare recordings from all but the earliest part of Lena’s performing and recording career.

Join us here starting today, October 16, and all week long – sometimes twice a day – as Ho`olohe Hou pays tribute to a seminal figure in the evolution of Hawaiian music.

This is Ho`olohe Hou. Keep listening…