Keepers of the folk music from old Hawai'i

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

Leo Nahenahe, from left: Noelani Mahoe, Lynette Paglinawan, Mona Teves and Ethelynne Teves. They have been performing together for almost 40 years. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser Tune in "A Prairie Home Companion" in Hawai'i is sold out. The first of the two concerts being recorded today will be broadcast from 6 to 8 tonight on KHPR 88.1 FM, KKUA 90.7 FM Wailuku and KANO 91.1 Hilo; and from 6 to 8 p.m. tomorrow on KIPO 89.3 FM and KIFO 1380 AM. Guests will include Ledward Ka'apana, George Kahumoku Jr., and Noelani Mahoe and the Leo Nahenahe Singers. The second concert likely will be used as part of a Hawai'i Public Radio spring fund-raising effort.

Her musical partners in the group Leo Nahenahe — Lynette Kaopuiki Paglinawan, Mona Akiona Teves and Ethelynne Soares Teves — had never heard of the popular, long-running National Public Radio show.

This afternoon, however, the quartet will be standing alongside Garrison Keillor on stage at the Hawai'i Theatre, broadcasting live.

Their unfamiliarity with the show is OK. Because Keillor and his listeners — including many here in the Islands — had probably never heard of Leo Nahenahe, either. The women got this gig just last week at the recommendation of Keith Haugen, musician, writer and KHPR radio host.

Haugen recalls the late 1960s, when Leo Nahenahe was among the most popular female singing groups in Hawai'i. The group recorded four albums. For years, their Christmas album, "Hawaiian Christmas," was the standard by which all other holiday collections were judged, he said.

When Keillor asked HPR staff to suggest someone "folksy" for the show, Haugen said, Leo Nahenahe came first to mind. "They ARE the folk singers of Hawai'i," Haugen said. The four women, who have been performing together in various configurations for almost 40 years, sing the mele of old Hawai'i, songs they learned at their elders' knees.

Even if it isn't folk music by some people's definition, it is music that is distinctly Hawaiian, rooted in the hymns Hawaiians learned at the missionaries' hands, with the classic three-part harmony so beloved here, and the poetry the Hawaiians were experts in before the missionaries came.

And Leo Nahenahe — which means soft voices or sweet voices —Êperform it in the accepted fashion: with 'ukulele, guitar and bass accompaniment, and with "an indescribable quality to it that you don't hear anywhere else," Haugen said. "When you hear Noelani Mahoe, you know she is Hawaiian."

Mahoe, 68, who worked for the Honolulu Parks and Recreation Department, and the tourist industry, collects old songs. Her pedigree in language, music and hula is impeccable: Her father was a Hawaiian speaker and she did her formal study under Samuel Elbert (co-author of a popular Hawaiian language dictionary). She studied hula with Tom Hiona, Lokalia Montgomery (to whom she was a sort of alaka'i, or assistant) and Keonaona Davilla. Wherever she traveled, she'd sing and then ask those around her to share the old songs they knew.

Paglinawan, who grew up in Pauoa and Nu'uanu, said seven of her maternal grandparents' 10 children played music. Her father could play any stringed instrument by ear, and the Moloka'i branch of his family would entertain themselves on the 45-minute drive from Halawa Valley to church in Kaunakakai by singing hymns, a capella and in perfect harmony. The music Leo Nahenahe performs, said Paglinawan, 62, "is the vintage of my parents."

Mona Teves, 73, remembers as a young girl growing up in Manoa Valley, when children would venture out after dinner and their baths to lie on the grass and sing, while members of the musical Gonsalves family played guitar and 'ukulele. Later, the Akiona home was a center for informal sing-alongs, and the children also attended nearby churches to learn to sing and play instruments.

Ethelynne Teves, 73, who married Mona's brother, was partly raised in Hilo by her grandmother, who would sing old songs when she was happy. The entire family was musical, and Teves used to watch closely when others played instruments, then come home and copy them as best she could. "I learned all on my own," she said.

In fact, none of the women have any formal musical training.

They met in the early 1960s, when Mahoe was teaching hula. She would draft her students to help her with various functions. At some point — no one can remember quite when — they adopted the name Leo Nahenahe from a song Ka'opena Wong composed for Mahoe, and began playing paid gigs in various combinations of two, three and four. But, Paglinawan said, "there's a magic about our voices when we are all together. We all feel it, a kind of vibrancy around us. We can tell when we've got it."

Besides their ensemble music, each of the women are cultural forces in their own right.

Mahoe, a fluent Hawaiian speaker, founded the Waimanalo Keiki Chorus, coordinated the first Hawaiian Music Conference in 1971 and, with Elbert, "Na Mele O Hawai'i Nei, 101 Hawaiian Songs," a classic in its 13th printing. Haugen said it's a book musicians often consult to get wording right.

Paglinawan, a social worker, taught in the graduate program at the University of Hawai'i, was the executive director of the Native Hawaiian Culture and the Arts Program (a key force in the Hawaiian Renaissance), and studied ho'oponopono, the Hawaiian method of conflict resolution, under Mary Kawena Pukui; she and her husband, Richard, are acknowledged experts in this field.

Mona Teves, a longtime horsewoman, is a recognized authority on pa'u draping — the intricate art of folding the yards-long skirts of the graceful parade riders. She served on the Aloha Festivals parade committee and worked for years with the King Kamehameha Celebration.

Ethelynne Teves has played Hawaiian music worldwide as an ambassador for the Islands employed by the then-Hawaii Visitors Bureau and Aloha Airlines.

The group is preparing four or five songs for today's show — from "Ekolu 'Iole Makapo" ("Three Blind Mice") to "Pili Me Oe," an old cowboy tune and their signature, "Sassy," about women going holoholo — and, just in case Keillor wants to sing along, an English-language number, "Does Your Heart Beat for Me?"

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2412.