Kahulanui’s retro stylings get tuned up for Grammys

Lena Naipo, leader of the retro-Hawaiian group Kahulanui, was on stage at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai on the Kona-Kohala Coast early last month when he got the news: Kahulanui had made the final ballot for the 2014 Grammy Awards. "Hula Ku‘i," the group’s debut album, would be competing against works by four mainland artists in the regional roots music category.

"It was definitely a surprise. I sat there going, like, ‘Wow! OK, now how are we going to get there?’"

Naipo’s zesty arrangements of classic Hawaiian and hapa-haole songs evoke memories of the Hawaiian swing music of the ’20s and ’30s and set Kahulanui’s "Hula Ku‘i" apart from every other local release of the past year. Now, thanks to the Grammy nod, their music is getting a listen from musicians and fans around the world.

"I’ve been getting Facebook messages and emails from Grammy members that just adore what we’re doing — jazz enthusiasts, swing enthusiasts — it’s cool," Naipo said.

Kahulanui — Naipo, Patrick Eskildsen, Robert Duke Tatom and Tim Taylor — came out of the Big Island in 2012 with a fresh take on the music of the Territorial Era (1900-1959). Part acoustic but arranged with a horn section backing traditional Hawaiian string instruments, the group’s music defies easy categorization.

"I listened to the music of between the ’20s and ’50s and created something different of my own for today," Naipo said. "If I did it exactly the way it was done (then), I don’t know if it would fit for this time and day."

Naipo belongs to a family with three generations of professional musicians. Born Rodgers Lolena Naipo and raised in Wai­ma­nalo, he grew up listening to stories about his grandfather Robert Kahulanui Naipo, a member of the Royal Hawaiian Band in the ’20s and ’30s, and watching his father, Rodgers L.L. Naipo Sr., who worked with Genoa Keawe in addition to leading his own group of musicians.

Naipo learned at an early age that he was better suited to playing music than school. At the age of 14, already a professional musician, he was allowed to take time off from school to work with a Hawaiian Airlines promotional group. He subsequently became a full-time airline employee and toured much of the United States, Europe and other parts of the world playing Hawaiian music and promoting the islands.

He eventually settled on the Big Island, recording two albums as leader of Hawaiians Unlimited in the 1990s. He also recorded two songs, as Rodgers (Lena) Naipo, for "Hula! Big Island Style," a Palm Records compilation album that won the Na Hoku Hanohano Award for compilation album in 2005.

HAWAIIAN music hasn’t had a Grammy category of its own since 2011, so making it to the final ballot in the regional roots category — comprising Hawaiian, polka, cajun, zydeco and Native American music — is a significant accomplishment. Two other Hawaiian music albums have been finalists: entries by George Kahu­moku in 2012 and Wendall Kekau­oha in 2013.

Fourteen other Hawaiian music albums, many by more well-known names, were on the preliminary 2014 ballot. The other finalists along with Kahulanui are the Hot 8 Brass Band, Zachary Richard, Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience, and Joe Tohonnie Jr.

The regional roots album Grammy winner will be announced during the untelevised pre-show presenta- tions before the big live show from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, airing on a delayed basis in Hawaii at 7 p.m. on CBS. (Live streaming of the pre-show awards will begin at 11 a.m. at www.grammy.com Opens in a new tab.)

Naipo and the other members of Kahulanui will be in L.A. just in case. So will "Hula Ku‘i" producer Charles Michael Brotman of Palm Records.

The trip to the Grammys is Brotman’s third since 2005, when he made history as the producer of "Slack Key Guitar, Volume 2," the compilation album that was the 2005 Grammy winner in the now-gone Hawaiian music album category. He returned to L.A. the following year to support one of that year’s Hawaii Grammy finalists, slack-key master Elmer "Sonny" Lim Jr., whose album, "Slack Key Guitar: The Artistry of Sonny Lim," was another Palm Records release.

Brotman attended the Grammys last year as one of the artists whose work was included on the soundtrack album for "The Descendants," an also-ran for the category of compilation soundtrack for visual media.

Brotman’s involvement in Hawaii’s music goes back several decades. He’s been a Hawaii resident for almost 40 years and has lived on the Big Island since 1990. He and his sister, Jody Brotman, co-founded Palm Records and built Lava Tracks Recording Studio in 1997. Since then he’s been active as a solo recording artist, as a member of the group Kohala and as a record producer.

"I’m doing a lot of music for film and TV in all genres," Brotman said. "I worked with production libraries on the mainland and Europe, so I’m busy with that stuff all the time, and then pretty much everybody on the Big Island, all the artists on the Big Island, are coming through here. They’re in and out of here all the time. I work a lot with Sonny Lim and the Lim Family, and many other musicians here on the Big Island, and then we get some artists from Japan every now and then come in and do a project. It’s a smattering of stuff but I’m busy; I’m in here every day making music."

Brotman "discovered" Kahulanui when he and his wife had dinner at a restaurant where Naipo and two other members of the group happened to be playing.

"They were doing contemporary Hawaiian music, not the stuff that’s on the record. They sounded great, and they really had the crowd going. I told them they should have a CD. I said, ‘You could sell one to everyone here in the restaurant.’"

Brotman’s initial suggestion was that they do a "live" recording — a straight re-creation of what he’d heard them do at the restaurant. Then he heard Naipo "messing around," singing in an older gutteral style and playing music that was completely different from the group’s restaurant material.

"We actually took a right-hand turn at that point and started going down the road that the album ended up at," Brotman recalled. "It actually didn’t start out that way, and we had several conversations about ‘should we really do this?’ because we thought it was pretty amazing stuff but it wasn’t what people were listening to. We all felt very strongly that it was worth doing."

Naipo decided somewhere along the line that a name change for the group, previously known as Hawaiians Unlimited, was also in order.

Brotman says Naipo is the foundation of Kahulanui and its distinctive sound.

"A lot of the thing that’s driving the sound of the group, and the reason why people are responding so much is because Lena is such a colorful character," he said. "What he’s doing with his voice and the interpretation of these classic songs is really fresh.

"Even though it’s retro, there’s something fresh about it."