Host closes in on 35 years of sharing nostalgia on air

Harry B. Soria is one of very few people in Hawaii radio who can say he’s soon to celebrate 35 continuous years of his show.

"Territorial Airwaves" debuted on KCCN-AM 1420 on Wednesday, June 13, 1979, and its 35th anniversary will be in less than a month, on Aloha Friday, June 13.

His goal "always has been to reach the younger generation" while honoring Hawaiian music of the past, he said.

Famed radio host Skylark served as his co-host for his first seven years on the air, then Keau­miki Akui "was my sidekick" for 13 years, but he has done the show solo since then, as it changed homes due to format or ownership changes.

"Territorial Airwaves" now airs on KKNE-AM 940 at noon each Friday and is rebroadcast at 5 p.m. Sundays, but it also is available on-demand online (see link below). The site offers an archive of two years’ worth of shows, but he hopes to get that archive 10 years deep.

Back in the early days of his show, KCCN was playing 1960s and 1970s "Hawaiian Renaissance" music, songs that were "off-limits to me."

In order to be unique, he played the old stuff. Really old stuff, from 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) records, "all from the 1930s and ’40s," he said.

"Families would gather and listen together. … Some had never heard this stuff before."

With each passing day, there are new oldies he can play.

Even though the music was brand new then, "it’s now vintage, out of print, and nobody plays it on the radio anymore," Soria said. Fifty percent of what he now plays would have been verboten when he first started because it was in high rotation on the station that hosted his program.

There was a downside to the type of music he played, from back when Hawaii was a U.S. territory, because supporters of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance movement were focused on "what Hawaiians are really about and not what they were made (out) to be."

"They would lecture me on how bad it was, what I was doing, highlighting music from that black period of our history," he said.

He nevertheless forged on.

"Funny thing, once they graduated, got out and into the world and got a little older, they realized, ‘That’s my grandparents’ time, that’s my parents’ time,’ and suddenly they revered it," Soria said.

It’s unclear if Hawaii’s kama­aina value nostalgia more than people on the mainland, but it could partly explain the longevity of his show, which not only plays old music, but also features trivia about old haunts, bringing back people’s memories of simpler seasons of their lives, or the lives of their beloved kupuna.

"So many of Hawaii’s cultures are family-oriented, so we do stay together, we do revere the older generations," he said.

Listeners will see him at an event or contact him and say, "We’re finding out so much about our grandparents or parents, they never talk about this," and so "you feel like you’re, through the power of music and trivia, unlocking these walls" between generations, he said.

The Soria name has a 90-year legacy in Hawaii radio, beginning with patriarch Harry Gilman Soria, who sold advertising for some 27 years at the old KGU-AM 760, then with Harry B. Soria Sr., a broadcaster and writer of hapa-haole songs. The elder Harry B. died in 1990, but his son, interviewed for this column, had begun learning from his father and mining his extensive rec­ord collection long before his death.

"Dad explained everything in detail, my entire life," the surviving Soria said.

His music collection has grown considerably since then. "I’ve got thousands of 78s, thousands of 33s and hundreds of 45s," he said.

Many of the songs have been digitized by Soria and big-time people in the music industry, to preserve it for future generations.

By day Soria is manager of the Sony Hawaii claims department, but through his show he has been fortunate to serve as master of ceremonies at Hawaiian music events around the world, and will soon be at Carnegie Hall for the third time. He also hosts the Hawaiian music program on Hawaiian Air.

"Funny enough," when "Territorial Airwaves" started, the elder Soria told his son he needed to be not just on AM radio, but shortwave radio, to reach a larger audience way beyond Hawaii’s shores, he said.

"Then he died in 1990 and after that the Internet appeared," which gets the show all over the world, with far better sound quality than could be achieved via the NBC Red Network of long ago, on which his father appeared.

Soria wants to continue to do his show as long as he can, noting that if he makes it to 37 years, he’ll tie longtime "Hawaii Calls" host Webley Edwards, and to 40 years it will hit the same mark as "Hawaii Calls" itself.

He has enthusiastic hope for the future of Hawaiian music, that the bygone era of the genre will live on through artists such as Raiatea Helm and Mark Yama­naka, and "all these kids in their 20s and 30s. … We call them ‘new traditionalists,’" he said. "They are embracing the music from way back in the day, and they listen to my show or go to my website to get inspiration" for upcoming recordings.

"That’s probably the most gratifying thing of all, keeping the younger generations plugged in," he said.

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On the Net:

» territorialairwaves.com

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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.