FRIDAY-SATURDAY

Korean festival to be headlined by K-pop duo

Korean food, dance, art, culture and entertainment are in the spotlight at the 15th Annual Korean Festival presented by the Hawaii Korean Chamber of Commerce. Organizers expect over 30,000 people to attend the event, which takes place at the Honolulu Hale Civic Grounds.

The festival will include taekwondo and traditional fan and drum dances, Korean cooking lessons and the ever-popular kim chee and jajangmyun (noodle) eating contests. Epicures who want to savor the cuisine can explore the product tents where kalbi (barbecued short ribs), tteokbokki (small rice cakes in spicy sauce) and mandoo (dumplings) will be for sale.

New this year is a liquor-tasting tent featuring soju, makoli, beer and wine, for those ages 21 or older.

The Friday night entertainment highlight is a free screening of the 2014 hit comedy-drama “Miss Granny,” about a 70-something woman who magically becomes a 20-year-old. The screening is at 7:30 p.m.

The headlining attraction this year is K-pop duo Pretty Brown — vocalists Hyun Jung, right, and Gu In Hwe — which will take the stage at 8 p.m. Saturday. Described in K-pop circles as “sophisticated R&B,” Pretty Brown hit the K-pop charts a year ago with “Break-Up With Break-Up,” a song that described being ready to give up on love rather than risk another heartbreak. They followed it with three more hits: “Dutch Pain,” “No One Like Him” and “Just The Right Temperature.”

Gu said via email that the pair hopes to see as much of Oahu as possible. “It would great if I could learn to surf and go snorkeling, but I am not sure if we have the time for that,” he said.

The duo’s name was inspired by one of his favorite songs, “Breaking My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes),” by the American R&B group Mint Condition. Other musical influences are Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (“Their creativeness and energy have influenced me greatly”), Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Drake and Beyonce.

Gu said he’ll be looking for musical inspiration while he’s here, as he hopes to become one of the rare K-pop artists to record in English. “I would like to record a song with English lyric,” he said. “But I think we need to practice our pronunciation.”

SATURDAY

Concert shows “Gratitude” for Waikiki scene

From the late 1960s until well into the disco era, no Waikiki nightclub, no school dance, no “A-list” event was complete without a Top 40 band, often made up of guys who’d started playing in intermediate school. If they were good and stuck with it, they could end up playing six nights a week in Waikiki. Almost all of them were represented by Hawaii Booking Services — HBS, for short.

Jump forward to 2016. On Saturday night, several of the bands Furukawa represented are holding a “thank you” concert.

“The right time to say thank you is when that person is still here,” Top 40 scene veteran Robin Kimura said, calling the concert “Gratitude.” HBS represented Kimura’s band, Greenwood, pictured, from 1973 until it disbanded in 1981.

Greenwood got back together in 2005, and since then Kimura has presented a series of “’70s Nightclub Reunions” with groups that played in Waikiki from the mid-’70s through the early ’80s. He required the groups to reunite with original members, and when it seemed that every old-time Waikiki group that was willing and able to reunite had done so, he ended the series.

For “Gratitude,” Kimura is including bands that were represented by HBS but didn’t play in Waikiki. In another first, individuals from groups that aren’t participating are sitting in.

“This is turning into something a little bigger than what I thought it was going to be, but the main focus of the night is to say thank you to Hawaii Booking Services,” Kimura said. “Without these guys we wouldn’t be here today.”

The Halo Halo Festival will feature Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas

Apl.de.ap headlines the Halo Halo Festival, a Filipino cultural celebration at Aloha Tower Marketplace on Saturday.

The founding member of the Grammy Award-winning group Black Eyed Peas, who was born in the Philippines and lived there until his early teens, said he maintains close ties to the country. “It’s home!” he said. “We really are a hospitable people and country; it’s hard not to miss it.”

He’s used his resources and talent to help his homeland by forming a charitable organization, the Apl.De.Ap Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for disadvantaged students, and by working with Habitat for Humanity, the Red Ribbon organization and Google to open schools and computer classes. He also recently released a song,“It’s More Fun in the Philippines,” to showcase the country, and has served as judge on the Philippines version of “The Voice.”

“It’s been fun to watch my team and everyone else really grow and develop as musicians,” he said. “I think it’s great for the Philippines music scene as a whole to expand and expose others to the talented voices we produce right from the islands.”

Born Allan Pineda Lindo, Apl.de.ap came to the United States to treat an eye condition, nystagmus, which rendered him legally blind until surgery corrected it. “I originally wanted to be an architect or a nurse, but with my nystagmus I knew these weren’t going to be very plausible career solutions,” he said.

“One day, while riding the jeepney to school, I came across kids break dancing and knew I wanted to be apart of that world. Break dancing and hip-hop go very much hand and hand,” he said. “Rap, as well as reading the dictionary, taught me English. I want to thank De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest for teaching me the language!”

He bonded with William Adams, who would later become will.i.am with the Black Eyed Peas, over break dancing and hip-hop. “I actually did the running man the first time we met,” Apl.de.ap said. “We’ve been making music ever since.”

Other performers at the Halo Halo Festival include San Francisco comedian Joey Guila, “Canadian Idol” star and internet sensation Mikey Bustos and local performers Shar Carillo, Everyday Aloha, Shyne, Kalei Gamiao, Canvas Disciples Dance Crew, Tekniqlingz, Unparalleled and 3-Lbs.

TUESDAY – SEPT. 4

A cappella quartet set to perform at Blue Note

The parade of big-name national and international entertainers performing at Blue Note Waikiki continues this week with Grammy winners Manhattan Transfer opening a six-night engagement on Tuesday that is sure to please admirers of a cappella music.

Fans can expect to hear “Operator,” the catchy pop song that was the quartet’s first Top 40 hit, and an eclectic collection of later hits that displays their pleasing harmonies on both pop and jazz charts. The quartet’s Grammy Award-winning recordings of “Birdland,” “Route 66,” “The Boy From New York City,” and the 1979 disco era classic, “Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone,” a tribute to Rod Serling’s iconic television show of the 1960s, are also set list possibilities.

The late Tim Hauser founded the original Manhattan Transfer group in 1969 and introduced a lineup that included Alan Paul and Janis Siegel in 1973. Hawaii discovered the group in 1975 when Atlantic Records released “Operator.” Cheryl Bentyne joined in 1978, forming the group’s long-lasting quartet format. After Hauser died in 2014, Trist Curless, already Hauser’s substitute for years, became a permanent member.