Hundreds celebrate life of entertainer Roland Cazimero

Robert Cazimero had just finished the first verse to “Kuuipo i ka Hee Pue One” when his microphone went dead.

The seasoned performer didn’t flinch, casually gesturing for and receiving a replacement mic before proceeding with a conspiratorial roll of the eyes that drew a titter from the otherwise dewy-eyed audience.

The moment of unintended levity was in keeping with Sunday’s bittersweet memorial celebration at the Royal Hawaiian hotel in honor of Roland Cazimero, who died in July.

Some 350 people packed the hotel’s Monarch Room, with hundreds more spread out in the outside overflow area. The memorial was split into a private event, featuring performances by Henry Kapono, Jerry Santos and others, and a public event that included musical performances, ceremonial oli and conch shell blowing, and a slideshow.

“In our day if you played at the Royal Hawaiian, you’d made it big in the Hawaiian music scene,” said Tony Keliipio, a fellow musician and Cazimero’s former roommate. “He was a giant in the industry, and a lot of people in the Hawaiian music community depended on him and his teachings.”

The day was filled with stories that left those in attendance laughing with tears in their eyes.

Former Kamehameha Schools Hawaii chaplain and current chaplain of Mid-Pacific Institute Wendell Davis told the audience how Cazimero, who was a Kamehameha senior when Davis was a freshman, made Davis carry around his tuba for a whole year.

Cazimero’s son Jonah recalled one of his last conversations with his father. He had come seeking advice after being frustrated by his performance on ukulele and guitar.

“He told me, ‘It’s OK if you mess up. It’s all about the next note that you play.’”

Over the course of the afternoon and evening, friends and family recalled Cazimero as many things: an innovator, a pioneer, a standard bearer. To a longtime friend who has borne many of those same accolades, he was something even more.

“He was a navigator,” said Polynesian Voyaging Society President Nainoa Thompson.

With the voyaging canoe Hokule‘a anchored directly off the hotel, Thompson recalled watching Cazimero play with his first group, Sunday Manoa, as a senior at Punahou School and being awed at the group of young musicians “standing strong and proud of who they were as Hawaiians, showing us a different identity and showing us what was in the heart and the mind of the young Hawaiian, stepping up and taking charge,” and how the energy and attitude they conveyed stood in such stark contrast to the suppression and denial of Hawaiian identity that Thompson had previously witnessed and experienced.

“When I look back, they were singing renaissance, they were singing a new voice, they were singing change,” he said.

Thompson said that with Cazimero’s widow’s permission, he and his crew will take Cazimero’s ashes aboard the Hokule‘a, in his captain’s box along with a specially made makau nui (fishhook), as the canoe completes its ongoing Mahalo Hawaii tour of the islands.

As the evening progressed and the music, dance and heartfelt remembrances continued, Robert Cazimero paused to survey the room.

“I think, I’m hoping, that he would be grateful for everything that’s happening,” he said.