Do It: Wanderlust, Sean Cleland, Jewish Film Fest

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

>> Singer Xavier Rudd returns to the isle

Australian singer-songwriter Xavier Rudd headlines the weekend’s entertainment at Wanderlust, the New Age extravaganza of yoga, health, spiritualism, activities and music at Turtle Bay Resort this weekend.

Rudd is a one-man band who plays didgeridoo, guitar, banjo, harmonica and bells, and uses a stomp box for percussion. He played all of the instruments for his 2004 album “Solace,” using few overdubs. The album would reach the top 20 in Australia.

Rudd shares common ground with Hawaii’s Jack Johnson with his love of surfing and roots music and for his environmental activism: His 2007 tour for the album “White Moth,” a blues-folk-reggae-world-rock combination, was carbon-free. He has justreleased a new single, “Walk Away,” from his forthcoming album “Storm Boy.”

The concert featuring Rudd is at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, but there’s plenty more to enjoy at Wanderlust, a four-day event dedicated to physical and spiritual health which continues through Sunday. Activities include SUP Yoga, tennis, running, zip-lining andbiking, along with other outdoor adventures.

Additional entertainment during the festival includes ukulele virtuoso Taimane at 7 p.m. Friday and Tavana at 12:30 a.m. Saturday. Tavana also precedes Rudd at 7 p.m. Saturday, with Ron Artis II following himat 10:30 p.m.

SATURDAY

>> Personal influences shape Sean Cleland’s newest album

Hawaii musician Sean Cleland releases his solo CD “The Process of” this weekend at a party at Hawaiian Brian’s.

The Honolulu-born, California-bred musician has been part of eclectic band the Hollow Spheres since 2009, when he returned to the islands. Many of the songs on “Process” were written “when I was with the band, but I didn’t have a place to put them,” Cleland said, describing his sound as “guitar-based pop and rock with a bit of soul.”

“I think my style sounds kind of like John Mayer, that kind of blues rock,” he said. “And then there’s the singer-songwriter aspect, the lyric side as well.”

His new album represents some of the life changes he’s experienced as of late. Aside from going solo, Cleland recently got engaged, bought a house and took a trip to Norway with his fiancee.

“A lot of great things are happening in my life, and that’s embedded in this album,” he said.

Two songs on the new album, “Dig” and “Salaryman,” have received play on the radio. Cleland also wants to push “Curl,” which was written for his fiancee.

“It was kind of this concept of ‘life isn’t a straight line,’” he said. “One of the lines is ‘I’ll just follow the curl in your hair/ I’ll follow my girl into the world out there.’”

SATURDAY-MARCH 18

>> Jewish Film Festival begins Saturday

Jewish culture comes to the screen this month with the Honolulu Jewish Film Festival 2018, featuring 14 films that explore themes like romance, music and Jewish history.

The festival opens Saturday with “On the Map,” the story of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, which won the European Champions Cup in 1977. The film explores how the team captured the nation during troubled times. The film screens at7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Arts and entertainment have a heavy focus in this year’s festival. “Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me” documents the life and times of the African-American singer-actor who converted to Judaism, resulting in ostracism from some blacks while still facingwhite racism. The film screens at 4 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and 1 p.m. March 9.

The great violinist Itzhak Perlman is the subject of “Itzhak,” showing at 7 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Perlman grew up as a war refugee, contracted polio as a youth and navigated his way through the competitive music industry tobecome one of classical music’s most beloved artists.

Of interest perhaps to younger people — or the young at heart — is “Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators.” The film tells the story of Hans and Margaret Rey, a German Jewish couple who escaped the Nazis and arrived in NewYork with a manuscript of “Curious George” as one of their few possessions. The film screens at 1 p.m. March 15 and 4 p.m. March 18.

The festival closes with Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl,” the musical about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to study the Torah but falls in love with another student (Mandy Patinkin). Streisand won a Golden Globe for best direction for the film — the only time the award has been given to a woman. The film screens at 7 p.m. March 18.

THURSDAY

>> Comedian Hari Kondabolu makes and examines laughs

Some community organizers — well, at least one — grow up and become president. Hari Kondabolu became a stand-up comedian. He appears in Honolulu on Thursday at The Arts at Marks Garage.

The native New Yorker, who’d been a class clown in high school, was working with immigrants, victims of hate crimes and workplace discrimination, and studying for law school when he started doing comedy gigs in Seattle and found that he got laughs with his commentary on politics, race and immigration.

The son of Indian immigrants, Kondabolu would get up on stage and read verbatim the application for American citizenship.

“It’s a strange thing to read a government form in front of a bunch of drunk people,” he said on NPR.

Kondabolu has produced two albums, the semi-autobiographical “Mainstream American Comic” and “Welcome to 2042,” which refers to the year when, according to predictions, nonwhites will become the majority in America.

More recently, he’s taken a jab at the sacred cow of television comedy, “The Simpsons,” with his film “The Problem With Apu.” The film documents resentment among Indian-Americans for the show’s portrayal of the owner of a convenience store as a miserly buffoon.

Kondabolu will discuss “The Problem With Apu” in a free event at noon Wednesday at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Burns Hall, 1601 East-West Road, Room 2118).

He’ll also be on hand at a screening of the film at 7:30 p.m. March 9 ($10-$12) at the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Museum of Art; screening details at honolulumuseum.org.