When a friend asked Kata Maduli to fill in for a musician who couldn’t play for a night, he assumed they needed a drummer or a rhythm guitarist since he grew up playing both instruments. However, when Maduli, then 13, arrived at the venue he was told they needed him to play bass. He replied he’d never played bass. His friend promised to teach him enough to get him through the night.
Maduli was a quick study. He got called back to do it again, and when the group’s bassist left for good Maduli became a full-time professional bass player. It was the start of a career that has seen Maduli distinguish himself in a multitude of roles: a nightclub musician, original member of Brother Noland’s Pacific Bad Boys, musical director for island showroom entertainer Dick Jensen, recording studio sideman, record producer, talent manager and concert promoter. He also has won multiple Na Hoku Hanohano Awards for his work as a musician and record producer.
Fifty-eight years after that first gig, Maduli, 71, still works full time in the industry. On Nov. 5, he will receive the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award.
Two of Maduli’s fondest career mementos are the bass guitars he was given by Rocco Prestia, bassist for the funk band Tower of Power. They met in 1977 when Prestia had been fired from the group. Bandleader Emilio Castillo had sent Maduli a round-trip ticket to San Francisco to audition for the job, and Maduli had been warned that Prestia might get violent. Instead, Prestia asked if he was from Hawaii and wished him well.
“I melted (in relief),” Maduli said of the encounter. “From that day on until his passing we were friends.”
Maduli auditioned well, but the job went to a bassist from the Bay Area. Prestia rejoined Tower of Power in 1984 and was a member until his death in 2020.
After they played together in a workshop about 15 years ago, Prestia gifted Maduli a bass, which Maduli still uses for work. Several years later, Prestia surprised him with a limited-edition bass on Christmas.
The Hawaii music industry also knows him as the man who produced Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole’s Hoku Award-winning first solo album, “Ka ‘Ano‘i,” in 1990 and as the promoter of the Makaha Bash concerts at the Waikiki Shell during the 1990s.
These days, he plays bass on the Emmy Award-winning “Talk Story with McKenna Maduli,” his daughter’s show on Hawaii News Now. He is also the leader of his quartet, the Kata Maduli Experience. The band has monthly gigs at Slack Key Lounge in Honolulu and The LookOut in Ewa Beach.
“After a while, you don’t even believe all the stuff you’ve done,” Maduli said. “It just kind of slips away until you start thinking about it.”
Les Ceballos, Nohelani Cypriano, Karen Keawehawai‘i and Audy Kimura complete this year’s list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients. Cynthia “Cindy” Ann Lance (1951-2021) will be honored with the Legacy Recognition Award that posthumously recognizes lifetime achievements.
Here’s a look at the other honorees:
Ceballos contributed to the preservation and perpetuation of Hawaiian music for 35 years as a choral teacher at Kamehameha High School Kapalama. He taught his students that the proper pronunciation of Hawaiian lyrics is as important as perfecting the vocal performance. Ceballos’ attention to detail and skill as an arranger of Hawaiian compositions upheld the high standards of the annual Kamehameha Song Contest.
Ceballos’ contributions to Hawaii’s music also include performing with Hawaii Opera Theatre, and joining Robert Cazimero and Aaron Sala for the “Three Tenors of Hawaii” concert in 2004.
Cypriano first gained fame as a member of the all-female band Rock Candy, and as lead vocalist of Golden Throat, a Waikiki pop rock band, in the early 1970s. She then partnered with keyboardist Dennis Graue to write and record the song “Lihue,” a fresh blend of 1950s-era exotica and contemporary electronic pop that won a spot on Ron Jacobs’ “Homegrown II” compilation in 1978. The song launched Cypriano’s career as a recording artist; in the years that followed, she won four Hoku awards. In 1999, she joined Loyal Garner, Melveen Leed and Carole Kai to form the Local Divas group and recorded two albums with them.
Keawehawai‘i made her professional debut as a member of the Laughing Kahunas, a Waikiki lounge band, in the 1970s. She left the group to go solo and released her first album, “Karen,” in 1979. The album earned Keawehawai‘i her first Na Hoku Hanohano Award in 1980; she went on to win two more by 1985.
Keawehawai‘i’s vocal talent was matched by her quick wit as a raucous emcee famous for saying something rude or inappropriate and then following it with a quick, “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!”
Kimura hit it big in 1983 with the statewide success of his debut single, “Lovers and Friends.” The song, and the album that followed it, earned him five Hoku awards in 1984. He received two more Hokus in 1986, and another in 1990.
By that time, Kimura had found his calling writing for television, commercials and film scores, but he always stayed in touch with island audiences through a five-night-a-week gig at Hy’s Steakhouse in Waikiki. Due to the pandemic, he ended his 33-year engagement at Hy’s in 2020.
Lance, who worked for 17 years as a project manager at Hula Records, was responsible for providing annotation, or liner notes, on numerous albums. An essential part of all Hawaiian recordings, thorough annotation provides context and background information. Without it, essential cultural knowledge can be lost forever.
Building on the training she received from cultural expert Jean “Kini” Sullivan, Lance meticulously researched the history, lyrics and kaona, or hidden meaning, of songs old and new. She found opportunities to upgrade and expand the annotation of older releases, and always encouraged re-issuing out-of-print recordings from the label’s earliest days.
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2023 Na Hoku Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Awards
>> Where: Monarch Room, Royal Hawaiian Hotel
>> When: 10:30 a.m. Nov. 5
>> Cost: $125
>> Info: harahawaii.com or 808-593-9424
