With all due respect to Lee Cataluna, whose work we deeply admire, at least one local entity has been keeping the hamajang torch alive, and that’s us guys: Hamajang, the band (“1988 called — it wants its word back,” Star-Advertiser, Feb. 8).

We adopted the moniker about 15 years ago, partially because it suited our retro-novelty repertoire, but mostly because it provided perfect cover for our musical goofs. Of the many spelling variants, we chose “hamajang” as the most pleasing to the eye.

We were fortunate to serve as the house band for the former Hawaii Public Radio local literature program Aloha Shorts, in which Cataluna herself was frequently a featured author, but I guess we must have slipped her mind.

Like her, however, we are dismayed about the word making the Oxford English Dictionary, since now we face an existential dilemma: With our fringe namesake having unexpectedly been graced with officialdom by Oxford, is it still cool to be all hamajang?

Derek Ferrar

Aina Haina

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