| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| wcerto |
Posted - 05/25/2011 : 5:36:42 PM
In honor of Kuana Torres Kahele's upcoming solo CD release, "Kaunaloa", Mountain Applie is offering a free download of Kuana's version of "Ulili E" which has a couple of new verses which Kuana wrote. He also has a You Tube vid. I think the video was on my latest Mele Monday list.
http://www.mountainapplecompany.com/Blog/kuana/ |
| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| wcerto |
Posted - 05/26/2011 : 09:00:35 AM
I understood it to be common to do this in traditional Hawaiian music, or to use words from another mele on your mele. It was a sign of honor, no? His verses go nicely. It does not detract nor does it grate on my by being glaringly different from the original. In this case, I like it. In other cases I might not. But this is purely my taste and opinion as a listener, not as an educated music type person. |
| hwnmusiclives |
Posted - 05/26/2011 : 08:22:04 AM
quote:
Originally posted by wcerto
In honor of Kuana Torres Kahele's upcoming solo CD release, "Kaunaloa", Mountain Applie is offering a free download of Kuana's version of "Ulili E" which has a couple of new verses which Kuana wrote. He also has a You Tube vid. I think the video was on my latest Mele Monday list.
http://www.mountainapplecompany.com/Blog/kuana/
This is really nice. But then I like everything he does.
OK, so let's bat this around a little bit. Should it be considered acceptable to take an already perfectly fine and complete song and for an altogether different haku mele to add words - entire verses - to it? Should the new haku mele be responsible for trying to ensure that the writing style of the new verses match the writing style of the original?
To take this out of the context of Hawaiian music for a moment, there has been no small amount of controversy in the publishing world recently when sequels to classics like "Winnie The Pooh," "Catcher In The Rye," and "Gone With The Wind" (just to name a few) have been published decades after the originals and by different authors than the originals. How does the new author know the intentions of the original author? How can the new author guess where the original author wanted the story to go next? Why does the new author assume that the story wasn't already finished and that there was no need for a sequel?
It's an interesting question, I think. In some ways, writing a sequel is a tacit statement that the artist didn't think the original was "good enough" or was somehow "incomplete" on its own. Who is anyone to alter the original work? "Altering the original work" is a recurring theme in Hawaiian music and hula.
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