Kona Festivale Chorale will hold its annual “Pops Menagerie” concert at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Kamakahonu Ballroom of King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel.
Featuring “Waikiki and the Golden Age of Hapa Haole Song” and “Classics — The Great American Songbook,” the concert includes two uniquely different art forms, each having entertained a golden era in song writing.
A traditional view of the hapa haole song are those representing some aspect of Hawaiian culture with English lyrics, which became popular beginning in the 1910s and continued into the 1950s. The name hapa represents influences of both the music and rhythms of Hawaii and haole represents the influence of English lyrics.
The perspective in a vast majority of hapa haole songs is that of a malihini (visitor) pining for a romantic encounter with an ukulele-playing hula girl, and quite often displayed on a beach, and often under the moonlight. Nearly all of the songs represented in the hapa haole portion of the concert are one-of-a-kind arrangements scored for a soprano, alto, tenor and bass chorus by Roberta R. King, accompanist.
Featured selections include “The Luau Song,” “Singing Bamboo,” “Pearly Shells,” “Waikiki,” “Teach Me How To Do the Hula,” “Beyond the Reef,” “A Song of Old Hawaii” “Here Is Happiness,” “Tiare,” “E komo mai,” “Beyond the Rainbow” and “Now Is the Hour” with “Aloha Oe.” Featured are the Kona Festivale Chorale Singers and Celebration Singers. Soloists include Jo-Anna Boshard, Misty Mistler and Brandy‘An Amafala Marquard with dance numbers provided by Boshard and Kalehua Meheula.
“Classics, The Great American Songbook” (1930s through the 1950s) represents music unique to the most important and most influential American popular songs of the 20th century, which now has become an archive known as “The Great American Songbook.”
Recorded and performed by a wide range of musicians, these songs are considered of enduring popularity.
Despite the relatively narrow range of topics and moods within many of the songs, the best “Great American Songbook” lyricists specialized in witty, urbane lyrics with teasingly unexpected rhymes. In addition, the songwriter provided memorable melodies, which included anything from the pentatonic, to the sinuously chromatic, to great harmonic subtleties with winding modulations.
The songs represented in this portion of the concert received their greatest notoriety and fame from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Featuring the Kona Festivale Chorale Singers and Celebration Singers, songs include “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” “Night and Day” and “Someone To Watch Over Me.”
Event tickets are available by calling the chorale office at 331-1115. Reserved seats are $25 for adults and $10 for children. General seating is $20 for adults; children 12 and younger are admitted free.
Kona Festivale Chorale is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) performing arts organization presenting a concert series of four events annually, now in its 27th season.