stories of family and friends of the rugrats of Lei Road
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(A portion of this was previously published in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.) I used to live in a three bedroom, ground floor apartment with...
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Music of our Childhood
There was always a moment in any family gathering when all the kids knew we had to run and hide...Aunty Argie, our mother, was coming to get all of us to sing.
Yikes.
For this entry in this blog, I've been trying to remember the songs that we were made to sing...besides the ubiquitous Abba Dabba Honeymoon . (Which most of us know by heart...such a haunting melody...)
This is one of those songs. Ke'alii Reichel sings it with more understanding than we kids ever did back then. We were learning Hawaiian words by listening to our uncles, aunties and parents. None of us understood what we were singing at the time.
Later, a few of us cousins had the privilege of attending Kamehameha and learning some Hawaiian. This was before the Hawaiian Renaissance which gave our children and their children the opportunity to really learn the Hawaiian language.
Yet there were so many songs that our parents sang that were not Hawaiian. After all, in those days, being Hawaiian was something you hid or didn't acknowledge most of the time. But that's the subject of another blog entry.
My father loved songs from World War I--the "Great War". He used to sing the chorus of this song which makes it particularly poignant when I realize how young he was when he died. There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams...".
He liked this one too. I used to wonder where Tipperary was. Well, it's in Ireland.
He liked military songs like "Over There" by George M. Cohan and marches by John Phillip Souza.
I wonder if it's because he had a desk job during the Korean War? Don't know. There were so many things we didn't get to ask him because he died so young.
There were many more songs even though Abba Dabba Honeymoon is the one that sticks to my memory cells like it was super glued there.
I'll have to think about it some more and keep you posted on what pops out of the old gray matter.
Yikes.
For this entry in this blog, I've been trying to remember the songs that we were made to sing...besides the ubiquitous Abba Dabba Honeymoon . (Which most of us know by heart...such a haunting melody...)
This is one of those songs. Ke'alii Reichel sings it with more understanding than we kids ever did back then. We were learning Hawaiian words by listening to our uncles, aunties and parents. None of us understood what we were singing at the time.
Later, a few of us cousins had the privilege of attending Kamehameha and learning some Hawaiian. This was before the Hawaiian Renaissance which gave our children and their children the opportunity to really learn the Hawaiian language.
Yet there were so many songs that our parents sang that were not Hawaiian. After all, in those days, being Hawaiian was something you hid or didn't acknowledge most of the time. But that's the subject of another blog entry.
My father loved songs from World War I--the "Great War". He used to sing the chorus of this song which makes it particularly poignant when I realize how young he was when he died. There's a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams...".
He liked this one too. I used to wonder where Tipperary was. Well, it's in Ireland.
He liked military songs like "Over There" by George M. Cohan and marches by John Phillip Souza.
I wonder if it's because he had a desk job during the Korean War? Don't know. There were so many things we didn't get to ask him because he died so young.
There were many more songs even though Abba Dabba Honeymoon is the one that sticks to my memory cells like it was super glued there.
I'll have to think about it some more and keep you posted on what pops out of the old gray matter.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Memories
Despite the issues clouding our relationship now, I have some lovely memories of our mother that I know my brother and sister share.
One of those is the way she used to sing to us at night when she was tucking us in and how each of us had a special song that she sang, just for us.
I think of this when I try to sing to my grandson but he tells me "Stop, Grandma!". I think that has more to do with the way I'm singing rather than the songs...which are pretty old and tunes that I remember my (our) Dad singing.
She told us once, I think, that she gave us a specific song because of some trait we had that reminded her of the song. Hmmm.
My brother's song, because he was always "noisy" was "Little Sir Echo" .
My sister's song was "Little Lady Make-Believe". I'm not sure why. But she did change the lyrics slightly. Instead of singing "as much as I love you" she would sing "as much as Mommy loves you". So yes, she referred to herself in the third person even then.
My song, which I remember clearly, was "Little Old Lady". I guess because I was so "old", fussy? Not sure.
Somehow, with technology, these songs have been preserved ;not the way our mother sang to us, which always sounds better in memory, but still...it's the song she gave to us when we were little.
One of those is the way she used to sing to us at night when she was tucking us in and how each of us had a special song that she sang, just for us.
I think of this when I try to sing to my grandson but he tells me "Stop, Grandma!". I think that has more to do with the way I'm singing rather than the songs...which are pretty old and tunes that I remember my (our) Dad singing.
She told us once, I think, that she gave us a specific song because of some trait we had that reminded her of the song. Hmmm.
My brother's song, because he was always "noisy" was "Little Sir Echo" .
My sister's song was "Little Lady Make-Believe". I'm not sure why. But she did change the lyrics slightly. Instead of singing "as much as I love you" she would sing "as much as Mommy loves you". So yes, she referred to herself in the third person even then.
My song, which I remember clearly, was "Little Old Lady". I guess because I was so "old", fussy? Not sure.
Somehow, with technology, these songs have been preserved ;not the way our mother sang to us, which always sounds better in memory, but still...it's the song she gave to us when we were little.
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