[ed. I've always loved Hawi, and John Keawe is a slack-key guitar master - every album of his that I own is excellent.]
All the better for local musicians and artists to hide away and find their Polynesian muses.
This lush district at the Big Island of Hawaii's north shore is isolated from the busy Kona Coast by the ranch-dotted, horse-heaven hill that is Kohala, an extinct volcano. On its windward side, it squeezes up like an accordion into deep and wild valleys navigated only by ancient trails.
A two-lane road transits the frozen-in-time, tin-roof towns of Hawi and Kapa'au and ends at an overlook and trailhead above the kiwi-green Pololu Valley.
Nearby, on a windswept point looking toward Maui, King Kamehameha I was born in the 1750s. To protect him from chiefs jealous of his royal destiny, protectors fled with the infant to raise him in the remote backcountry beyond Pololu.
To this day, North Kohala cradles island culture and intact native families, and this road less traveled nurtures the souls of musicians and artists whose work is emblematic of Hawaii.
You need a reason
"The important thing about Kohala is it's a dead-end road and you have to have a reason to come up here," says David Gomes, a musician whose Portuguese great-grandparents came from the Azores to work a now-defunct sugar plantation that was Kohala's economic lifeblood for 100 years. "That makes the community a little tight place. They're sweet, tolerant, forgiving people. Kohala is literally and figuratively the end of the road for some."
Gomes, who grew up with the remote valleys as his playground and who still loves to hike them, spends peaceful days crafting masterful guitars and ukuleles in a cluttered workshop off a quiet lane above Hawi (say "Huh-vee"). He has a dual cultural connection to the ukulele: Before being popularized in Hawaii in the 1800s, ukuleles came from Portugal.
by Brian J. Cantwell, Seattle Times | Read more:
Photo: Brian J. Cantwell
