This project has been a wonderful reminder of the idea that in trying to do good works for your community, you often receive much greater gifts in return. Iʻm pretty sure Iʻm not done giving or receiving just yet.
Mark Boots Lupenui, Project Director, 2025
The American Folklife Center proudly announces the availability of an online collection of documentary field research created through the Community Collections Grants (CCG) program. Unearthing the Lost Songs of Kohala is an initiative of the research team of Mark Boots Keahi aʻamau pio ʻole i ka poli o Pele Lupenui (project director, interviewer, and musician), Adam Palya (videographer), and Cheryl Lupenui (project manager). Their year-long efforts have resulted in this unique collection of video recordings, song sheets, and photographs that document generations-old “heirloom songs” of the Kohala region in the northwest portion of the island of Hawai’i.
The collection features several generations of performers whose musical repertoires include traditional hula chants, original compositions for solo and ensemble performance, slack-key guitar playing, and re-workings of pop songs to reflect community sensibilities. There are also formal interviews with several of the performers who discuss their upbringing in the rich musical culture of the area and the influences on their own musical development. As many of the artists note, such influences may be family members and also beloved kumu’s (teachers and mentors) that guided and shaped their artistic progress over the course of years.
AFC colleagues on the archival processing staff and I (as project liaison) have had insider privileges to listen to and view the documentary materials as the documentary process has unfolded over the last year. A constant theme that is apparent in virtually every performance and interview is the intimate relationship between the place –its terrain and natural features- and the people who live there. For one example, the song “North Kohala Cane Field Road,” composed by Richard Solomon and his brother, Fred, transforms pop singer John Denver’s ode to West Virginia, “Take me Home, Country Roads,” into a Hawai’i-centric description of the topography and natural beauty of this small corner of the islands (song begins at 11:25).
Another example emerges in Hope Keawe’s interview when she discusses the different names residents give to the breezes that blow through the hills and valleys of Kohala.
On the whole, the documented performances and narratives in the collection underscore linguistic anthropologist Keith Basso’s contention about people, places, and cultural practices.
What people make of their places is closely connected to what they make of themselves as members of society and inhabitants of the earth, and while the two activities may be separable in principle, they are deeply joined in practice.
(Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, UNM Press, 1996.)
Unearthing the Lost Songs of Kohala is one of twenty-nine research projects funded through a Community Collections Grant (CCG), which is part of the Mellon Foundation’s funding initiative, Of the People: Widening the Path. The initiative seeks to create new opportunities for communities to engage with and expand the Library’s collections with their unique cultural perspectives and creative expressions. Grant funding has enabled documentation of cultural expressions ranging from craft traditions of the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma to coffee growers in Puerto Rico to the production of the Goombay festival in Bahamian communities in Miami, among other such projects. There is a wealth of information about particular CCG projects on the Library’s Of the People blog.
Boots Lupenui’s reaction to the work that AFC staff did to represent the community’s traditions throughout the process is deeply gratifying to us. As he wrote to me, “When I first saw the web page I was very impressed. It looked like a “scholarly endeavor” while still presenting with some excitement. To see the photos of those people, those composers, those sons and daughters of Kohala made me so proud of Kohala- I think you curated an excellent presentation of the collection.” The “excellent” curators at AFC who worked to ingest the collection into the archive and bring the materials into public view include staff members Steve Berkley, Jesse Hocking, Charles Hosale, Sabine Lipten, Jason Smith, Matt Smith, and Steve Winick, with administrative support from Michael Pahn, Ann Hoog, John Fenn and Michelle Stefano. He went on to note the importance of the AFC’s Archive in safeguarding the community’s artistic heritage: “Knowing that their songs and their stories will be safe for generations to come makes them all so proud and I am grateful that the Library could give that gift to them.”
Although the collection and website represent the culmination of the CCG funded project, the work to document community cultural expressions will continue in Kohala. Reflecting on the inspiration that the CCG funding provided, Boots had this to say: “It seems I’ve been telling stories of my home for a long time and this archival project with the Library has only served to reinforce that pathway. The pride I saw in the people who were a part of this project, the pride in the faces of the folks who came to the premier to watch the documentary, those things stayed with me long after the footage was shot, the files collected, the metadata logged. There are so many more stories to uncover in my own backyard and I can’t think of a better way to spend a life!”
The launch of the website coincides with a concert of traditional Hawaiian music featuring Boots Lupenui and the Kohala Mountain Boys on the evening of Thursday, April 10th, in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium. Boots will also be discussing his documentary project in a symposium alongside other CCG awardees on April 10th and 11th. Concert tickets are free, but going fast, so register for yours as soon as you can!
Mahalo to Boots, Cheryl, Adam, and the community artists of Kohala for sharing your stories and songs with us.