The music business is of one of those most affected by changes in digital culture and musicians are scrambling to keep up. Less than a decade ago, music retailers like Sam Goody and Tower Records were places musicians could promote their new music. With all of that online now, local musicians are getting a boost from a Hawai‘i based Youtube channel. HPR’sNoeTanigawa reports theHiSessions channel attracts over a million views a month.
Can you believe the little video of Mike Love performing “Permanent Holiday,” made one sunny day in K?ne‘‘ohe, has over 6,639,463 views on Youtube?
“You don’t think, jeez, this is going to go viral, but that’s what the whole point of it was.” Jon Yamasato, former lead singer for Pure Heart, is discovering and helping us discover a mother lode of local musicians. “It’s very satisfying for us that artists like Mike can point back and say, this video really helped propel something. I’m sure he would have made it anyway without it, but it just so happened to be the thing that launched him a little bit more into the spotlight.”
Yamasato is modest. He is the producer for HiSessions, a six year old Youtube channel featuring high quality live recordings of contemporary local musicians. It’s a calling card, a video resume for musicians, and a huge talent repository for the rest of us. Corralling seven cameras with technicians, engineers, audio and post production would be beyond the fiscal reach of most musicians.
“The idea was and still is, most artists can’t afford to put a production team together to do high quality video. There’s a lot of technology coming out that allows you to do better video, but to have the seven cameras shooting with all the other stuff, it’s expensive if you had to pay for it for yourself. This is a way artists can have something they can present to promoters or whoever they want to, to say, “Hey, this is what I do.” And it represents them well.”
Discover Imua Garza, Kimie Miner, Ashley Lilinoe, Eden Kai, and RonArtis II, among the young musicians featured on HiSessions. The classics are there too, Ernie Cruz, Nathan Aweau, and Pure Heart makes a pumped up return with the originals, Jon Yamasato, Lopaka Colon and Jake Shimabukuro.
“HiSessions has always been the excuse to hang out with friends,” says Dave Kusumoto, the director and videographer for HiSessions.
“And it’s attracted just the right people. That more than anything keeps people coming back.”
Kusumoto says they always walk away at the end of the day energized, feeling close to the musicians and their ‘ohana.
“Even today I never met H?k?, but we’re like best friends now. We’ve been through things together.”
Let’s face it, working together is the most fun adults get to have.
“Every person, look at Vance who does sound, Darren who does really high end mixing in post-production, look at every person. Everyone has grown, and that’s another thing that keeps us doing this labor of love. Everyone is getting better.
H?k? Zuttermeister has been shooting his video today at the Hawai‘i Theatre, the new venue for HiSessions. “To be asked was pretty cool. It helps a lot. And I watch it all the time. Usually we don’t rehearse but we had rehearsals for this.”
Yamasato: “That’s the whole purpose and all we really care about is putting out a good product the artists then can use to promote themselves. It’s a tool for the artists they can use, and it’s good for us because we get a fun day of hanging out with good music and friends.” The HiSessions Youtube channel gets over a million views a month and has over 85 thousand subscribers.
Raiatea Helm was tuning up as I left.
