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Robert Cazimero: Good times, great memories

Award winning singer, composer, and kumu hula Robert Cazimero.
Noe Tanigawa
Award winning singer, composer, and kumu hula Robert Cazimero.

Some people credit The Sunday Manoa with kicking off the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance with their "Guava Jam" album in 1969. In the early 1970s, not everyone approved of integrating rock, folk, soul and Latin beats with Hawaiian music.

Of The Sunday Manoa trio, composer-guitarist Peter Moon and singer-guitarist Roland Cazimero have passed, but singer, bass player, kumu hula Robert Cazimero is still in fine form.

Robert Cazimero sat down to talk story with HPR's Noe Tanigawa. Here's that interview.

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Robert Cazimero: I always have to go back to The Sunday Manoa days to say thank you because of those formative years and the support that we got from people. It carries through to this very day.

Noe Tanigawa: What were you trying to do with your music?

At first, especially when it comes to The Sunday Manoa, I don't know that we really had an idea of what it was we were doing, as much as it was just a lot of fun. And then when along came the Renaissance period, the ending of the '60s into the early '70s, we were a part of that. Now being proud of who we were as Hawaiians in all different aspects of it.

With Sunday Manoa, you put together so many strands that became the Renaissance.

Peter had his style, Roland had his style and together we sort of melded it to make it our style at the time. Which really had the opportunity to take off. Then by the time we started with The Brothers Cazimero, it was a time of reinvention again! Without us really knowing how we were going to reinvent. And that kind of thing happened as it went along, you know. No matter where you are in music, especially though in Hawaiian music, it's going to have to take you to the palace of Hawaiian music, which would be the pink palace, on the beach at Waikiki.

Well, it's almost fateful because you sang Royal Hawaiian Hotel on that first Brothers Cazimero album. A terrific version.

And really, we sat down one day and Jon (de Mello, their producer) said, "Okay, look, this is what's happening. We may have an opportunity to go into the Royal Hawaiian Hotel." And I was like, "I don't know if I want to go to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel."

Why?

Because it just seemed so foreign it seemed so tourist, and we had always been performing for local people. He said, "No, people need to know that no matter where they're from, especially from Hawaiʻi, we can go to Waikiki and feel comfortable about it." And eventually, we learned how. And I must say it taught me a lot.

You have an operatic sound, you have a projection in your voice that is so different.

Eventually, I went for private lessons with our dear Neva Rego. Once I changed because of Neva to do it in that bel canto, forward style, it put me over a different level.

It said, Royal Hawaiian Monarch Room?

And then to Carnegie Hall, and beyond. So this voice has been very, very kind to me.

Did you really try to take care of it?

Not when I was young. I was out there having too much fun. We were eating and drinking and ending up at Likelike Drive Inn. Either that or we'd all end up at some Chinese restaurant with Don Ho.

Oh where, McCully Chop Suey?

Girl, you know! Don was always at McCully and he would order like he was expecting people to walk in. Whoever walked in, he said, "Sit down. Eat." Because he had ordered so much stuff.

Catch the extended interview here. Robert Cazimero will perform at Chef Chai on the evening of every full moon in 2022.

Noe Tanigawa covered art, culture and ideas for two decades at Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
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