Nā Mele Paniolo — Hawaiʻi's cowboy stories set to music. Kamehameha Schools chose cowboy culture as the theme for its 103rd annual song contest in March.
The junior class ran away with many of the top awards. Four out of seven awards, to be exact. Among the many performances, the coed class sang the playful "Waimea Cowboy (Kilakila Nā Roughrider)," originally by Bill Ali‘iloa Lincoln.
The Conversation spoke with junior coed class song director Taitea Sunaoka and program director Chad Takasugi about celebrating Hawaiʻi's paniolo history and traveling to Waimea.
"I may not be a paniolo. Taitea may not come from that background. But these are still our people's stories. And what we gain from that is the fact that we can learn from our kūpuna, their grit, their resilience, the stories of the paniolo, and the tragedy that they felt, the success that they've seen across the world," Takasugi said.
"A huge part of the experience at Kamehameha is if you can make that connection to your kūpuna, you are drawing from ancestral knowledge and strength, that is going to make you successful as you grow as a learner," he added.
Sunaoka and other class song directors had the opportunity to visit Waimea before the contest to meet paniolo, connect with the music and gain a sense of place.
"Going to Waimea and actually learning about these ʻohana and these families who had been living in this lifestyle for so long, it was something completely different, which I feel like we got to our class pretty well," he said.
In turn, Kamehameha Schools invited Hawaiʻi Island cowboys like Robert Kamuela "Sonny" Keakealani Jr. and James William "Kimo" Ho’opai Jr. to fly in for the live performance at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center.
"The way we held ourselves that night, throughout our whole class, you could really see them like, 'Oh, we are singing to honor these people, not just for our competition,'" Sunaoka told The Conversation.
"The added nerves of the paniolo being there, right, it's kind of like, 'Oh, I don't want to mess up or tell the story in the wrong way.' So I think our class really had fun with it."
This interview aired on The Conversation on April 4, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
