Local musician Gabriel Goes, 21, will be a contestant on this season of NBC's music competition show "The Voice." His blind audition performance, a cover of "What I Got" by Sublime, earned him a spot after Chance the Rapper turned his chair around.
"To be 100% honest, when Chance turned around, I totally blacked out. I was like so high on like adrenaline that half the stuff I was saying I didn't like remember what I said," Goes said.
The 2020 Kaiser High School graduate has been playing music since he was a child. His parents are from Brazil, but he was born and raised on Oʻahu. He grew up surfing, spearfishing and speaking pidgin.
"Halfway through high school is when I started to like take music more seriously and wanted to like turn it more into like a career," he said.
A band he formed with high school friends, Backset, still plays at local venues around town.
"I live and breathe and wake up just to make music. I just want to create it and maybe help someone else out with my music," Goes added.
He listed Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Incubus as some of his favorite artists and bands.
Part three of the blind auditions airs on NBC at 7 p.m. tonight. Look for Goes on "The Voice" in the weeks ahead.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 4, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
