A new bon dance song about everyday life during summertime in Lahaina was released Thursday, one year after the Maui fires.
Maui resident and attorney Lance Collins co-wrote the song, "Lahaina Ondo," with Shinshu Kyokai Mission bomori Sumiko Tatsuguchi. Collins said it took them three years to write.
"When the fire happened, we had a discussion, and we agreed that we need to finish it so that we could contribute to supporting the Lahaina community in a slightly different way than some of the other activities and supports that folks in the community have done," Collins said.
He said the most challenging part was translating the English into Japanese.
"What I wrote in English is not something that you can just put into Google Translate and then have a bon dance song because poetic Japanese, or song Japanese, it's a little bit complicated, at least for my mind because I'm not a fluent Japanese speaker," Collins said. "That's what took a long time because all of the imagery had to be adjusted to fit into Japanese."
The Maui community is invited to take part in the dance on Aug. 10 at the Lahaina Bon Dance at the Lahaina Cannery Mall. Dancers will perform moves choreographed to the new song.
"We had like 100 dancers participate in the music video and everybody contributed their time to this," Collins said. "In one sense, it's remembering Lahaina, and then in another sense, it's remembering everybody's childhood in Hawaiʻi."
"One of the things about Lahaina was that it's very unique, and at the same time, there's a universal appeal to the happy memories that people have of their childhood in Hawaiʻi."
The recorded song, available on streaming platforms, features singers Colette Gomoto and Brian Nagami.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Aug. 8, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
