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My music tastes can be...eclectic. This week, I have fallen in love with the music of Israel (Iz) Kamakawiwo'ole, the late (and large) Hawaiian singer.
Iz died at 38 years old in 1997, of complications due to his weight (at one point, he topped 750 pounds). He was well known in the Hawaiian musical scene, and had toured part of the US continental west coast. Today, outside of Hawaii, he is best known for his "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" medly, played at the end credits of Meet Joe Black. The beginning of the song has appeared in commercials for cars and internet websites, and excerpts of the song were played during last week's TV hospital drama Gideon's Crossing, (which is my favorite new show of the season and had prompted me to find the song). He has had several albums, and I'm now pouring through them.
It sounds like a bad joke to say that the falsetto crooning of a 750 pound ukulele singer can be moving. Visions of a puffy Tiny Tim come to mind. It's the simplicity that gets to me. I'm usually a fan of the complex -- industrial to swing, it's the overlapping instrumentation and multiple harmonization that hooks me. Iz is simple, yet poetic...almost haunting at times. "Rainbow" makes no joke of the fact that it's a Judy Garland cover -- the song is respectful and true to the original atmosphere of the song. "Hawai'i 78" is a lovely, yet disturbing song about lost Hawaiian kings, mourning for what modern Hawaii has become. It's Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young rolled together in polynesian spice; lyrics that, in any other singer, might sound cliche and melodramatic. Iz makes it work through honesty and a calmness that is nearly zen.
If you get a chance, check him out.
Iz died at 38 years old in 1997, of complications due to his weight (at one point, he topped 750 pounds). He was well known in the Hawaiian musical scene, and had toured part of the US continental west coast. Today, outside of Hawaii, he is best known for his "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" medly, played at the end credits of Meet Joe Black. The beginning of the song has appeared in commercials for cars and internet websites, and excerpts of the song were played during last week's TV hospital drama Gideon's Crossing, (which is my favorite new show of the season and had prompted me to find the song). He has had several albums, and I'm now pouring through them.
It sounds like a bad joke to say that the falsetto crooning of a 750 pound ukulele singer can be moving. Visions of a puffy Tiny Tim come to mind. It's the simplicity that gets to me. I'm usually a fan of the complex -- industrial to swing, it's the overlapping instrumentation and multiple harmonization that hooks me. Iz is simple, yet poetic...almost haunting at times. "Rainbow" makes no joke of the fact that it's a Judy Garland cover -- the song is respectful and true to the original atmosphere of the song. "Hawai'i 78" is a lovely, yet disturbing song about lost Hawaiian kings, mourning for what modern Hawaii has become. It's Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young rolled together in polynesian spice; lyrics that, in any other singer, might sound cliche and melodramatic. Iz makes it work through honesty and a calmness that is nearly zen.
If you get a chance, check him out.
