Family pairs build bonds through traditional Native music
Submitted on September 23, 2004 - 12:00am.
Adam Kealoha Causey and Ivy Meagan Smith
WASHINGTON – The way Kawai Hoe plays his flutes might seem odd to a piccolo player attending the First Americans Festival – he plays them through his nose.
But that is normal for Native Hawaiians Kawai, 25, and his father, Calvin, 59, both of the island of Oahu, because they play Hawaiian nose flutes. Instead of mouthpieces, these instruments have a small hole for air from the nose.
“Basically it's sounds of the environment,” Kawai said Thursday about the bamboo and gourd flutes and his family's other nature-exalting instruments – conch shells, gourd drums and ka'eke'ekes – bamboo percussion pipes.
But that is normal for Native Hawaiians Kawai, 25, and his father, Calvin, 59, both of the island of Oahu, because they play Hawaiian nose flutes. Instead of mouthpieces, these instruments have a small hole for air from the nose.
“Basically it's sounds of the environment,” Kawai said Thursday about the bamboo and gourd flutes and his family's other nature-exalting instruments – conch shells, gourd drums and ka'eke'ekes – bamboo percussion pipes.
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