Israel Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole, in Hawaiian of the fearless eye, the bold face; (May 20, 1959-June 26, 1997), also called Bruddah Iz or IZ, was an American singer-lyricist, musician, and Hawaiian sovereignty activist.
He achieved commercial success outside Hawaii when his album Facing Future was released in 1993. His medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World was released on his albums Ka ʻAnoʻi and Facing Future, and was subsequently featured in several films, television programs, and television commercials.
Along with his ukulele playing and incorporation of other genres, such as jazz and reggae, Kamakawiwoʻole remains influential in Hawaiian music.
Kamakawiwoʻole was born at Kuakini Medical Center in Honolulu to Henry Hank Kaleialoha Naniwa Kamakawiwoʻole Jr. and Evangeline Angie Leinani Kamakawiwoʻole. The notable Hawaiian musician Moe Keale was his uncle and a major musical influence. Kamakawiwoʻole was raised in the community of Kaimuki, where his parents had met and married.
He began playing music with his older brother Skippy and cousin Allen Thornton at the age of 11, being exposed to the music of Hawaiian entertainers of the time such as Peter Moon, Palani Vaughn, and Don Ho, who frequented the establishment where Kamakawiwoʻole's parents worked.
Hawaiian musician Del Beazley spoke of the first time he heard Kamakawiwoʻole perform, when, while playing for a graduation party, the whole room fell silent on hearing him sing. He remained in Hawaii as his brother Skippy entered the Army in 1971 and his cousin Allen moved to the mainland in 1976.
In his early teens, he studied at Upward Bound (UB) of the University of Hawaii at Hilo and his family moved to Mākaha. There he met Louis Kauakahi, Sam Gray, and Jerome Koko. Together with Skippy, they formed the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau. A part of the Hawaiian Renaissance, the band's blend of contemporary and traditional styles gained in popularity as they toured Hawaii and the mainland United States, releasing fifteen successful albums.
Kamakawiwoʻole's aim was to make music that stayed true to the typical sound of traditional Hawaiian music.
The Makaha Sons of Niʻihau recorded No Kristo in 1976 and released several more albums, including Hoʻoluana, Kahea O Keale, Keala, Makaha Sons of Niʻihau and Mahalo Ke Akua.
The group became Hawaii's most popular contemporary traditional group with breakout albums 1984's Puana Hou Me Ke Aloha and its follow-up, 1986's Hoʻola.
Kamakawiwoʻole's last recorded album with the group was 1991's Hoʻoluana. It remains the group's top-selling CD.
In 1982, Skippy died at age 28 of a heart attack related to obesity. Later the same year, Kamakawiwoʻole married his childhood sweetheart Marlene. Soon after, they had a daughter whom they named Ceslie-Ann Wehi (born c. 1983).
In 1990, Kamakawiwoʻole released his first solo album Ka ʻAnoʻi, which won awards for Contemporary Album of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year from the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts (HARA).
Facing Future was released in 1993 by The Mountain Apple Company. It featured a version of his most popular song, the medley Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World, along with Hawaiʻi 78, White Sandy Beach of Hawaiʻi, Maui Hawaiian Sup'pa Man, and Kaulana Kawaihae. The decision to include a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow was said to be a last-minute one by his producer Jon de Mello and Kamakawiwoʻole.
In 1994, Kamakawiwoʻole was voted favorite entertainer of the year by the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts (HARA). E Ala E (1995) featured the political title song ʻE Ala ʻE and Kaleohano, and N Dis Life (1996) featured In This Life and Starting All Over Again.
In 1997, Kamakawiwoʻole was again honored by HARA at the Annual Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards for Male Vocalist of the Year, Favorite Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year, and Island Contemporary Album of the Year. He watched the awards ceremony from a hospital room.
Kamakawiwo'ole's Facing Future has become the best-selling Hawaiian album of all time.
Kamakawiwoʻole was known for promoting Hawaiian rights and Hawaiian independence, both through his lyrics, which often stated the case for independence directly, and through his own actions. For example, the lyric in his song Hawaiʻi '78: The life of this land is the life of the people/and that to care for the land (malama ʻāina) is to care for the Hawaiian culture, is a statement that many consider to summarize his Hawaiian ideals.
The state motto of Hawaiʻi is a recurring line in the song and encompasses the meaning of his message: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono, proclaimed by King Kamehameha III when Hawaiʻi regained sovereignty in 1843. It can be roughly translated as: The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.
Kamakawiwoʻole used his music to promote awareness of his belief that a second-class status had been pushed onto fellow natives by the tourist industry.
Kamakawiwoʻole suffered from obesity throughout his life. Beset with respiratory, heart, and other medical problems, he died at the age of 38 in the Queen's Medical Center on June 26, 1997. At the time of his death, Kamakawiwoʻole had a wife, Marlene Kamakawiwoʻole, and a daughter, Ceslie-Ann Wehi.
The Hawaiian flag flew at half-staff on July 10, 1997, the day of Kamakawiwoʻole's funeral. His koa wood casket lay at the state capitol building in Honolulu, making him the third person and the only non-government official to be so honored. Approximately 10,000 people attended his funeral. Thousands of fans gathered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Mākua Beach on July 12, 1997.
According to witnesses, many people commemorated him by honking their car and truck horns on all Hawaiian highways that day. Scenes from the funeral and scattering of Kamakawiwoʻole's ashes were featured in official music videos of Over the Rainbow, released posthumously by Mountain Apple Company. As of July 2020, the two videos, as featured on YouTube, have collectively received over a billion views.
More information: Instagram
but I'm not scared for myself for dying.
Because I believe all these places are temporary.
This is just one shell.
Because we Hawaiians live in both worlds.
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
Daniel Stone likes tales. He writes beautiful ones and he has recommended to The Stones to watch Lava, a computer-animated musical short film that has a closer relation with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.
Lava is a 2014 American computer-animated musical short film, produced by Pixar Animation Studios.
Directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren, it premiered at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on June 14, 2014, and was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Inside Out, on June 19, 2015. The short is a musical love story that takes place over thousands of years.
It is set to a song written by Murphy, and was inspired by the isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes. In an interview with KHON, Murphy explained that his interest in Hawaii began 25 years prior while honeymooning on the main island of Hawai'i.
Years later, he heard Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow, which touched him. I put together this fascination and love and this experience I had with my wife in Hawaii, with this feeling I had for this song and thought, wow, if I could blend those two things, it would be really -a film I would love to see."
The idea began to coalesce while attending the wedding of his sister, who married at the age of 43. As my sister stood up on the altar, I thought about how happy she was and how long she'd waited for her very special day. There, at my sister’s wedding, I remembered Loihi and I had an epiphany... What if my sister was a volcano? And what if volcanoes spend their entire lives searching for love, like humans do?"
The plot talks about a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, where a lonely volcano watches the wildlife creatures frolic with their mates and wishes to find one of his own. He sings a song (lava) to the ocean each day for thousands of years, gradually venting his lava and sinking into the water, but does not realize that an undersea female volcano has heard him every day and has fallen in love with him.
She emerges on the day when that volcano becomes almost extinct, but her face is turned away and she cannot see him. He sinks fully into the ocean, heartbroken, but revives, full of lava when he hears her singing his song to him. His fire is re-ignited, he erupts back to the surface, this time right next to her, and the two form a single island where they are together, singing his song together.
More information: Disney Fandom
without stepping on anybodys toes,
without causing friction with anybody.
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