Na Pua Lei `Ilima - Led and Fran at the Lake

The `ilima flower is a tiny delicate one, hard to find and precious. It is the flower of O`ahu so songs about the `ilima are likely to celebrate the island and its children. As it happens there are two songs of the same name and both do celebrate and honor O`ahu. The older song was composed by John K. Almeida, one of Hawai`is most prolific composers. You can find the lyrics and a translation here: http://www.huapala.org/NA/Na_Pua_Lei_... and it is certainly a song of love, but the lover could easily be a metaphor for the island.

The version we generally hear today has a totally different melody and this is the one that inspired Led and I for our improvised duet. The lyrics of this version were composed by Abbey Palea with music by Emily Kau'i Zuttermeister. You can find the lyrics and translation of this song here: https://www.kalena.com/huapala/NA/Na_... and you can see that this one is more directly a tribute to the island of O`ahu and its children.

One of the features of windward O`ahu is the drama in the sky, the magnificent clouds that decorate the sky and frame the mountains. It can be challenging to capture that sky while also featuring the musicians but things came together pretty well for this shoot. As always its better to be lucky than good (grin).

Led and I are both playing Martin guitars, his is the old faithful long scale 000-16 that he bought years ago at Gryphon Strings in Palo Alto, CA. I'm using my Hawai`i OM-18V, a somewhat abused example that I bought from a pawn shop via Ebay. It can sometimes be a struggle but that wonderful Martin and mahogany sound is worth the effort. I miked up the two guitars with my pair of Shure KSM142 mics, set to their omnidirectional pattern. The mics were plugged into the Zoom F6 while I shot video using my Panasonic Lumix GH5. I used REAPER to mix down the audio tracks and then pulled the clip together using DaVinci Resolve.