You’ll find many bass notes in this tune that bounce off that string. Many guitar pieces transposed for ukulele work best with a low-g and this one is no different. Needless to say, I’m rather fond of this song.īut enough of my self-indulgent stories! For this arrangement, you’ll need a low G, no questions asked. So I performed Olinda Road with HAPA onstage at the Big Island Film Fest while playing Ron Kuala’au’s ukulele in my board shorts, t-shirt, and green festival wristband. He was thrilled and invited me to play with the band when they got to Olinda Road at the end of the show. Before the show I found Barry backstage and said hi. I was over the moon.Īfter I had graduated and returned home to the Big Island, I went to a HAPA concert at one of the hotels. The icing on the cake was when our program director facilitated bringing Barry Flanagan to class one day and I got to play Olinda Road with its creator. We began performing it at gigs and it became one of my signature show tunes during my time in the Institute. With lots of free time outside of class for practicing, writing, and figuring out songs, I came up with an ukulele arrangement of Olinda Road. I ended up at the two-year Institute of Hawaiian Music program on the island of Maui in 2012.
I finally put two and two together and realized that HAPA’s Barry Flanagan had written one of the tunes on my old Islands album. Their first album, HAPA, came home one day and remains one of my family’s favorite Hawaiian records. The love affair continued many years later after moving to Hawai’i with my family and hearing more of HAPA’s music on KAPA radio in Kona. I’d spin it over and over in my little purple boombox, amazed at how somebody could make sounds so lovely.
That last track by somebody named HAPA was pure magic. It was on the first CD I owned – Putamayo Presents: Islands. Olinda Road was possibly the first song Hawaiian song I ever heard. As far as Hawaiian instrumentals go, Olinda Road by HAPA is surely one that deserves an ukulele tab arrangement.
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