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The following is reprinted from a June 22, 2007 article by Melissa Moniz at Midweek.com. For the complete article and interview, please click here.
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A supernatural encounter following the death of Walter Keale's uncle, Moe Keale, in 2002 prompted him to try his hand at music.
"The day after Uncle Moe passed away I was at Kailua Beach and he came to the beach,"says Keale. "He came and sat down next to me. They call it a vision, whatever, but I have never had that kind of experience in my entire life. He said to me, 'I love your music, I love your music.' I never like say anything because it was strange. I thought to myself, I don't have any music, what do you mean, Uncle? And he just said, 'I love your music, no worry I love your music.' And then he said, 'You are Keale.'
"And that's why I decided to play."
For the past four years, Keale has been engulfed in music, following the path that his cousins Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and Skippy, and uncle Moe Keale have walked before him.
Music, however, wasn't the road that he planned to take. "I never planned to be a musician," says Keale. "It wasn't even on the bottom of my list because I saw what Iz went through and what Uncle Moe went through. It's a hard life, music. I would much prefer not to, but I had to. It was time."
The release of Keale's debut CD, Kahikina, is an expression of who he is and what it means to him to be Hawaiian. It includes 15 tracks, ranging in style from traditional Hawaiian to groovy contemporary.
"I don't sing to make a hit, I sing because it is connected to my real life existence," says Keale. "I wanted to make the CD because it said something about the places I'm going, the trails that I've taken and the land that I live."
Keale hopes that his music will be considered Hawaiian, but he expresses that categorizing music is much more black and white than he would prefer.
"There's some English and groovy stuff that some people might not consider Hawaiian, but my definition of Hawaiian is a much bigger pond than most people would allow to exist," says Keale."To me Hawaiian is not a style because every style of Hawaiian music is from somewhere else. Like the guys who say you can't use that instrument because it's from New Zealand or whatever. And I tell them, where is the ukulele from? The ukulele is not from here. The guitar is not from here.
"If you want to be really traditional, you going be clicking rocks."
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