Facing Future (The 33 1/3 Series)
by Dan Kois
“What I do is minimum effort, but maximum pleasure. That’s part of being Hawaiian, brah.”
— Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
“ [...] its delicate beauty, its guileless reimagining of the standards, and its 4 a.m. willingness to go over the top in search of the sublime.”
— Dan Kois, describing the medley “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World”
********************
If you are reading this there is a good chance that the name Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and the album Facing Future mean nothing to you. In fact, there is a good chance that if I were to ask you who the artist is or if you had ever heard of the album you would look back at me with a puzzled physiognomy. And if that were the case I would say that Israel Kamakawiwo’ole is the Hawaiian man who performed a cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with just his vocals and a ‘ukulele, and Facing Future is the album on which said cover was originally released on. And to us Mainlanders that would be the end of the story, for the most part. We Mainlanders would mostly agree that Israel’s version of that song is the very definition of the words delicate and beautiful, and probably even the phrase delicately beautiful—even in spite of its lyrical missteps. His version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is the prototypical great cover song: a recognizable and transcendent version of a song which has a uniqueness that instantly conveys timelessness. A song that a gigantic Hawaiian man performed in a small studio at four o’clock in the morning, five years before it was to be released on Facing Future and many years before it would generate word-of-mouth buzz when being used in commercials and movies, this is the song that could very well replace Judy Garland’s iconic version with many people in future generations. It is the very definition of timeless.
But what are we, the Mainlanders, to make of Kamakawiwo’ole, his legacy, and his most popular album? Dan Kois (last name rhymes with Joyce) aims to break this down and provide answers to this in his 33 1/3 entry.[1] To us, Kamakawiwo’ole is a curiosity not unlike that of a circus freak variety: when he died, he weighed 1,000 pounds; his voice didn’t match the image of him in the slightest sense. Upon hearing of Israel’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—whether it be on the commercial for the now-defunct eToys or during the closing scenes of Finding Forrester—many people bought Facing Future (it’s the highest-selling Hawaiian album ever produced) and were probably alarmed that every other song didn’t sound like it. It wouldn’t be outlandish to assume that most people thought of him as a novelty.
Kois, who lived in Hawaii for a couple years, goes back to the islands and attempts to put in perspective what Israel (or Iz, as he’s known amongst many of his bruddahs) means to Hawaii and what Facing Future means to the American island state that has always had a strong sense of nationalism, and disaffection with the Mainland. Kois not only breaks down the songs themselves into categories (Hapa Haole Songs and Hawaiian/Jawaiian Songs[2]) but he also delves into the history of Iz himself and the history of Hawaii.
The end result is a book that any piece of music criticism and literature aspires to: when you are done reading it you will want to buy this album. I will purposely leave out the details of what Kois writes about Iz, the people associated with him, and the history of Hawaiian nationalism (most notably tied to the song “Hawaii ’78″) because they are things that should be read and appreciated first-hand. This book not only does the artist and the album an immense amount of justice but it is, most importantly, a poignant portrait of everything that is connected to Iz—a man who is like an amalgam of Elvis, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon to the citizens of Hawaii. Multi-faceted and insightful, Kois’s book about Facing Future is a must-read for anyone that loves this album, wants to read great music criticism, or is simply curious about the artist and our (arguably) most misunderstood state.
[1] If you have never heard of the 33 1/3 series, they are pocket-sized paperbacks about albums written by a wide variety of writers (no writer has ever written two books). You can go the official 33 1/3 page and browse their catalog. I highly recommend this series (especially the entry on Harvest by Neil Young, if you like/love that album).
[2] Hapa Haole means “English-language songs played Hawaiian style”. Jawaiian is slang for Hawaiian reggae.
[...] [1] Self-promotion alert: the review that I wrote of that book can be found here. [...]