Well it has been a while. Don't know if anyone actually reads my blogs, if you do let me know what you think about my posts please :)
I have been pretty busy with school so I haven't been able to post as much as I have wanted to but I am going to try and fix that. But about school, so I am a music business major at Columbia College Chicago and I have been going back and forth about what I want to do in the industry. At first, I thought I wanted to do some A&R, which is basically finding artists and working with them to get them signed to a label. But I have also had goals of starting up a talent agency or a record label. Lately, since I have been in my Marketing class I have wanted to do Marketing as a career in the music industry. Getting artists known and exposed. As of today, I am starting to want to combine all of what I wanted to do. All because of the guest speakers in my Art and Business of Recording class today....
So in my ABR class we had guest speakers, Devin Buttner and Kaile Goh. Devin is a Columbia College Alumni and Kaile is one of the artists that he manages, produces, and drums for. Devin has done some great work with Kaile and other artists but what amazes me is that Kaile is only 14 years old and was signed to a record label at 10. She is releasing her first album this summer. Kaile is an amazing artist. She has that Indie Rock sound, similar to Paramore. What inspires me is I have always had an interest in the younger, just starting artists, which is basically what Kaile is.
The new inspiration I have gotten from them is that I would want to eventually start an Independent Label that helps to start up new artists, which is what Kaile's label does. I would want to both A&R and Marketing work for it if possible. But what I would lean towards is YouTube, Myspace, and other social network artists. The ones who have a decent fan base or could have no fan base, but have the talent to be stars. The YouTube stars that I watch like AJ Rafael, Sarah LaMantia and Alyssa Bernal are all true musicians that deserve to become stars. They are the type of people I want to work with.
There is so much more I want to do along with that, and as time goes on in college I will probably think of more things I want to do, but it is clear that the music industry is where I belong. :D
Check out Kaile Goh: http://www.myspace.com/kailegohmusic
The YouTube artists that I mentioned:
AJ Rafael: http://www.youtube.com/user/ilajil
Sarah LaMantia: http://www.youtube.com/user/SarEliz0131
Alyssa Bernal: http://www.youtube.com/user/hchsknights08
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The Haka
Because I grew up in Hawaii, I am fascinated by the Polynesian culture and basically anything tribal. One thing that I love about the culture is the chants and dances. Here is a little background on The Haka.
"Haka are not exclusively war dances, nor are they only performed by men. Some are performed by women, others by mixed groups, and some simple haka are performed by children. Haka are performed for various reasons: for amusement, as a hearty welcome to distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements or occasions (McLean 1996:46-47). War haka (peruperu) were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the opposition. Today, haka constitute an integral part of formal or official welcome ceremonies for distinguished visitors or foreign dignitaries, serving to impart a sense of the importance of the occasion.
Various actions are employed in the course of a performance, including facial contortions such as showing the whites of the eyes and the poking out of the tongue, and a wide variety of vigorous body actions such as slapping the hands against the body and stamping of the feet. As well as chanted words, a variety of cries and grunts are used. Haka may be understood as a kind of symphony in which the different parts of the body represent many instruments. The hands, arms, legs, feet, voice, eyes, tongue and the body as a whole combine to express courage, annoyance, joy or other feelings relevant to the purpose of the occasion." - wikipedia
One of my favorite forms of The Haka is Ka Mate. Today, most people know of Ka Mate because of The All Blacks New Zealand Rugby team. I have known about it since I was little but it was brought to my attention again when I saw the movie Forever Strong. I feel that many sports teams should do this in order to get their adrenaline pumping before a game, and/or to intimidate the enemy. And don't think that just because you aren't Polynesian that you cannot do it, I have seen many white people doing it, but of course they were within a group of people that were Polynesian. Now if anyone actually decides they want to try it, don't do it just for fun, because you could be coming off as mocking it. This dance, along with all other aspects of this culture should be respected.
Now I am not much of a sports fan, but I have recently become very interested in Rugby. And I'd say that Rugby is the only sport that I'd actually follow, and I plan to start following it, but here is a video of the All Blacks doing the Haka:
This next video is a very cool commercial for the All Blacks:
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Hawaii, My Home: Kailua (Part 1)
So this is a first post of a series of blogs that I will be doing. This series is all about my memories of certain areas of Hawaii. For those of you who do not know me that well, I am from Hawaii. My family moved there when I was less than a year old, and I lived there until I graduated High School. Now that you have a little background here is the first post.....
Kailua (Part 1)
I started out by living on Kaha street, up until I was two years old, then moved over to Oneawa street up until I was about 7. I hardly remember my Kaha sreet house because I was so young but I can remember some things at my Oneawa Street house. I can picture the house, a mahogany-colored wooden fence surrounded the house. This fence was sturdy, but I bet if one big gust of wind came, that fence would have went down in an instant. When you enter this poorly made, mahogany fence you enter into a partial grass, partial sand like dirt yard. Over to the left was my dad's workout equipment. We would spend days outside listening to songs by Keali'i Reichel, and other Hawaiian artists. He would be working out, and I would either be on my swing, riding my trike, or possibly trying to catch some geckos. Off to the right was a dark shaded area where there was the dog house under a tree, and attached to a branch was my swing. In that doghouse was my dog Nika. For the time that we lived there I was scared to death of my dog, and well any dog, I am not entirely sure why I was so scared of them, I think it was some sort of young childhood experience. Nika was always chained up to her doghouse, for two reasons, because she would run and jump on me, and because she would always dig under and eat up the fence in order to get out. She was not a bad dog at all, just a little rascal at times. I don't remember the inside of the house too well, but I remember one incident that happened on my lanai (porch). My friend Sarah was over, I was about 5 years old and she was around 3. It was a usual time of me bossing her around, telling her to get off my trike, or her to get off my swing, and then me trying to catching geckos. But this time, something happened, I actually caught a gecko. I immediately run and show it to my mom, who is recording the whole time of me playing with Sarah. Of course, Sarah wanted to see it and she said "I wanna see, I wanna see, I wanna put it on my finger." then I replied "Okay Sarah, don't be scared." Then, all of a sudden, the gecko jumped into Sarah's hair. Now normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but Sarah's hair was curly and freezy, and my mom referred to it as a rat's nest, so the gecko got caught in it. Sarah was bawling saying "get it out, get it out". Good times. Ha.
Now after I moved out of that house, I moved to Kaneohe Bay drive in Aikahi. This house was nice, and I lived there for a little over ten years, but nothing too exciting (like gecko's gone wild) happened there.
There are so many things I remember about Kailua, and I will probably forget to add a lot, which will probably make me have a part 2 of this later. Here are some things...
Kainalu Elementary School
Now this was my school from kindergarten to 6th grade. Great school, I still talk to many of my friends that I had there. I remember all the fun times I had there with those friends, the most fun I had was playing dodgeball and kickball in 5th grade.
Dodgeball
"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"
Now us Kainalu kids played dodgeball and kickball like no one else. These were the unofficial sports of the school. Dodgeball, it was like any regular way of playing dodgeball, but we had our moments of great times. Everyone loved to play it even if they hated sports, because those who couldn't throw, could dodge, and I was a great dodger. But one moment that stands out the most was one kid, Lucas, he was the best dodgeball player in our school, he could throw that ball like it was a fastball, and you did not want to even try to catch it because it burned you when it hit you. Most people would dive to escape it. So not even Lucas's competition like Joey, DJ, or Rickey could even catch his throws. But one time, my long time friend Jessica, who wasn't a great player but wasn't bad either caught one of his throws. Now this moment was amazing, because if you know dodgeball, you know that if someone catches a person's throw, then everyone that was taken out by that person is let back into the game. Jessica's catch caused basically her whole team to come back in. Kids rushed back in, and everyone was amazed by that moment.
Kickball
Then there was kickball. Now we didn't play kickball like the normal kids, where you okay it like baseball, we had a better way of playing. It looked a lot like dodgeball. There are two sides each with a lot of kids, one kid would start it off by kicking it to the other side, then one person would either catch it from the other side, or retrieve it as it fell, then they would kick it back, and this would go over and over again. There was no real competition to this game, but we would sometimes see who could kick it the highest and farthest. There was one kid who dominated above all the rest in that competition, and he was Soloman (Sol), an extremely tall Samoan kid. He kicked a ball and that ball would go higher and farther to the point where you could barely see it, I wouldn't be surprised if he is a kicker on a football team now. Because it went so high and far, it obviously had a lot of power to it. So no one really wanted to get in the way, unless they had a death wish. But we also had this little game where someone would jump in front and stop each other's kicks right as they went up so it they could steal the ball and kick it for themselves. No one dared to try with Sol's kicks. But my friend Sheldon was a crazy little guy. Sheldon was a short Asian kid, that was probably the shortest in our grade. Everyone loved this kid and he did crazy things and got along with everyone. One day, as Sol was about to blast the ball to the other side, little Sheldon flies up into the air and blocks Sol's kick with his back. Everyone was so surprised to see this happen, and also to see that Sheldon didn't go flying because he was so small. He just got up and laughed it all off. We had many crazy times, but that was the most memorable.
I have crazy friends. But they are awesome.
One other thing that I remember about Kainalu is the playground equipment. Now we didn't have the greatest equipment, it was just structures made out of metal poles, like monkey bars, jungle gym's, and other things like it. Now it was a little rusty, and the paint was chipped, but it was sturdy. But one day, they decide to take it all away. This was in about 4th grade. We find out that supposedly someone got hurt and their parents decided to sue. They told us that we would get new equipment that was safer. Of course we liked new things, so we waited. And waited. And waited. It was about 4 years until they put new equipment. So we all graduated from that school and moved onto another. But of course we all wanted to go and see this new equipment, and what we saw, was a small area of cookie cutter plastic slides and other equipment that they began to have in just about every school. Now if we had a small area that would be understandable. But we had a playground bigger than a football field, so they decide to put a small plastic thing right in the center of the field. Can anyone say cheap? Of course all of us kids who had been waiting for years for new equipment were very irritated by this, but we moved on, because we were at a new school.
Despite the bad equipment and cheap budget, Kainalu was a pretty good school, and all of those times that I had in and out of that school were great. But this was just the early years.
End of Part 1
I started out by living on Kaha street, up until I was two years old, then moved over to Oneawa street up until I was about 7. I hardly remember my Kaha sreet house because I was so young but I can remember some things at my Oneawa Street house. I can picture the house, a mahogany-colored wooden fence surrounded the house. This fence was sturdy, but I bet if one big gust of wind came, that fence would have went down in an instant. When you enter this poorly made, mahogany fence you enter into a partial grass, partial sand like dirt yard. Over to the left was my dad's workout equipment. We would spend days outside listening to songs by Keali'i Reichel, and other Hawaiian artists. He would be working out, and I would either be on my swing, riding my trike, or possibly trying to catch some geckos. Off to the right was a dark shaded area where there was the dog house under a tree, and attached to a branch was my swing. In that doghouse was my dog Nika. For the time that we lived there I was scared to death of my dog, and well any dog, I am not entirely sure why I was so scared of them, I think it was some sort of young childhood experience. Nika was always chained up to her doghouse, for two reasons, because she would run and jump on me, and because she would always dig under and eat up the fence in order to get out. She was not a bad dog at all, just a little rascal at times. I don't remember the inside of the house too well, but I remember one incident that happened on my lanai (porch). My friend Sarah was over, I was about 5 years old and she was around 3. It was a usual time of me bossing her around, telling her to get off my trike, or her to get off my swing, and then me trying to catching geckos. But this time, something happened, I actually caught a gecko. I immediately run and show it to my mom, who is recording the whole time of me playing with Sarah. Of course, Sarah wanted to see it and she said "I wanna see, I wanna see, I wanna put it on my finger." then I replied "Okay Sarah, don't be scared." Then, all of a sudden, the gecko jumped into Sarah's hair. Now normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but Sarah's hair was curly and freezy, and my mom referred to it as a rat's nest, so the gecko got caught in it. Sarah was bawling saying "get it out, get it out". Good times. Ha.
Now after I moved out of that house, I moved to Kaneohe Bay drive in Aikahi. This house was nice, and I lived there for a little over ten years, but nothing too exciting (like gecko's gone wild) happened there.
There are so many things I remember about Kailua, and I will probably forget to add a lot, which will probably make me have a part 2 of this later. Here are some things...
Kainalu Elementary School
Now this was my school from kindergarten to 6th grade. Great school, I still talk to many of my friends that I had there. I remember all the fun times I had there with those friends, the most fun I had was playing dodgeball and kickball in 5th grade.
Now us Kainalu kids played dodgeball and kickball like no one else. These were the unofficial sports of the school. Dodgeball, it was like any regular way of playing dodgeball, but we had our moments of great times. Everyone loved to play it even if they hated sports, because those who couldn't throw, could dodge, and I was a great dodger. But one moment that stands out the most was one kid, Lucas, he was the best dodgeball player in our school, he could throw that ball like it was a fastball, and you did not want to even try to catch it because it burned you when it hit you. Most people would dive to escape it. So not even Lucas's competition like Joey, DJ, or Rickey could even catch his throws. But one time, my long time friend Jessica, who wasn't a great player but wasn't bad either caught one of his throws. Now this moment was amazing, because if you know dodgeball, you know that if someone catches a person's throw, then everyone that was taken out by that person is let back into the game. Jessica's catch caused basically her whole team to come back in. Kids rushed back in, and everyone was amazed by that moment.
Then there was kickball. Now we didn't play kickball like the normal kids, where you okay it like baseball, we had a better way of playing. It looked a lot like dodgeball. There are two sides each with a lot of kids, one kid would start it off by kicking it to the other side, then one person would either catch it from the other side, or retrieve it as it fell, then they would kick it back, and this would go over and over again. There was no real competition to this game, but we would sometimes see who could kick it the highest and farthest. There was one kid who dominated above all the rest in that competition, and he was Soloman (Sol), an extremely tall Samoan kid. He kicked a ball and that ball would go higher and farther to the point where you could barely see it, I wouldn't be surprised if he is a kicker on a football team now. Because it went so high and far, it obviously had a lot of power to it. So no one really wanted to get in the way, unless they had a death wish. But we also had this little game where someone would jump in front and stop each other's kicks right as they went up so it they could steal the ball and kick it for themselves. No one dared to try with Sol's kicks. But my friend Sheldon was a crazy little guy. Sheldon was a short Asian kid, that was probably the shortest in our grade. Everyone loved this kid and he did crazy things and got along with everyone. One day, as Sol was about to blast the ball to the other side, little Sheldon flies up into the air and blocks Sol's kick with his back. Everyone was so surprised to see this happen, and also to see that Sheldon didn't go flying because he was so small. He just got up and laughed it all off. We had many crazy times, but that was the most memorable.
I have crazy friends. But they are awesome.
One other thing that I remember about Kainalu is the playground equipment. Now we didn't have the greatest equipment, it was just structures made out of metal poles, like monkey bars, jungle gym's, and other things like it. Now it was a little rusty, and the paint was chipped, but it was sturdy. But one day, they decide to take it all away. This was in about 4th grade. We find out that supposedly someone got hurt and their parents decided to sue. They told us that we would get new equipment that was safer. Of course we liked new things, so we waited. And waited. And waited. It was about 4 years until they put new equipment. So we all graduated from that school and moved onto another. But of course we all wanted to go and see this new equipment, and what we saw, was a small area of cookie cutter plastic slides and other equipment that they began to have in just about every school. Now if we had a small area that would be understandable. But we had a playground bigger than a football field, so they decide to put a small plastic thing right in the center of the field. Can anyone say cheap? Of course all of us kids who had been waiting for years for new equipment were very irritated by this, but we moved on, because we were at a new school.
Despite the bad equipment and cheap budget, Kainalu was a pretty good school, and all of those times that I had in and out of that school were great. But this was just the early years.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Background and reason of this blog
So to tell you the truth, I am not the blogging type of person, but I've seen many great blogs, and thought it might be interesting to start one of my own. I can get my feelings out and talk about anything I want to really. I have no idea what kind of direction this might go in the future, but as of right now, I can see myself talking about things and places of my past, present, and future, and anything else that might be interesting me at the time. So if anyone actually takes a look at this, tell me what you think. Thank you. =)
Most of you may not know what Kia Kaha means. Kia Kaha means be strong in Maori. But in the one of my favorite movies "Forever Strong" they use the meaning forever strong. For those of you who have not seen this movie, (warning, may contain spoilers) it is about a boy named Rick Penning (played by Sean Farris of Never Back Down) who is plays rugby, and it is basically his whole life. His father is his coach, who is extremely hard on him, and is always his coach and never his father. Rick gets into trouble with the law and gets sent to a juvenile prison, at this prison he is recruited by his rival rugby team to play for them. This team is called Highland Rugby. This team learns more than just how to play and win, but they learn values of everyday life. This team is not allowed to drink, do drugs, or do anything else that would embarass themselves or their family. You can watch the movie for yourself to find about the rest. In this movie they do the maori warrior dance called Ka Mate (look up All Blacks Ka Mate on YouTube). They do the Ka Mate in other cultures like the Tongan Culture, which is the culture background of the Ka Mate in this movie.
I love anything tribal related so of course this movie interested me, and most sports movies tend to be pretty moving. But it was those values that the team lived by that really got to me. Of course everyone wants to party and have fun, but I feel this is the better way to live life, and if more people can incorporate this into their own life and the lives of their peers, then we all could be living much better. We would all be forever strong.
Most of you may not know what Kia Kaha means. Kia Kaha means be strong in Maori. But in the one of my favorite movies "Forever Strong" they use the meaning forever strong. For those of you who have not seen this movie, (warning, may contain spoilers) it is about a boy named Rick Penning (played by Sean Farris of Never Back Down) who is plays rugby, and it is basically his whole life. His father is his coach, who is extremely hard on him, and is always his coach and never his father. Rick gets into trouble with the law and gets sent to a juvenile prison, at this prison he is recruited by his rival rugby team to play for them. This team is called Highland Rugby. This team learns more than just how to play and win, but they learn values of everyday life. This team is not allowed to drink, do drugs, or do anything else that would embarass themselves or their family. You can watch the movie for yourself to find about the rest. In this movie they do the maori warrior dance called Ka Mate (look up All Blacks Ka Mate on YouTube). They do the Ka Mate in other cultures like the Tongan Culture, which is the culture background of the Ka Mate in this movie.
I love anything tribal related so of course this movie interested me, and most sports movies tend to be pretty moving. But it was those values that the team lived by that really got to me. Of course everyone wants to party and have fun, but I feel this is the better way to live life, and if more people can incorporate this into their own life and the lives of their peers, then we all could be living much better. We would all be forever strong.
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