Rock it

The following was written in the din of the 2008 Waiakea High School Senior Prom, 08 March 2008, held at the gymnasium. It has been slightly revised and edited from its original form, which may be found at my Facebook page.

So. Local music. Jawaiian. Reggae. Whatever. Call it what you will; its tendancy to be simplistic and repetitive simultaneously appalls me and intrigues me. I don’t fully understand it, its fans, or its artists, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe it’s someting deeper than its elementary chord structure and excessively high decibel levels. Maybe I am analyzing it too much.
It is such an integral part of modern Hawai’i that perhaps to shun the genre is to deny oneself the opportunity to become totally immersed in the culture. To an outsider, it might sound completely foreign, and that’s sometimes how I feel: like an outsider; I can’t appreciate the inane and sometimes foolish nature of the lyrics or, again, the repetition.
When I leave here, I know that this might be one of the things I miss about home.
Then again, I might be overcome with a sense of relief: that I have finally left the ‘aina behind and abandoned my Hilo roots.

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~ by posaune on 27 April 08.