The Windjammers

Every Monday night, the hotel presents the Windjammers, a group of local musicians and dancers who provide a nice laid back local show.  It is not a show which is the same every night.  It is not choreographed to be spectacular.  It is more of a family gathering where people have fun.

 The evening started with these three guys.  The one in the red t-shirt is Leonard and he just sort of retired from his full time job in the technology department at one of the schools.

I don't know what the other two do but the three of them have played every time I've visited over the past several years.  As the evening progressed, more musicians and dancers showed up.

They alternate Hawaiian music with dancing and a few regular songs.

 The man in the picture is from Japan.  He and his wife come here every June to spend a month studying Hula at one of the Halau's (dance schools).

The lady in the pink muumuu sang and danced.  She is the one who chose songs like 5 foot 2 and other oldies.  I recognized them due to a relative who had them on recoreds.

 More dancing but by this time a few more people had showed up to participate.  The woman in the background is Caroline.  She is married to Leonard and her mother comes every Monday to watch. 

I think her mother is now 100 or so but she loves coming and interacting with everyone.  Carolyn is wonderful because she'll make sure you know the next move in the hula, even when you haven't done the dance in a long, long time. 

I actually got up and performed with Carolyn and a couple other people but I forgot to give my camera to someone to take a picture of me.  Darn.

This lady is from Japan and is married to the man I mentioned earlier.  They often do a dance where she ends up kicking him in the but and everyone has a blast.  She is so good.

When you sit and watch everyone dance, they do not do the exact same steps and motions at exactly the same time.  It all depends on who they learned the hula from.  Many dances are passed down through families.

As you can see in this picture, another few musicians have joined.  The guy in front of the open doorway is a fantastic ukulele player.  He can pick various tunes the same way someone would do it on a guitar.

He as fantastic.  I had never seen anyone pick music on a ukulele the way he does.  He was awesome.

The program was done so they'd go to each musician for his or her choice.  Some times the person chose a hula while other times they'd choose a song. 

I told Caroline, next year, I'm going to arrange to stay for two Monday's so I can enjoy their music twice instead of just once.  It is such a fun show and they involve the audience as much as they can.

I hope you enjoyed this.  I'll try to upload a couple of videos later in the week.  Have a great time.