Coming soon…
A few of the gigs, hoike & performances.
Mahalo HARA
Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts
for 2025 Nā Hōkū Hanohano Nominations
This time for Kī hōʻalu—back to my first music.
Thatʻs my roots, Kī hōʻalu, “blood music”.
Some people say “soul music”.
For me, itʻs “blood music”—mele koko—because it stirs my blood.
Itʻs an honor To share homegrown music stories! Mele Mo‘olelo
and 2025 finalist for Slack Key Album
for Apokolaniʻs Nā Hōkū Hanohano
2025 Slack Key Album of the year finalist
&
jazz finalist awards
2023
Kumau Barn Sessions,
2013
Red Wine & Blue Skies
and multiple nominations through the years.
And most recently receiving news in 2024 for the 2023 honor
of the song being chosen
among hundreds of worldwide songwriters:
“The More I Wanna Do “
that can be heard on the Kumau Barn Session album.
About Us
Some links and snippets that tell more about us, as observers and conduits, manifesting form as stories.
Stories told in sound, sight and invisible feelings.
Sweet and Sour Stories of Music, Motion, Color, and Light.
Any-kind, poi music of Apokolani.
KEOKI :
Storied songs. Crossover musical originals, that fuses early Hawaiian jazz and kī hōʻalu—like poi— blending live elements that bubble, rest and change constantly to be sweet, sour or both. Handed down, Hawaiian family style—As a keiki, sit quiet and listen. Watch. Most of all—feel it before you play it.
Thatʻs how. New songs often come to life the same way, canʻt say I write them. Sure…pencil or pen is put to paper…kinda falls from the sky as mist that thickens and bubbles with life and somehow takes shape and form as a new story is revealed.
It began small kid time and never stopped. But for real…it began plenty Moku o Keawe generations of relations before. Rhythms and sounds are in the koko (the blood), the uakoko (rainbow-sparkling rain), the wai (water), makani (air movement). I call it “blood music”. Mele Koko. And mahalo to my other ancestors–bloods of the world–life gifts.
Playing by sound…thatʻs what I do…not by ear…itʻs all in the sound. Sometimes I have a wandering pinky that searches, wanting a special feel to add to the chord. No matter, guitar or ukulele, standard or open tuning, soprano, tenor or baritone, four, five or six strings. Wandering fingers and tunings, searching for the sound. The sound holding the clearest, strongest, feeling. Music, the best way I know to talk true.
YVONNE:
Still, a brave trusting fool, borne from a childhood as a self exploring homegrown poet, song lover and image capturer beginning with a black box of a Brownie camera; egged on by LOTS of loving aunties & uncles to be in the sheer joy of it. First born of my generation to the hugging-est, cooking-est, gardening, farming, music-making and loving people of Hawai‘i, Appalacia and the Visayas—which translates to being cloaked in love and belonging and awesome homegrown food. Poke, chicken long-rice, crabcakes, cornmeal dredged okra, or pinakbet are equally soothing dishes. Big city people might of thought us poor, but how far from the truth was our rich spirit world. Add to that mix, adventurous parents who filled our worlds with more wonder from age four to nine, soaking in the late 50s music, smells and food in Morocco and Puerto Rico. And then…back home to velvet cloak of fragrance, sunlight and soothing of the islands. That and so much more, colors my stories.
TOGETHER
PARTNERSHIP MULTIMEDIA SAMPLE:
This gift of a loving partnership of two people
respecting each others differences and intersections.
A sample where all converges—Keokiʻs music story when bothered
and Yvonneʻs whateva crazy ideas turning into the story it wants to be:
“When Thingʻs Boderate” an art and video installation at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum.
https://apokolani.com/when-things-boderate/
Yvonne and Keoki are children from a multitude of generations—shoreline and island water people of many bloods—across many oceans. Resilient, collaborative, spirit survivors connected through time to hopeful futures for many families to come.
Our stories are not of conquerors or the vanquished. Bearing witness, they are stories of seeing, feeling—the joys, fun, beauty, the profound—the hurt, betrayals, kindnesses, uplift, renewal and gratitude for others who believe we connected through time and places. Mahalo also to the unique lenses of others who tell their stories.
We were both born in the “Territory of Hawaiʻi” before skyscrapers rose to reroute people, centuries of natural winds and waters, before beaches were cutoff from ohana campfire sharing of kani circle music, laughter and waking to a refreshing sunrise ocean plunge. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents experienced far greater losses from diseases, homeland access taken through a new system of power—language outlawed, hula outlawed, hale pili outlawed and abundance ravaged by greed. But never did they lose hope and aloha and recognition that there were people of all colors and creeds who also love place, kindness and goodness for the generations to come.
The hard work is honoring the ancestors we continue to learn from, upon whose shoulders we still lean. Harder still is forgiving our mistakes and imperfections. Lucky us…it seems to come clearer and truer in a song. May they connect us as cousins.
Others on the music of Apokolani
About Apokolani music and gatherings.
“Plenty flavors of crack seed kine stories, island style. Easy, take your time music. Like he says. just like life, some is sweet, some is sour. “
“So relaxing. My Honolulu crazy-traffic cd in the car. It mellows the ride. ” R.M.
“Missing Hawai‘i, it makes me feel closer. Kiss the Sky is so up lifting and timely. Mahalo, I love being able to share a hula to it.” Kumu hula, J.T.
“Like a Hawaiian Bob Dylan” Paul
“Eh brah. So good, I was just mellow, grooving with it in the truck. Then I listened again coming home and whoa, Auē Noho’i. Some heavy stuff to sweet mele. I like it. I like it. Itʻs for real.” Braddah John
“We had a most de”LIGHT”full evening. It was what we all needed. You both filled our umeke with so much aloha. The mahina was Lāʻau, good moons for relaxing, healing, and soothing. Good for everyone there that evening and beyond. You both raised the vibration through music, mele, and story, for our ʻāina, kānaka and akua mā. Piha ka mahalo! …We were indeed all transcended. Kehaulani
” From Jazz and Kae‘a on a KAPA radio interview with Keoki and Yvonne about the new album, “Auē Noho‘i’.
Ka‘ea: “I got a name for it, Conscious Music. Thatʻs what it is.Because thereʻs always a message, or something you can take away. From not only the lyrics, but the movement of the music.
Jazz: “Itʻs also partial folk music in a way, if you go back to the old albums liner notes, like Sons Of Hawaii, the Americans were calling it “folk music” as storytelling. And your music is very much that style. Your ukelele style is very much that Peter Moon, Ohta San—simple but very classy, clean playing. Not that bladahdaadaadaadaa all over the place kine—which fits the storytelling. It doesnʻt distract from the storytelling.“
Ka‘ea: “That makes sense to me—space…itʻs like my body understands and can feel it because itʻs not confused by what itʻs hearing.
…you folks have chosen a handful of musicians accentuating the mood, the intention, and you can hear the music. Like Jazz was saying, you can hear, the sax. Where the instrumentation is placed, youʻre actually allowed to enjoy it…This CD, you can put on and listen to all day long. Because it has this really calming groovy energy to it. So it just fills the house with such goodness.”
A FEW LINKS:
Separate websites, work, venues and mediums are artificial demarcations. Where does one stop and the other begin? Always, we are influenced and entwined with “place” and others. All is connected, and despite different websites and expressions, so is our work through the years. Here, since returning home to Hawai‘i in 1994:
Since 2020 a website with no single organization affiliation, began—still in-progress—of like-spirited partnership efforts with others and place that includes creative reverence expressed through music, poetry, hana lima, and mālama that never ends. The notion of “success” is foreign when all is spiraling, intersecting, loops through time. Most of the website work has been done by Yvonne, Keoki and Ku‘ulei Keakealani telling the stories of MANY who gave their trust, sweat, tears and laughter to the ahupua‘a of Ka‘ūpūlehu and mahalo to the quiet homeland leadership of makua Leinaala Keakealani Lightner and Hannah Kihalani Springer.
Hoike (diverse expressions of creative reverence): https://piliaina.org/hoike-2023-mothers-day/
Hana Lima o Ka’ūpūlehu (ohana stewardship): https://piliaina.org/were-you-here-photos-of-malama/
Community of Place (Ho’ola Ka Makana’ā o Ka‘ūpūlehu) https://piliaina.org/hoola-ka-makanaa-dryland-forest-at-kaupulehu/
Keola Magazine https://keolamagazine.com/art/yvonne-and-keoki-carter/
2019 by Ma’ata Tukuafu. “Try Look Inside: Yvonne and Keoki Carters’ Artistic Life”
Visual Arts Awards and sampling of exhibits on their TryLookInside gallery website:
PARTNERSHIP LAND & ARBORETUM SIGNAGE
https://trylookinside.smugmug.com/Hana-Lima-Graphic-Design-and/Aboretum-and-Outdoor-Signage/Arboretum-and-Outdoor-Signage/i-qRB273F