Eddie Kamae was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1927 and has spent all of his life in the Hawaiian Islands. Although Eddie did not graduate from high school, he has gone on to distinguish himself as a singer, a musician, a composer, and more recently, as a filmmaker. He has been a key figure in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance, which found one of its earliest and strongest voices in The Sons of Hawai‘i, the charismatic band formed in the 1960s by Kamae and the legendary singer and guitar virtuoso, Gabby Pahinui. This band became known for the authenticity of its feeling and choice of songs, many of which were a result of Kamae’s research into the archives of long-neglected melodies and lyrics. He is recognized as the first well-known performer to systematically seek out the sources and origins of traditional Hawaiian music.

Eddie has served on the Board of Directors of the Hawaiian Music Foundation. In 1974, he helped produce the landmark album, Music of Hawai‘i, part of The National Geographic’s prestigious “Music of the World” series. During this period, he and his wife, Myrna, also co-produced nine albums of traditional Hawaiian music, in a series called Eddie Kamae Presents the Sons of Hawai‘i. By the mid-1970s, Kamae himself had become a folk hero, known for his instrumental genius and for a vigorous singing style, both guttural and poetic, that carries the spirit of an ancient vocal and chanting tradition into the 20th century. In 1979, he was designated A Living Treasure of Hawai‘i. And in 1992, Eddie was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hawaiian Academy of Recording Artists. In 1996, he received the Bishop Museum’s Charles Reed Bishop Medal for his outstanding contributions to Hawai‘i’s musical heritage. In 1999, the Sons of Hawai‘i were featured in Washington, D.C. at the Annual July 4th Folklife Festival on the Mall. In 2000, The Commission on Culture and The Arts for City and County of Honolulu honored Eddie with a Lifetime of Achievement Award. Eddie was also inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2002, he and his wife, Myrna, received the state’s highest film award, The Filmmakers in Hawai‘i Award. In addition to his many accomplishments, Eddie has garnered numerous Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, Hawai‘i’s equivalent of the Grammy Award, for many of his albums, CDs and songs. Governor Linda Lingle proclaimed July 24, 2005 as the official “Eddie Kamae Day” in Hawai‘i for all he has done for the state. In 2007 Eddie received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts the highest federal government award a folk musician can receive.

During the 1980s, while continuing to lead The Sons of Hawai‘i, Kamae began a second career as a filmmaker. His years of searching for musical sources put him in touch with the generation of older Hawaiians who in many ways represent our last living links with the pre-modern life of 19th century Hawai`i. Moved to record their voices, their faces, their ways of speaking and thinking, Kamae undertook a series of documentary films dealing with Hawaiian musical and cultural tradition.

The first of these documentaries, LI‘A: The Legacy of Hawaiian Man, premiered in Honolulu in 1988 and has since been named one of the ten best documentaries shown during the first ten years of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival. LISTEN TO THE FOREST (1991) received an Award of Special Recognition from the Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i. THE HAWAIIAN WAY: The Art and Tradition of Slack Key Music (1993), became the first film by a native Hawaiian to receive national recognition. It premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as part of a day of screenings honoring Kamae’s Legacy Series, and hosted by Hawai‘i’s congressional delegation.

His 1995, WORDS, EARTH & ALOHA: The Sources of Hawaiian Music, earned the Hawai‘i International Film Festival’s Silver Maile Award. The Festival’s Audience Award, for most popular documentary, went to LUTHER KAHEKILI MAKEKAU: A One Kine Hawaiian Man (1997) and to HAWAIIAN VOICES: Bridging Past to Present (1998). SONS OF HAWAI‘I: A Sound, A Band, A Legend (2000) was nominated for the festival’s Documentary Award, KEEPERS OF THE FLAME (2005), and LAHAINA: Waves of Change (2007) are winners of the Audience Award for best documentary.

After successful broadcasts on primetime television and showings at film festivals (in Hawai‘i and on the mainland). Kamae’s films have become part of the cultural curriculum in Hawai‘i’s public school system, along with study guides prepared by a team of educational specialists. Education is one of Kamae’s top priorities, and these films, along with the study guides, are now used as cultural resource materials throughout the state of Hawai‘i.

Eddie Kamae is one of a few directors of Native Hawaiian Ancestry. He captures on film something essential about the spirit of the Hawaiian people, the distinctive quality of that spirit, and of the islands they have inhabited for over 1,500 years. Though dozens of films have been shot in Hawai‘i during the past 75 years, most have used the islands as a setting, as a source of spectacular scenery, but relatively few have been about Hawai‘i. Even fewer have been about its people. Kamae’s films are Hawaiian in content as well as in style. They are of the Pacific and of the Hawaiian islands where he has spent his life. True to a Polynesian sensibility, he has been able to convey, through the music he knows so well, through the subtle power and mystery of Hawai‘i’s many magnetic places, and through the testimony of the kupuna (elders), who bring into our time the voices and the healing values of an older time.

MYRNA KAMAE

Myrna Kamae is the Producer for the nine documentaries in The Hawaiian Legacy Series and Executive Director of The Hawaiian Legacy Foundation. Before working with her husband, Eddie, on The Hawaiian Legacy Series, she worked in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor in Voter Education and as a Production Assistant for the Hawai’i State Department of Education in Educational Television. She is the Coordinator for The Hawaiian Legacy Series educational programs and the co-writer of the Study Guides that accompany these programs. From 1986 to 2000, Myrna worked as the Executive Director for the Hawaiian Division of The Asian/Pacific Foundation of Hawai’i. Currently, she is working with her husband, Eddie, to help preserve traditional Hawaiian culture through films and school programs through The Hawaiian Legacy Foundation.

Through Hawaii Sons, Inc. the Kamaes have collaborated on 14 songs, including three songs for the 1978 television special, Christmas Time with Eddie Kamae & The Sons of Hawaii, as well as other television productions. Together, they have produced seven albums and four award-winning CDs of traditional Hawaiian music.

For more information on the documentaries by Eddie Kamae, please visit www.hawaiianlegacy.com