Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band, Vol. 1
Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian BandCountries that own much of their income to tourism tend to find their indigenous musics being filleted of emotional content and served up as clichés for souvenir purposes. Such is the fate of Caribbean calypso, Spanish flamenco and Hawaiian acoustic music. Luckily, back in the halcyon days of 1974 when record companies went in for such extravagance, Warner Bros sent a crew to a remote area of northern Hawaii to record master guitarist and singer Gabby Pahinui and his seven piece band going through their paces. Pahinui and his fellow performer Atta Issacs were later to distinguish Ry Cooder's Chicken Skin Music and Cooder sits in here. The prevailing texture of the music is as warm and soft as the island of its origin, ringing guitars melting into each other, ripe vocals offering songs that emanate from the island's tribal past rather than its Club Class present. And there's hardly a steel guitar in evidence at all. A lovely and timely re-issue.
- David Hepworth
(Issue #13)(October 1987)
Gabby Pahinui, who featured on Ry Cooder's CHICKEN SKIN MUSIC, was at the forefront of the roots revival that took place in Hawaii in the '70s. On this 1974 album, Cooder adds intermittent mandolin to a line-up that includes acoustic and steel guitars, bass and sometimes accordion. The band play sweetly and with an easy swing, notably in the nostalgic Blue Hawaiian Moonlight, to create a particularly seductive atmosphere. The addition of strings mars a couple of tracks, although the grittier singing on Moonlight Lady provides a welcome contrast to the quivering harmonies that dominate the bulk of the album. If you like your music sweet, try this.
- Chris Stapleton
(Issue #64)(January 1992)