The fair and industrious Trudy suggested I go to the ukulele hoedown without her. I gathered her intent. Her laptop was in the room. She had words to share and photos to post. She had likes to collect. Facebook was calling.
On the lanai downstairs, a warm breeze was blowing off the water. It was now nighttime, and it was dark just beyond the railing of the verandah, but here there were chairs and tables and a warm glow of lights recessed in the broad ceiling.
The Keauhou hoedown. It is called a kanikapila, and they have been doing it on Wednesdays for years. It wasn’t hard to find. Past the front desk, up two steps and around to the right, there were several dozen people seated in circles, all of them playing ukuleles.
I found a chair in the back.
Gentle ukulele music filled the space and spilled over the railing, flowing out into the gardens. There were old timers who leaned back in their chairs strumming confidently. There were newer timers leaning forward focusing intently on their music. Some had loose-leaf binders of songs. Some had songbooks. Some had iPads with the music paging by at the mere swipe of a finger. And in the middle of the group, there was a man, one of the old timers it seemed, playing a walking bass, a lightweight, three-stringed, fretless upright bass that from a distance looks more like a thin piece of lumber with a cord coming out the bottom.
Song after song they played. At the end of one, they would stop, and someone would ask, “What next?” And there would be a suggestion from the crowd and nodded ascent: “We haven’t played that one in a long time.” And then they came to the final song. They all stood up. The man in front of me turned and motioned for me to step forward, and he held out his hand to me.
This is what they do when they sing Hawai‘i Aloha. They stand. They hold hands. They sway from left to right.
And everybody sings.