Spectrum Hawaii; Ramsay, Chinatown, East West Center 25th gala; Susan Hansen, Chinese Puppets, Ukulele

[beeping] The following program is a production of KHET in Honolulu, Hawaii Public Television. The following program has been funded in part by grants from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the people of Chevron in Hawaii. are. [music] [Announcer] Today on Spectrum we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the East-West Center with dance and music from three countries. We take a short visit to two historic

sites: Koloa in Kauai with an interlude in Honolulu's Chinatown. But first we visit with Ramsay, a woman who draws a world in the black. [music] [Ramsay]: To describe the world with nothing but black, it's fascinating to me. But the real reason I like it is that you can't make a mistake with it. With ink and with line, you've got one crack at it. And it's consistently appealing to me, and that little bit of adrenaline keeps me excited about the work. [Male voice] We have a lot to do, an awful lot to do. [Announcer] Known for her minutely detailed pen and ink drawings, Ramsay approaches her world with unique vision. Here with her husband Dr. Norman Goldstein, Ramsay selects works for a mainland show from her

Diamond Head studio. [Ramsay] This I think. [Announcer] She originally came to live and work in Lahaina 10 years ago. There she caught the attention of the Alexander and Baldwin Company which commissioned her to draw its corporate office in Honolulu. She's gone on to draw other historic buildings, ranging from the Chinese Temple in Lahaina to the Plaza Hotel in New York. [flute music] [Ramsay] My mom always used to read to me, and I'd ask her to read to me, I wouldn't eat unless she read to me, I wouldn't go to sleep

unless she read to me, and I was always looking at the illustrations in books that I saw. And I liked the detailed ink drawing, watercolor washes that are very-- still very prevalent in children's books. And when I saw a man who was doing the kind of work that I had seen in books, he was like a miracle to me because I never really thought of a human being doing it. They just were there. And he showed me a piece of work that he had done and I thought I'd never seen anything as beautiful as that piece of art. And John is now 92 years old, and his last letter he wrote to me that he was becoming old but he still works with children, still teaches them how to use pen and ink, he makes them toys. He's a musician. He's a remarkable human being and he's a coal miner. And that was the other lesson I learned: that regardless of what you do for a professional life or to earn money, it's not the whole picture. It's not the whole person. And he taught me great lessons. I only met him once. We've corresponded now for 27 years.

I was always a solitary person, sort of a bookworm. And the drawing was the way to-- and it's sort of an excuse, to commune with nature and still be producing something. [Announcer] One unique attribute that Ramsay brings to her work is her own vision. It has been described as microscopic. [Ramsay] I start looking and I'm seeing each fiber in the paper. And then I can really tell because with this kind of a pen, it's so pointed that if I can't see the fiber of the paper I just might pick up one of those fibers and the ink will move across it and I'll have a little flaw. So I don't want that. So the more, the longer I have to work on the drawing, the better off-- the better I feel about it. [music] Naturally I try never to make a mistake.

But when you use pencil in advance, it takes a lot of the spontaneity out of the work. So if I'm sitting down to draw a landscape or something, there's no reason to put to use pencil or do a preliminary sketch because I just start with a leaf and let the thing grow out. It develops on its own volition pretty much. When I'm drawing, i's important that I have no distractions in my peripheral vision. In a controlled environment like a studio that's easy. On a street on the side of the road, that's something else. [Announcer] Ramsay has been commissioned to draw the buildings of Old Koloa Town and travels to Kauai one week every month to sit on location. [Ramsay] Pen and ink is the perfect medium for old buildings. And one of my first drawings was an old building. My parents would be driving along. And I'd say "stop, turn back, there's a fabulous building back there." And

I'd sit by the side of the road and draw and they would like it. It takes many long hours. As much as up to 72 hours I've worked. With no sleep, just stuck there at my board doing it and I get a very good concentration from doing that. [Announcer] One drawing took her three months to complete. [Ramsay] We're living in a world of glance, art, immediate gratification. And some of the work that I'm doing takes more than a glance to appreciate. It's more like reading a book. Actually sitting down and examining the drawing. [Goldstein] A little boy stopped by a little while ago. He wanted to know why do you have here, instead of why don't you do it back in Honolulu. [Ramsay] It's so important to be on location for this type of work. The detailing can't be achieved in any other way

besides on location work. Take a look over there, honey at that. See the light coming between the cracks of the brick in the bottom of the wood of the building? Look how the light is revealing things underneath the building. Like the posts that hold it up and some trash under there and some flowers. [Goldstein] I didn't see that yesterday. [Ramsay] Because the lighting was different yesterday. So here we are. And we can put that lighting of this particular time right here even if that lighting won't be there when the next cloud cover comes over. [Announcer] Her style of drawing is almost photographic, but renders the subject pure, free from the trappings of the real world. [Goldstein reading] [Announcer] Koloa

The Hawaiian words for "sugar" and "long", Koloa, a town with 150 long years of history in sugar cultivation. Sitting on the leeward coast of Kaua'i, Koloa is the birthplace of the sugar plantation in Hawaii. It was here in 1835 that the first plantation was organized for the Ladd and Company of Honolulu. [Eric Moir] So many of the things that Ladd and Company did at that time are things that continued through the sugar industry for over a century. Such as, they supplied housing for their employees, supplied at that time a noonday meal, medical attendants. They had a doctor on call for their employees. This was in 1835 so so many of the things that went through the complete sugar industry including-- up until the 1940s after the war. [Announcer] Here in the center of Koloa stands the remains of the third sugar mill built in 1841. The first mill was built downstream in 1836.

This mill was powered by water heated by bagasse and firewood. It was used until 1913 when a new mill was constructed outside of town. [Moir] We do know that in 1880 there was telephone service from Koloa to Lihue, and I believe 8 subscribers to the telephone company. That's four years after Alexander Graham Bell invented it. Ten years after the airplane was first flown by the Wright Brothers, a Chinese gentleman called Captain Tom Gunn, G-u-n-n, brought an airplane here to Koloa and flew in 1913 off of the hilltop up here. So that's, you know, these are all amazing things that have happened in a little hamlet I guess, or a little town this far away off the beaten track of the world. [Ramsay] I've been drawing pen and ink buildings for 27 years and when I began, it never occurred to me that some of these buildings would

not exist anymore. And I'm not against progress, and chrome and glass is fine. But not everything. I hope that the generations to come will be able to experience the wide hallways and tall ceilings and natural materials that buildings used to be made of. And I'm hoping that the architects of the future think about this and that more go into rehabilitation efforts. As well as, you know, what has got to be to house the people. [Announcer] Active in arts organizations and supportive of historical preservation, Ramsay also represents other artists in her downtown and Chinatown galleries. [Ramsay talking in background] These are his latest pieces.

It is a unique situation to be an artist and in business. And then again in the business of showing other artists. But I feel that when I speak with the artists I can really understand their sensitivities. It's not like dealing with a gallery owner, it's like dealing with another artist. Although I always considered myself sort of a private person, now I'm making friends. And I enjoy that too and working with them to hang their special shows. I'd like to do more than just introduce new artists and display the work of artists. I'd like to help create a whole community in Chinatown where tourists and locals and people who love the art can congregate and enjoy the beauties of Hawaii in the historic Chinatown district. [Announcer] Despite the changing face of the city in which she lives, she is confident that there is much yet

to render in black ink. [Ramsay] There's a lifetime, several lifetimes of work to be done. It's endless, endless. I look at it and I think well, what have I done today? [Victor Hao Li] The East-West Center was founded in 1960 by the U.S. Congress. It was set up to establish

better relations with the Asia-Pacific region at a time when the Pacific Age was just starting. And over the years we've engaged in a wide variety of programs with the region. Tens of thousands of people have taken part in it now. We work through four institutes that deal with population, environment, resources, culture and communication, and then a program that deals with the Pacific island countries. This is our 25th year now. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary. A month ago several hundred alumni from all over the region came back to visit the center, see how we've done. This group of people form an enormously important of the younger people rising in the countries of the region who will be the future basis of a real Pacific community, a Pacific group of people who will be working with each other. [Dr. Mary Bitterman] We at the Institute of Culture and Communication have quite a challenge ahead of us and that is

engaging with colleagues from more than 50 nations and certainly ten times as many cultures to proceed with a program which makes each of us more aware of the cultural diversity among us. And we do this in a variety of ways, all of them rather modestly. But we think very important. We do research programs and hold seminars where we bring people together, looking at issues of mutual concern and importance to one another. But we have a number of programs where even if one isn't a specialist in cross-cultural affairs of one sort or another, that one can really learn a great deal. And this is through our Performing Arts Series. Our artistic exhibitions, our International Film Festival, and I think increasingly through our major literature project which we also-- where we also involve a writer in residence. We have an artist in residence program and a filmmaker in residence program and I think by

bringing very creative people together, not just scholars who write about the creative process, but those people through whose veins flow the creative energies that make art and cultural performance, helps to take each of us a step further in understanding the tremendous diversity of this particular region of the world. In celebration of the East-West Center's silver jubilee we decided it would be important to feature some of the cultures present here at the center in a performing arts festival. And the festival was as diverse as including some highly stylized dancing of the Javanese tradition and bluegrass music from the west. And our feeling is that there is such diversity in the region, such an enormous amount of talent and tradition, that where we can offer it forward for people from various cultures to enjoy. And for people within the culture specific to the

presentation to take full joy and pride in what they're doing, that it's a very special moment. Because it's probably when people sit around a table talking about their own culture that they sit the tallest and the most proud. [Indonesian music] [Indonesian music] [Bluegrass music]

[Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music]

[Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] [Bluegrass music] Spectrum was funded in part by grants from the people of Chevron in Hawaii and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. The following program is a production of KHET in Honolulu, Hawaii

Public Television. The following program has been funded in part by grants from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the people of Chevron in Hawaii. Today on Spectrum Hawaii, Chinese hand puppets perform fierce battles on horseback and fly through the air. Then we explore the music and lore of Hawaii's most famous instrument, the ukulele, the gift of Portuguese immigrants to the islands. But first, a visit to the studio of Susan McGovney Hansen creates beauty in watercolor from a fresh perspective.

[Hansen] Artist are attracted to a myriad of subjects, and I'm attracted to several in particular. And a lot of it has to do with the way I see things, I feel like I have voracious eyes like I garble things up with my eyes. And make mental notes of things all the time. The leaves of the orchid are just unbelievable to me. I couldn't make up all the shapes and directions and turns that they take, so I just take my cue from nature. And I'm not sure why I like it so much, I think it's kind of like being in love with somebody, sometimes you can't really explain that. But right now I'm in love with orchids. [Hawaiian music]

I take a lot of time setting up a still life. First of all, it's kind of fun to do. I have an idea in my mind and the more problems I solve as I arrange the still life, the less problem I'll have on the painting. So I have my composition in mind. I like to look down on the composition, I think it makes more interesting patterns and shapes, juxtapositions. Before I draw, I'm going to use a viewfinder. It's the same proportion as the paper. And it can give me a clue as to where I place things. If I look at the still life here. The central line. Creating a painting

takes a lot of thought. That's where the little seed of an idea comes in and maybe it might noodle around in there for years. Or maybe you want to get right to it and work at it in a few hours, but it starts in the mind. And often when I'm doing something else that idea will be in my mind and I'm kind of forming it. And adjusting it and taking things away and adding things to that idea before I even start putting pencil to paper. I want the paper wet. Because I'm going to do a wet into wet under painting and do washes over that. Now the words wet into wet, the things are going to have soft edges

and kind of blend into one another and be more or less a background on which to paint the rest of the painting. When I was about 9, I started painting in oils. But my teacher at the time had us start out using black and white and tones of gray with still life and this was difficult. We were all just-- we couldn't wait until we could start painting in color, but she wanted us to get the values down pat and we had to paint in

black and white until she felt that we knew how to choose the values of a painting, the darks and lights. And then that exciting day when we could start using color came. I'm getting the lighter tones in. I can't put lighter over dark. So we go from light to dark in this wash. I don't have to worry about edges because in this still life the pattern behind the orchids is darker. And I'll just come in around the edge. And now I'm going to let this dry before I start putting any more washes on it. This is really my second career. I made the decision not to do my art when I had my family when I was about age 20.

And I'd had a lot of art education. But I decided that it was important just to raise children and concentrate on that. So my artwork was put aside. But I knew it was there waiting for me. It was like a big Christmas gift just ready to untie. And sometimes it scares me, my presumptuousness. How I just knew it would be there whenever I was ready. But luckily it was and when my youngest was into school I started just getting back into my art work. I'm sure one reason I'm particularly interested in doing faces is from my childhood. My art teacher used to go downstairs, her studio was on the second floor in downtown Santa Barbara. And she would go down and ask one of the little Mexican American news boys to come up and pose for us, and that's when I really started concentrating on faces and

heads. So when I came to Hawaii many years ago, of course I was immediately attracted to the Polynesian faces and the culture and the dancing. I am interested in the movement of the figure and the form and trying to get that motion down on a two dimensional sheet of paper or canvas. Ordinarily I do a little, what I call a thumbnail sketch in my sketchbook, and see how these ideas that have been rolling around my mind come out on paper. And I may have to do several things to work out the idea. And then I transfer it to the watercolor paper. I paint in transparent water color which means I don't use white

paint out of the tube. So the white is the white of the paper. And when I plan my painting, I plan it in steps so that I'm painting around the white areas that I want to keep white or light. And generally I'm working light to dark. Once I've painted one area darker, I can't get it lighter like in oil painting. You can see why I put a gray on this beforehand, it didn't leave it clear white. The pattern is going to stand out against the dark green and I don't want it to jump out and get your attention before other things in the painting. I heard once that painting-- you do more painting with the mind than you do with your hands. And I believe that because that's where your concept comes from. So I think a lot about my idea. You discard many of them. I

have hundreds in my mind literally that I haven't gotten to yet so I have more than a lifetime of painting. [drums] [Announcer] Four hundred years ago, they entertained their audiences with stories of virtue and religious morals. They performed at celebrations for major event. More recently the traditions of Chinese hand puppets continued with a performance at the East-West Center in Honolulu in honor of the Center's 25th anniversary. [drums]

This hand puppet troupe from Taiwan performs in the take one(?) style. The pace is fast and the action violent. The plots are legends of warfare and folklore. This scene is an excerpt from the Beijing opera, Three Warring Kingdoms. The battle on horseback comes alive under the skilled manipulation of the puppeteers backstage. [drums] Backstage one finds rows of puppets dressed and waiting for their moment in front of the

audience. They are coiffed with wigs and headdresses, equipped with weapons. All appropriate for the roles they play. Chinese hand puppets mirror in many ways the human theatre of Chinese opera. Like their human counterparts, they too are dressed in stylized costumes depicting status, sex, and role. Their makeup is also characteristic of their qualities, such as the red face of this military warrior symbolizing loyalty. The head puppeteer is Su Wong(?), has studied his craft since the age of six. His teacher was his father, a leading puppeteer and founder of this troupe. No puppet performance is complete without a demonstration of window jumping.

Chinese acrobatics, puppet-style. [Drums] For this week's interlude we travel to the sugar cane fields of Kauai, where the sugar cane industry first began 150 years ago. Pick up an ukulele and people expect to hear Hawaiian music. But the

instrument is not endemic to our islands. Originally a gift from the Portuguese, it is now a musical voice of many cultures capable of reflecting many moods. It can be played simply by a beginner or it can challenge a virtuoso. Hawaii's King Kalakaua was a great fan of the ukulele and may have helped to give it the comic nickname "uku" meaning flea, and "lele" meaning to jump. Nimble fingers crossing its strings still call that image of a jumping flea to mind. Small and durable with a warm pleasing tone, it makes a perfect travelling companion. It is no wonder this instrument has met with immediate acceptance on its musical voyage around the world. Leslie Nunes descends from a Portuguese family that helped pioneer instrument making in the Islands. [Nunes] Here we have an

ukulele. This is a Hawaiian ukulele and the reason I'm interested in the ukulele so much is that my great grandfather is the one that brought it from Madeira to Hawaii and helped build the industry here in Hawaii. My grandfather, who was the manufacturer, the supervisor, of the company here in Hawaii, started me on my collection. And he told me one day "Les would you like to have your own Nunes ukulele?" I said "great." So he and I went together and I bought my first instrument for $100. And with that, my instrument collection has grown to over 100 instruments. Since then I've been studying the ukulele, I've been collecting them, I've gone to Portugal, New York, California, Japan, even Africa some of my instruments have come from and this is what I'd like to show you. I'd like to show you some of my collection.

This is Portuguese cavaquinho. It's from the mainland of Portugal and it's the popular folk instrument of Portugal. The reason it's popular is because mainly it's inexpensive, it's easy to play. There's only four strings and it's very versatile. Although it is used mostly as a strumming instrument as part of a string band. [Announcer] The cavaquinho, translated to mean "worthless little piece of wood", seldom cost more than a few dollars. This cousin to the ukulele can be heard accompanying the lively dances at Portuguese harvest festivals. [Nunes] One of the instruments in the string band is the Portuguese guitarra.

And the reason this is a Portuguese guitarra mostly is because of the shape and the way that the instrument is strung. You notice that it has an unusual peg head here in that the machines are different, they move up and down rather than the ones that we're familiar with. It has a violin scroll and unusual peg head. The shape is heart shaped. And it is a romantic instrument. This is the Portuguese guitarra again. And this is my great grandfather's ukulele. He started making this in 1879 when-- almost immediately when he came here to Hawaii. He didn't have Portuguese woods but he found the koa wood and the koa word is like some of the woods from Madeira, and by the way Madeira means wood. [Announcer] In 1879 Manuel Nunes was among a hearty group of immigrants who

left their island home of Madeira for the unfamiliar shores of Hawaii. Like many of these Portuguese, he was a skilled tradesmen. Many were fishermen, others farmers. All whose talents were easily put to use. Most came to escape the economic effects of a blight on Madeira's wine industry. Wine is still important there today. Unlike Nunes, who paid for his family's passage, contract laborers were not brought to the islands for several more years. Nunes was one of three craftsmen who were soon producing elegant instruments from native hardwoods, particularly koa. [Nunes] This is an Jonah Kumalae ukulele, and Jonah Kumalae was the first one that actually started mass producing the ukulele and he made about 300 of them in one month. He was very successful in making instruments. He made them for quite a few years. He also made-- hand-- singing teams and musicians that went in the Waikiki area,

he almost monopolized the musical industry. [Announcer] In 1915, Kumalae ukuleles and Hawaiian music were in great demand. That was the year of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The fair provided mass exposure of Hawaiian bands, many of which featured the ukulele. The fledgling recording and radio industries fanned the flames of popularity and soon Hawaiian labels were outselling all others. The world couldn't get enough of the Hawaiian ukulele strumming along to hapa-haole melodies. [old-timey music] [Harry Soria Jr.] The curious thing about those earliest recordings is that you truly couldn't hear the ukulele because the recording techniques at the time. It wasn't until the 1930s that the ukulele emerged with better recording techniques. Now in the teens and '20s, Ernest

Ka'ai was the acknowledged virtuoso and he also came up with the very first ukulele instructional booklets. In the '30s it was Jesse Kalima with his rousing rendition of this "Stars and Stripes Forever" when he won the territorial amateur hour contest. The song then became an instant classic and every kid on every corner had to know "Stars and Stripes Forever". Now in the '40s it was Randy Ones(?) taking his ukulele and performing the horn licks of the big band swing arrangements and then the ukulele fully emerged as a solo instrument. In the fifties, we had people like Nelson Waikiki and Eddie Kamae. In the Sixties, Likelike Weisbarth and Mul Keali(?). In the 70s, Peter Moon on his tipple and now today we have the ukulele festival and each year you can appreciate some of the best ukulele players of all ages in Hawaii. [Announcer] From Portuguese music to Hawaiian to hapa-haole. Even the instrument's shape has

undergone dramatic evolution at times. [Nunes] This is a standard ukulele like my great grandfather would make them. Here we have other instruments that would actually make my great grandfather turn over in his grave. This is a camp-- banjolele. It's got a wooden sound box. Here we have another banjolele only animal skin and a metal box of banjo and with the ukulele fretboard. This is an instrument here. It's a triangle ukulele, and this is very interesting. This is a cigar box ukulele and this is one of Sam Kamaka's instruments. Notice that the date on the ukulele is 1886. This is an actual cigar box ukulele. Even the pegs here are a little bit different. And it is stylized. Sam Kamaka's father also made the pineapple ukulele and he started the craze

that is still popular today. This is the the first of the pineapple ukuleles. This is a painted model. Sam has it in his store room here on South Street. And you can see that just by coming into his store there. [Announcer] Manufacturing ukuleles has long been a specialty of the Kamaka family, one that started with Sam Kamaka senior in 1916. Today Sam Jr. adds another generation of expertise to the shop's tradition of creating the finest koa ukuleles available. [Kamaka] As a young man I was fascinated by all of the belts running in every direction and all of these belts were hooked up to a pulley which activated a certain machine which had a certain function on the assembly line. And my father had four or five workers that I remember and they'd go from one machine to another, back and forth putting on belts and taking off belts. And so it was really a noisy

and interesting place to visit. [Announcer] Despite modern equipment, Kamaka ukuleles are still fashioned by discriminating craftsmen and each instrument requires three to four weeks to complete. Three to four years, if you count the drying of the wood. All of Kamaka's workers bring with them specialized talent. And Sam knows they have all contributed to his success. Kamaka now ships over 300 ukuleles per month to retailers as distant as Japan, Sweden, and Norway. All are manufactured for consistently high quality, but occasionally just the right amounts of fine wood and patient craftsmanship will fashion a superior-sounding instrument. Veteran ukulele players are always in search of these qualities. So you'll never know who will drop into the South Street show room. [Jonah Nuuhiwa playing and singing] Far from being a worthless piece of wood as its Portuguese name implies, the cavaquinho

and its Hawaiian cousin, the ukulele, continue to circle the globe, encouraging the sharing of cultures through the gift of music. Sharing the music of Portugal with us this week are Pedro Cabral and Francisco Andion(?). Next week on Spectrum, bom dia.

[Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing]

[Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] [Ukulele music and singing] Spectrum was funded in part by grants from the people of Chevron in Hawaii and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.