Hawaiian falsetto singing
Honolulu, Hawai’i
Photo courtesy of artist
Raiatea Helm is one of the preeminent female vocalists carrying Hawaiian music into the future while keeping the flame for its distinctive falsetto singing tradition. Helm grew up on Moloka‘i, a primarily agricultural island in the middle of the Hawaiian archipelago. Her family was deeply musical, and she loved to listen to her maternal grandmother play ukelele and to watch the musicians at the local hula school—but as she describes it, her generation, growing up in the 1990s, had little exposure to the full breadth of traditional Hawaiian music. However, 14-year-old Raiatea knew she had found her calling when her dad came back from a trip to Honolulu, a 30-minute plane ride away, with a CD of the legendary Lena Machado, the matriarch of Hawaiian falsetto singing. She asked her dad for a ukelele of her own and began to teach herself to sing and strum Hawaiian mele (songs) by listening to recordings from the golden era of Hawaiian music in the mid-century, “the kind of music my grandparents would have listened to.”
Raiatea quickly became a celebrated singer of leo ki‘eki‘e (falsetto singing), and a master of the ha‘i, its striking, emotional transition from low to high registers. She released her debut album at age 18, winning the first of her many Nā Hōkū Hanohano Female Vocalist of the Year awards. Two years later, in 2004, she was the first solo female vocalist nominated for a Hawaiian music Grammy. Raiatea’s career is distinguished not only by her prodigious talent but by her sustained investment in researching and passing on the rich legacy of the islands’ traditional music. Calling her “a much-heralded musician with a singular and captivating voice,” the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) honored her with a 2012 National Artist Fellowship to support her efforts to provide scholarships for Native Hawaiian youth. In 2017 Helm went back to school for a degree in music from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, where she developed as a historian and a teacher. As she was finishing her degree, Raiatea received a NACF SHIFT-Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts Grant to explore the history of an even earlier heyday of Hawaiian music on her recent critically acclaimed album A Legacy of Hawaiian Song and String Volume 1, a tribute to the islands’ groundbreaking troubadours from the turn of the 20th century.
Raiatea Helm comes to Richmond with an ensemble of all-star musicians who help her build a sound that “stings with the nostalgia of yesterday while at the same time carrying the promise of tomorrow.” Her band includes Joe Zayac on lead guitar, Kapono Lopes on upright bass, lap steel guitarist Casey Olsen, Jeff Peterson on ukulele and guitar, and fiddlers Duane Padilla and Eli Bishop of the Grand Ol’ Opry house band. In Richmond, Raiatea will be joined by luthier Kilin Reece, from the Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings, adding even more depth to her sound.
In addition to her continuing success as a performer, Raiatea Helm teaches in Windward Community College’s Hawaiian music program and works as music programs manager in the Lili‘uokalani Trust serving the islands’ youth. Her knowledge of Hawaiian musical and cultural history is highlighted in her narration for PBS’s recently released documentary Pu‘uwai Haokila: The Story of How Hawai‘i Shaped Modern Music. “I’m fortunate and excited to continue to share these stories as an ambassador for Hawaiian music,” Raiatea says.