Hawai‘i: Yo-Yo Ma and the Whales

Hi, it's Anna.

“I wanted to start this episode with something”

from last episode. When I asked Micheala, how do you connect with your ancestor who is a patient? And she said, we chant, we sing to them. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Chanting. What is chanting in Hawaii specifically?

Is it really so powerful?

So all encompassing that it can connect, Micheala or anyone, to things we can't see. When you chant, the vibrations of fact change. And we believe that when we chant, our voice remains in existence.

Some people think that when the sound ends and they can't hear it anymore, that it ceases to exist. But for us, it's still out there just rippling and rippling.

“That's why we will chant the same chant every day”

if we have to. We'll do it three times a day if we have to, because it's about amplifying and adding another layer and another layer until you have a whole chorus. Our human ears can't hear that anymore, but the universe can.

And so our chance or our contribution to the orchestra of the world. I think you can feel it in the chanting. You can feel it in the dancing. You can feel it in the political narrative.

It comes from the earth and the sky and the volcano and the ocean.

And there's almost nothing more powerful.

That's Yo-Yo Ma, and I'm Anagan Zalis. This is our common nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to find that connection to nature that's so many of us are missing.

And today, we're gonna harness the power of chanting and mix it with the power of Yo-Yo's cello to attempt to communicate with a singular voice in the chorus of the ocean. I just have a whale of a time.

Great pun.

“Oh, why did you want to try to communicate with the whales?”

Like, where was the inspiration for that from?

Well, whales are our mammal relatives. They obviously have a sophisticated language. And they are sentient beings as a wee. And yet we don't know their language. Over 50 years ago, humpback whales were on the verge of extinction.

Whaling actually reached its peak in the 1960s and scientists were trying to raise the alarm on the industry. Nothing really worked though until there was this biologist, Roger Paine, who decided to record the sounds he was hearing from the families of humpback whales that he studied

because they were so similar to human sounds. And Roger also pioneered this theory that whales communicate to their herds up to hundreds of miles apart, not through sight, but through sound, singing and hearing

and their family's songs. Paine was also a classical music fan and an amateur cellist, so he decided to make an album of these songs and release it and hopes that people would hear it and begin to protect these gentle marine giants.

And it worked. Ever since songs of the humpback whale was released in 1970, commercial whaling has been banned. And humpback whales have steadily come back because people heard their voices calling out so similar to our own.

And I listen, I heard my goodness. These are sounds that are kind of in the register of the teller. They are absolutely replicable on the teller,

I wonder if I were to replicate some of those sounds

“in the way that I go to a different country”

and I'm learning some words, and I'm gonna try out my vocabulary. - Our trip to Hawaii offered a real chance to try out these sounds because we would be there right at the start of the Hawaiian humpback mating season.

And we'd be joined by Hawaiian musicians who have their own way of communicating directly with all the elements of the natural world. (singing in foreign language) - I chant a lot.

This is Snowbird Bento, and she's a teacher

of Hawaiian music and culture.

She's an expert in chance or in Hawaiian melee. Everything I chant is my prayer. (singing in foreign language)

“As we chant, we're actually putting out vibration”

into that universe and expecting response. (singing in foreign language) Snowbird tells me she chants to affect the weather, to carry histories of people, plants and animals, and to protect things.

- And you're asking for your people to come help you, give you what you need. - And Snowbird was one of the first people Yoyo called when he was organizing a concert in Honolulu. - I won't lie, I about screamed my head off

and fan girl knows what they're gonna do. And I thought I'm gonna keep practicing 'cause one day, this is the guy that inspires me, and I'm gonna, I would just love to meet him.

I never thought I was that kind of a chelopler.

(laughing) (upbeat music) - In this concert Yoyo was set to play all six of the box chelosweets. And if you don't already know,

playing all of the box chelosweets is a tour de force in chelopreformance. It's about two hours of solo chelos and it's one of Yoyo's specialties.

“He usually does it straight through no breaks,”

but this time he invited Hawaiian musicians and performers to come out in between the suites. And Snowbird was first. (upbeat music) - I decided to perform 'Koulu ve He ve'i.

It speaks to this time in the existence of our land when everything was in balance and healthy. (singing in foreign language) And so what I attempted in my performance was to create this space.

(singing in foreign language) But even for a minute, we can touch that type of beauty and perfection. (singing in foreign language) But in last verse,

the energy changes from a meditation on the beauty to a directive to the audience. (singing in foreign language) Land is the chief. Man is its servant.

Remember our place. Can you imagine the way that it changes the way you see yourself within this environment? You're actually saying, I'm not above or below, we're all equal.

(singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) - Human beings have the tendency to think of ourselves separate from the world around us and even better.

We think we can control it, that we're on top. But in this melee, this chant, snowboard is saying that's not how it works here. So if Yoyo is going to communicate with whales, he's gonna have to meet them where they're at.

He can't just expect a walk out of a white geeky hotel room and play for the whales as they swim out on the beach. Yoyo is going to have to enter the space where whales live.

in the depths of the ocean and in the deepest parts of our brains.

“It's a place with a Hawaiian name, "Pol."”

For some, "Pol" means the cosmic night. "Pol" is a source. "Pol" is origin. "Pol" is darkness. "Pol" is black.

Its physical manifestation lies in the realm of the ocean. Because the deeper you go in the ocean waters, the sun begins to fade. The darkness gets thicker. This is the "Pol."

Whales dip into this world holding their breath. As they go deeper and deeper, their eyes can't pierce through the darkness. So they begin to sing.

“Their songs and screeches ripple out through the water”

and tell them where to find their friends and families. Snowbirds and sisters also use sound to communicate through the ocean. In my own family, we have stories of migrate great-grandfather feeding sharks by hand, chanting to them and they swim in.

Snowbird refers to her family and the sharks and the whales as Canaloa people. Because in the Hawaiian creation story, the ocean is ruled by Canaloa. Yeah, Canaloa is one of our four major aqua.

Hawaiian deity or god. Canaloa lives within the pool and controls the oceans and all of their creatures, which are mostly mysteries to us. We don't know half of the creatures that live

in the deep parts of the Canaloa. Because do you know how much of the ocean's human beings have actually explored five percent? Just five, which means that 95% of the oceans are unknown to us, which means there could be anything living in there.

Undiscovered creatures and portals and maybe things beyond the physical. Canaloa represents a subconscious mind. The Canaloa realm is open to us when we allow for us to cross over from the consciousness of conscious. I think it's a good time to tell you

how I actually first met Yo-Yo-Ma.

It wasn't through Arthur or Sesame Street or seeing him live or even through this podcast. It was through something else. And I'll tell you about it after the break. In every episode of songwriter and extraordinary artist tells a story

and a musician plays a brand new song written in response. This season, you might hear a story from Academy Award-nominated actress Isabella Rosalini and then the premiere of a brand new song by Sharon Van Edden not to mention conversations about inspiration along the way. You can search for my name, Ben Arthur, wherever you get your podcast

or just go to songwriterpodcast.com. Our common nature is back.

This is Anna and I want to tell you about the first time that I met Yo-Yo-Ma.

It was through a memory passed down to me. Hey, Anna. Hey, Mom, what's up? I was just chewing on a hot brownie and I couldn't... Keep chewing.

I also had a work question I wanted to ask you about for the Yo-Yo podcast. Okay.

“Do you think it'd be okay if I talked about him playing at Ampest's funeral in the show?”

Absolutely. Yeah? Yeah, I think it's a treasured memory for everyone. So, I think it's a beautiful memory. I don't think there's any way to not be an honor.

The year before I was born, my mom's sister Beth died of breast cancer. It was a shock to everyone who knew her.

Their kids went to school together.

And I was always told with this sort of disbelief

for family members that Yo-Yo-Ma played at my Aunt's funeral. Well, it was just so extraordinary and unexpected. There had been a big snowstorm. There was a lot of snow on the ground. Like, a foot or two, you know, like a lot of snow.

And it was like crystal clear blue sky and sparkling sun on the snow. And it was quite a crowd of people. And then, he just stepped out of the crowd. And his wife put this his stool down from the sit-on. Again, even though he was there.

And then he sat down on the stool. He started to play.

“It's him playing that is what I remember about your burial.”

It's that moment. You don't remember anything else? No. Like, it's one of, you know, there's things like it's, I have the exact picture.

I know exactly where I was standing. I know the exact setting. I know exactly where he was sitting. I know, like, the whole scene is just there. When you think about it now, does it feel like it's still,

like, present, like, still happening almost? Absolutely. This memory lives in a place I can't see. It's a place my mom can't see either. But she feels it and so do I.

It ripples out forever into our universe. In our subconscious minds and in the kind of low realm.

I didn't tell anybody about this connection I had to go, yo, it just never felt right.

And when I got the call to maybe join, yo, yo out on some trips in nature and make a podcast, it felt like this strange boomerang, like a small, unexpected bit of fate coming back to me. But I held onto it. I didn't tell 'em until you're in Hawaii. The most amazing moment we're sitting on that planet.

Yeah.

“And you tell me, so do you remember Beth Pile?”

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then... And I've known you already for a while.

You know, so it's like, a saw you read. Yeah, we talked at this time. It's like, a little boom. Boom. Your land and then suddenly, we're connected.

Yeah. From before I was born. I know. That was a year before I was born. It's hard for me to kind of wrap my land around.

Because, you know, obviously I think of you as very separate people. But the fact that your mother was so close to her is really important. Do you feel bad, though, no? Because I don't want to leave you feeling bad. No, okay.

No, no, I mean, no. It's just... It's some, you know, I think of Beth's death.

“I always think of just how unfair life is.”

It was just a terrible thing that happened. Yeah. So, you know, if we can any way to honor her and... is a good thing. Cool.

Let's not try and do. It's probably Aunt Beth trying to do it, honestly. That's probably how I got this whole thing. I'm sure you did. She's probably like, "Ooh, that would be interesting."

Yoyo is on stage in Waikiki. He's in the middle of playing notes he's played for more than 60 years. He's not even really playing the notes. It's like he's accessing them in a place he can't see, but can feel.

A place where the notes live that always exists.

I associate playing with having an elevated consciousness where you have access to your subcultures.

so you have maximum access to your subcultures.

“So over the past 60 plus years, Yoyo has been opening those portals”

in his mind to mesh his conscious and subconscious. All that imagery that Yoyo says he envisions when he plays Bach Chelosweet number one. The image of the flow of water is starting to see flying things. That all lives in Yoyo's personal pole. It's the untouchable place that human beings have yet to explore where light fades.

It's where my aunt and her memory remain living. It's a realm Yoyo dips into every time he performs.

Where he uses sounds to navigate his universe just like the whales.

And if you have access to that, you have access to a vast repertoire of ideas, memories, or just trash. But somehow, when you're performing, you're aware of that much more. I know exactly what that feels like. It's numbered again. It's like a light switch.

You move from one consciousness into the next. And you cannot help that when you flip the switch from the conscious to the subconscious in performance, you're no longer playing the music. It's almost like the opposite, right? The music is playing you.

“There are times when I'll come out of it and I can't remember a darn thing,”

because my eyes closed and I just, I go. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm not performing for the physical audience that's sitting there watching me. I'm performing for who needed to hear it. Even if that audience is an audience of one.

Some of my best performances have been with just me and the wind. And the elements around me. Because they'll let me know. They'll signal if it was good, if it moved them. When I watched Snowbird on that stage in Waikiki, she seemed to be in her own world,

“performing for those who needed to hear it.”

Yoyo and Snowbird both navigated through portals open between their conscious and subconscious to access the pole. And that's exactly what they needed to do. The night before our final journey of this story in this series. The one where we go out onto a traditional Polynesian canoe, where there are no navigating instruments.

No GPS, just us, the ocean, the wind and the sky. That's after the break. In every episode of songwriter and extraordinary artist tells a story and a musician plays a brand new song written in response. This season, you might hear a story from Academy Award-nominated Actress

Isabella Rosalini and then the premiere of a brand new song by Sharon Van Edden, not to mention conversations about inspiration along the way. You can search for my name, Ben Arthur, wherever you get your podcast, or just go to songwriterpodcast.com. Our common nature is back. I'm Ana and Hawai'i with Snowbird Ben Toh.

I was about three years old when I was first introduced to Hokulea on the shoulders of my uncle.

He walked me down into the water and he said, "This is Hokulea, baby." You know, one day this canoe will take you around the world. Hokulea is a double-hauled canoe with two massive sales. It's this brilliant wooden vessel with a large deck and sleeping quarters for its crew. It was built in the 1970s as a replica of the original ships that brought the first

Polynesians to the archipelago of Hawai'i thousands of years ago.

the seas as their ancestors did. And to form a crew, who could move through the open ocean

“with just the stars. Hokulea is more than a feat of sailing and engineering. It represents”

a fierce devotion to Hawai'i and culture. And I hope that it will remain. And today, Hokulea is going to serve as a vessel for us. As we navigate the realm of pull and Kanaloa and hopefully connect with some whales, we met Hokulea in Kuaihai Harbor on the island of Hawai'i where, by the way, Mount Aloa, the volcano was erupting for the first time in almost 40 years. It's so cool that I wish for the first time that this was a movie like with video and not just

the podcast, but as we approach Hokulea, the red glow of the lava coated the harbor and we gathered to board. I met with Lehua Kamalu, one of the captains and primary navigators of Hokulea. We are about to take Hokulea out of my high harbor on a short sunset sail. It's beautiful afternoon

“and I think, you know, invite the whales and in the ocean to listen to something, maybe they”

haven't quite heard before from the deck of a canoe. It's going to be super amazing with Yoyo Unbored,

a number of our elders and Kupuna and practitioners and there are about 40 or 50 people on this working port. It's a real mix like Lehua said, older Hawaiian people who know Hokulea well, Yoyo's team and a man who calls the group together. His name is Nainoa Thompson. He's the CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society that runs Hokulea and he's a legendary navigator in Hawaii. But just quickly, there's a lot of people that want to come on this trip.

He only got so much room for everybody. We're only taking people who protect something. Whether it's this land, whether it's this ocean, whether it's our ancestors, the world's our country. So that's when everybody was calling us saying, we want to come, we were asking them, what are you willing to protect? Paula, there's a thousand thank yous and we'll have time. The sun is beginning to set and the winds are rolling in. There's like

20 of us who go over the short plank and we're on Hokulea. All these clouds are moving in and drizzling rain on us and suddenly a double rainbow appears over Mount Aloha, which is spitting lava into the clouds and I find Yojo. How are you feeling? Well, first of all, there's a double rainbow here, which is unbelievable. It's just like we have the volcano, we have the rainbow and we're going out to see whether we can maybe spot a whale or two,

will then see whether it's possible to make some form of contact through their songs. Do you

“think, yeah, how do you think it's going to be the producing? Well, I think possibly as with any”

two living beings, if you spot one another, there's a greeting. There's some form of recognition

and if we could try and get to that, that would be an amazing thing because then what happens

after that is a relationship, you know? Yojo looks like it's on you. Someone comes over and put the life-est on Yojo. We're all kind of like stumbling around the ship as it ungulates on the calm, glossy waters. I think people are throwing rope and going under deck to grab supplies. There's a group working together to row this long or at the back of the canoe, which helps the ship move without wind and one of them pointed to an urn she brought on board with her. Your mom is your mom?

Well, I'm glad she's here. You don't tell us where to go. You know her well. A little ways down the canoe, there are marine biologists with audio equipment. Hey, nice. Hello. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Lars Beger is the director of the Marine Mammal Research Program in the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. How you feel before we set this? I'm so excited. Look at this background. Look at that rainbow right there.

Two of them. Yeah, that's going to be awesome. Everything. Lars specializes in marine megafauna, aka big old ocean animals like whales. Take me through like this science side of what's going to happen right now. What are you planning on doing? Yeah. So it's a little bit early, but the whales have started showing up. So if we're lucky, we're going to put a hydrophone, so an underwater microphone in the water.

in the ocean. And then at the same time, yo-yo's yellow is going to be connected to a speaker that we're

“going to put in the hole that hopefully will project the sounds into the ocean. And those sounds”

will be recording together with anything else that we're hearing in the ocean. And if we're lucky, we'll pick up some humpback whales on. Let me break this plan down a little bit. So these waters and all the living beings in it are very protected by law from all human disturbance. So we actually could not get permission to use speakers to project yo-yo's cello directly in the waters. So Lars and his colleagues have rigged up the wooden holes of the Hokleta to be natural amplifiers. Yo-yo will play

and his cello will shoot out through the oceans through the canoe. And the marine biology team set up a hydrophone. That's an underwater microphone to drop off the side of the canoe. When yo-yo's performance stars will have the hydrophone recording and hopefully we can record what's happening underwater. This is Ode, one of Lars' colleagues and she's crouched on the side of the canoe with a little

“audio set up and headphones pressed to her ears. Yes. Have you ever done anything like this?”

No, this is the first time I go back to what sound is and it's a wave and wave travels and

transmit and what a sound, what is a wave and waves are everywhere and yeah and how long do they last? There's no guarantee that yo-yo's sound waves will reach any whales or that the whales will respond if they do hear them. Moments later, Hokleta said sail. And we're off. Yo-yo is busy setting up his cello with the marine biologist but out of the corner of my eye, I see snowboard.

Because I think my job was whale chantress. That I would be chanting for the whales.

“Well, let's see who decides to come out then to play.”

As we sailed out and we started to move away from the pier,

I kept my eyes scanning the horizon in front of me and I started to chant. I called out to my ancestors, the ones I descend from and then I said, "If it is possible for us to connect with you folks, then please show us whatever those signs are. Let's see if we can connect with the rest of the canal or people, like the whales and see if the canal or people want to make their presence known.

And then went into asking for my coupon to help validate that we were in the right place to be at that time. And it wasn't crazy, it wasn't loud, it wasn't grandiose because who's the audience at this point? None of us on the boats are on the canoe, are the audience, who's the audience. The last portion of the chants is Eho Maika Ike,

grant on to me wisdom, Eho Maika Ike, grant on to me strength, Eho Maika, Kama I grant on to me knowledge, Eho Maika Ike Papa Luwa, grant on to me the ability to see the things that others may not see. And then the last line is Eho Maika Manna, grant on to me the spiritual power. And when I clapped twice, right off my left side 45 degrees I saw the tail flat.

I was like, what do you want? He just had a green tail. And that was it. Nothing else, I didn't see it breech, I didn't see it blow, air out just the tail flat, boom and it was gone and I was like, you saw that right. The mood was different after that and the focus turned to Eho, who sat in the glow of Manoloa's lava and the double rainbow crown and dropped the end pin of his tail up.

somewhere over the rainbow, amazing grace, a Catalan folk tune called Song of the Birds,

the prelude to Bach cello sweet number one and G major, and we waited, I had funds, listening underwater for response. Nothing, but Eho had another idea, maybe if he played the sounds of wheels that he learned to replicate, maybe some wheels would call back.

“The only thing that I can count on is purity of intention. You know, we mean no harm,”

going there, the intentions are benign. I watched how he played, how he closed his eyes, how he moved and I thought they're hearing you and they were respond to you in the way that they were respond. But the water remained quiet. Sometimes you don't get it recorded. Sometimes it's not seen by everyone because it's not meant for that.

It's meant for that audience, even if it's an audience of one. We don't know if Eho's music or whale sounds reached any whales. After the tail flap, we didn't get any response. But through our attempts to communicate with the whales, we thought like them. We entered the realm of Canalua. We accessed the poll with help from Snowbird and Eho. And I think the whales felt our presence.

“That whole trip was magical. Remember those double rainbows, and are they signs?”

Are they just natural occurrences and all coincidences? And we don't know. We probably will never

know. And whatever we know, we're trying to bring as a peaceful offering and if they choose to engage, which in our case, they didn't really, that doesn't mean that we can't try again and see what happens because that's what people do. Because it all comes back to knowing our place in this world. If we're truly connected to the world around us, we're listening, we're observing and striving to understand something we can't yet see or touch, but no exists.

1,000 percent, that is the way Eho affects his environment around him. If he's in his subconscious

and he's just playing to play the cello and he becomes the vehicles, getting those reverberations out into the universe and he's affecting his immediate environment. From the top of his head, the zenith, to all the things that are around him as far as his eyes can see, that's his universe. And he is absolutely affecting the audience within that universe. On each one of these trips over the past three years, I've been fortunate enough to experience

the YoYo universe. Everywhere he drops the end pin of his cello and picks up his bow, he's taking in the energy of the land and the people and he becomes that conduit that Snowbird is talking about. He reflects it right back to his audience, which is whoever and whatever needs to feel it. From the tallest peak in the Smoky Mountains to Cole Country riverbeds, from a snowy New England cemetery to the Deco-Hokulia. YoYo plays to rebuild our connections

to each other, to the past, to the present, and to the future of this world we live in.

“Because that's what music does. It's a form of love. And in Hawaii, they have a name for that kind of love.”

Aloha is having a deep love and respect and understanding for all the good stuff and all the bad. All the obstacles and all the successes. Aloha is when you look at someone with empathy

understanding dwells between you and I, the world needs that.

“So the last song of YoYo is Honolulu Concert. The last song of the series is Aloha Owe.”

Farewell to thee. It was composed by Queen Lily Owe Kalani, the last raining monarch of the Hawaii island. And the story is she wrote it as a love song, a malejo Owe boypo. But over the past 150 years,

it's become a symbol of all the good and all the bad in Hawaii. People mourning the loss

of their sovereignty, but also enjoying Luaos and high school graduations, and tonight we sing it,

“all together under the dark Hawaiian sky. Our voices go out into the universe forever,”

rippling, reaching whoever and whatever needs to hear it. Our common nature is a production of WNYC in sound postings, hosted by me, Anna Gonzalez,

produced by Alan Guffinski, with editing from Pearl Marvel. An original music by Alan Guffinski,

mixed by Joe Plord, fact checking by Anna Alvarado, our executive producers are Emily Boteen, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays. Our advisors are Mira Bertwin Tonic, Kamakadias, Kelly Libby, and Chris Newell. Special thanks to my mom, Moora, for picking up the phone, and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the Polynesian Voyaging Society for making our whale dreams possible. This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name conceived by

yo-yo-ma and sound postings with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners,

“all over the world. And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can check out”

the our common nature EP featuring yo-yo playing with Eric Mingus, Jen Christberg, and an Icelandic choir, now available on all streaming platforms. Our common nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies. Special thanks to the one and only yo-yo-ma. And I want to dedicate this episode to the memories of Eleanor Sterling, who used to run the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology into my aunt Beth Pile, until we meet again.

Hey, it's Amagan's Alice, and I want to say thank you for traveling around the country with me and yo-yo-ma. By listening you are a central part of our common nature. Our common nature is a podcast brought to you by WNYC, and the team here is way bigger than just me and yo-yo-ma. We have producers, fact checkers, editors, executive producers, people who work on distribution and membership and making sure that this thing gets to your device, however you are listening to it. It takes a lot

to put together a show like our common nature. People, time, and resources, but it also takes you. Listener donations are the largest source of funding for shows that WNYC produces. So if you've been moved by some of the stories that we've told and people we've met, please take a minute and make a donation to WNYC so that we can bring you more podcasts like this. To give go to our common nature podcast.org/donate. Thank you for listening and for supporting our show.