Classical Music Happy Hour
Classical Music Happy Hour

Hawai‘i: Yo-Yo Ma on Moloka‘i

11/12/202544:336,004 words
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On the island of Molokaʻi in Hawaii, we trace the spiritual power of mana, from a sacred grove to the Kalaupapa colony, where music, story, and Yo-Yo Ma’s performance honor the resilience and memory o...

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For most of his life Bernard Punicaya lived on the island of Molokani in Hawaii.

But it wasn't by choice. He was part of a community forced to live there.

People sent in exile, right, basically never to return.

[ Music ] It's a very powerful place. It's a very powerful place. Historically, humanly, politically, it's charged. That's Yoyo Ma, and I'm Anagan Zales.

We're going to get back to Bernard in the second half of this episode. But this charge is what today's show is about. And Hawaii, they have a name for it. That's a muddle right there.

Yoyo and I went to Molokani to tap into this muddle using music.

And we came away with two very different stories from two sides of this mysterious island.

That make us question, what do we do with all of the memories left in the land?

That's today an hour common nature. A musical journey with Yoyo Ma through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. [ Music ] In the Hawaiian archipelago, there's an island shaped like a blade.

Cutting the water is between a Wahoo and Maui. The name of our island can be pronounced two ways. Molokai or Molokai. Molokai no stops means middle of the turning oceans. But the word kai with a little glottal stop in there.

Kai means lead to set the pace to take charge. So in that sense, Molokai can also mean to produce leaders. So I'm going to use Molokai for this episode because it makes sense, you'll see. Molokai is different than its neighbor islands, where tourists and millionaires have made and remade the landscapes.

When you drive east from the airport into town on the one road that circles Molokai, there's a sign someone made that says, "Visit, spend, go home." As you continue to drive down that two-lane road past farms and mom and pop shops, sometimes the forest is so thick you can't see around the tight curves. Sometimes all you see is a cliff on one side and a drop off into turning foamy ocean on the other.

[ Music ] In the rainy season, the road easily turns to mud.

And the best way to get around is an lifted yoda, aka a raised Toyota truck.

A night Molokai is so dark, the eyes of deer and wild pigs peek out from the woods. You can feel why this island is considered among Hawaiian people to contain an innate power that comes from the land itself. And Hawaii, they call it mana, and it feeds everything. Every time you eat something, you take the money of that plant in.

You drink the water, you breathe the air, you're taking all that mana that energy, and then you convert it into the acts and words that you put out. But you don't necessarily use all of it in your one life, especially if you've accumulated great amounts. And then there's a bunch of it that just collects and stays with you.

And that's the thing is like, for us, mana, death cannot take away from us. It takes the body away, but the other thing still exists. [music]

Michiala Peskaya was one of the first people yoyo when I met when we landed in Molokai.

She works for the US Park Service and grew up in Molokai. My first name Michiala means to be alert and punctual.

My grandmother gave me that name because I guess it wasn't so alert or punctu...

So it's kind of a nickname that I've kept because I think it's something worthy of aspiring to...

Michiala loves Molokai for everything it is and everything it isn't. We don't have any stop lights, we fish and farm. We're not very transient, like a lot of families live in the same place or even in the same house that their parents grew up in or their grandparents built. A lot of Michiala's family comes from the north side of Molokai.

And the Pelakulu Valley, where the winds are so strong that people actually figured out a way to write them. Yes, Pelakulu people, they live in this narrow valley.

The walls extend out into the ocean, you cannot walk the coastline.

You have this narrow view, you watch the birds every day flying. You're going to notice that there are wind currents just as there are ocean currents. You'll notice the way birds glide and fly. And if you have generations and generations and generations of observation at some point, somebody figures out, you know what?

We can mimic that with a leaf.

And that's what they would use to hand glide across the valley and even over the ocean.

That is the coolest thing I've heard. Maybe ever. All of the elements of nature on Molokai were so strong that Michiala was taught to name them. Every rain has a name, every mountain, every hill. Every wind has a name.

The Ilili Kihi, it'll swirl the sand at the black sand beach of Pekwane. Kuii-Ala Lipoa, it brings up the smell of the seaweed. Kuii-Me is to hit or strike. Ala is fragrance, Lipoa is a type of seaweed. Michiala and Molokai are intertwined.

And she believes, like many Molokaians do, that when she dies, she needs to be buried in Molokai. So that her mana, the energy, the charge left in her physical body, can return back home. That which is extracted from this Ina should be returned to this Ina. Michiala told me a story about someone who went to great lengths to bury his bones on Molokai and keep them secret.

Let me call her is so powerful that his energy should not be in anyone else's hands.

In the 1500s, Lani Kaula was a trusted advisor to leaders and kings because he could foresee the future. He was killed by a rival and his family knew that when they buried him, it had to be in secret. Or else people might dig up Lani Kaula's bones and use them irresponsibly, selfishly. His children decided to bury their father's body on a plateau and leave the spot unmarked. On top of his remains, they planted trees so that the mana from Lani Kaula's bones would fuel the trees for eternity.

And that's why the trees are secret because if their roots are touching his bones, then that energy is coming up through them out into the leaves.

So Michiala brought us to this grove. A place where the mana of Molokai is most powerful leader remains buried. So we could better understand what she's talking about. So this area that you're looking at right here is considered but in the grove. The trees are delicate, thin trunks and their leaves are shining and silvery. They're called kukui trees, or candle nut. I'm careful not to step on too many saplings on the ground, but they're everywhere.

Lani Kaula is very peaceful. The wind moves through the trees unlike other trees. But it has this stillness when you enter it. It's sort of quiet and commands reverence.

It's very welcoming to sit and yet it almost feels like you shouldn't sit and that you should be very mindful of the space you occupy when you're there.

Michiala led us in a ceremony I couldn't record, where we sat in a small circle on a woven mat and drink lava, a drink made from a root vegetable, as we explained how we use our gifts in the world.

Around our circle, there were maybe 30 more people who'd come to watch the ce...

And then yo-yo took out his cello to play.

Come closer, can form a circle around me, this is not a stitch.

He took a seat under the delicate shade of the kukui trees. What I've learned as a musician, because I don't have a steady job. So I have to travel and play in the place. And so I pick up things, and one thing I pick up are songs that are meaningful to people. A song that may be about a bird, but kind of a sacred bird, because for people that have experienced genocide, that becomes a symbol of life for them. [Music]

Sitting in the grove, listening to yo-yo play this, I felt the reverberations of his cello. I felt it before, but this time it was different.

It was mixed with the energy of the people around us watching yo-yo play.

There are beekeepers and surfers, teenagers and grandparents on these nuncles all forming a circle around us. Lani Kaula's trees form a circle around them. It's a relationship of mutual protection that can only come when a community knows the history of its people and its land. And recognizes the energy that still exists from those who lived here before. [Music]

We had to come here first before we could go to the other side of Molokai.

We had to understand what mana is, and that it could never be destroyed even by death.

Because on the north side of Molokai, there's a peninsula where death is everywhere.

We go there after the break. [Music] 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, then art there wherever you get your podcasts, or just go to songwriterpodcast.com. [Music] Welcome back. This is our common nature. And we're on the north side of Molokai Hoai, where there's a remote peninsula with a dark history.

Growing up, it was always like, "Oh, that's where they sent all the sick people."

[Music] I never thought of it in a scary way or like, an avoidance. It was more like, on the sick people, that's where they took them, so that nobody else got sick. [Music] Michiala is talking about the peninsula of Kalau Papa.

It's hard to access, folks usually fly into a small airport, and then drive into town. But you can also take a mule over a mountain, hike for an hour, or historically, get there by boat. Kalau Papa is a place of transition from an old Hawaii, a pre-Western pre-U.S. Hawaii to a globalized, colonized Hawaii. All because of a disease that by the end of the 1800s was ravaging the Hawaiian Kingdom. And, of course, those days, they referred to our sister's letters, and that's really a turquoise, or to use to describe anyone.

This is the voice of one of the more than 8,000 people sent to live in Kalau Papa because they contracted a disease. A disease that we used to call leprosy. This is one of the few voices recorded at length, and thanks to the Park Service, these VHS tapes have been digitized for us to listen to.

Well, I guess I should start off with the same name, which is Bernard Wakao K...

And I then, here at Kalau Papa since 1942, so it's a long time ago.

Bernard Pune Thayo was interviewed in the 1980s. In these two tapes, he's sitting in a chair in his living room, and on the steps of a building for staff members of Kalau Papa with palm trees in the background. At this point, he's a middle-aged man looking back on his life, but in 1942, he was 11 years old.

OK, let's go back a little bit to some of the things at the way beginning. How old were you when you went into Kalauki?

Six and a half. When Bernard was just six years old, a nurse noticed he had red spots on his neck and face, and he was sent to a local clinic. And he was standing on his little revolving stand, and he was going to poke you and do things to you, just like a specimen.

And finally, the children and mother that I had to be admitted to Kalauki Hospital.

I didn't really understand even then that I would be taking away me forever almost. Plions called the disease Mahahua Kavale, the separating disease.

Because since 1865, anyone who showed symptoms of it were separated from their families by the Hawaiian board of health and sent away.

Because the disease spread easily, there was no treatment or cure and a diagnosis meant first painful disfigurement and eventually death. The English speakers called it leprosy. Today, because of all the stigma associated with that term, it's called Hanson's disease.

It's a bacterial infection. It attacks your skin, nerves, and respiratory tract.

People lose feeling and use of their muscles until their body is no longer function. And somehow Bernard contracted Hanson's disease as a kid in Honolulu, and his mother was ordered to bring him to live in a nearby hospital. To stop the spread.

In the separation, it was very difficult for my mother and myself.

There were other kids at the hospital already, different ages, and a bunch of nurses, teachers, and doctors. And during the day, it was easy. You know, to forget that ago school, you got to go to doctors and get tests and everything. But at night, the reality seems to seem, and you don't know, loneliness is really very strong, and I used to cry a lot in life. At least his mother and siblings visited, but when they hugged, they were reprimanded by the watchful staff. Bernard made friends, and sometimes he was able to watch movies. The disease, however, progressed.

It affected his face, his mouth, his hands. He figured it would just get worse in this hospital until the day he died. But then... We're having our practice. We heard all these noises outside. God's firing, and that radio he was saying, "This is an air raid. Take color. This is the real McCoy." December 7th, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

And the hospital where Bernard was staying was just miles from the attack. So he and the other kids ran outside and climbed up a tree to see what was going on. This plane came so long that you could see the pilot looking down like this and smiling as he was firing his gun. With World War II on the horizon, the decision was made to move the kids away from Honolulu. And one island over, on Molokai, there was a peninsula only accessible by boat really because of its sharp cliffs and dense mountain forests.

And people with hand-sense disease had already been sent there for the past 80 years.

The chief said to us that they were sending you to go.

The description they do, you know, gave to us, scared a hell out of it.

And we were talking about a lot all over the walls and different.

And we just kids and everyone across said, "Please, please, please don't set us." Already, Colopapa had a reputation among Hawaiians. It was known as the place where people with hand-sense disease went to die. You have these tall cliffs that sort of the island broke and sheared off and it created all these big boulders in the ocean.

The water is rough and deep and it's always like moving.

Colopapa sits just to the west of where Michiela's family is when hanged light over the winds and sea. And it's a similar geography. You have these 2,000-foot sea cliffs that form a natural barrier around a valley by the sea. So King Kamehameha the fifth chose Colopapa as the site of Hawaiians official quarantine for people with hand-sense disease. Patients began arriving on ships in 1866. It was really harsh in the early years.

Today, Colopapa is a national historical park and part of Michiela's job is to help people understand the colony's history.

There are some people who felt like I died the day I left home.

Because for Hawaiians people, especially at that time, the land was family.

Removing someone from their homeland was a spiritual death. Not everybody sent to Klopapa was Hawaiian. You had people from Europe and Asia there as well. But the stigma against contracting this disease was so high, it crossed all cultures. Some families disowned their sick relatives, married couples often divorced. Mothers had to leave their children and they all had to start a new life in a series of small wooden houses in the valley between cliffs where the wind went.

The colony wasn't prepared for the hundreds of patients they received. People didn't live very long once they arrived.

But over time, the community became stronger.

The doctors and nurses became more informed. The church leaders had more compassion and people with the disease began advocating for themselves. By 1942, when 11-year-old Bernard and the rest of the kids from Kalihi Hospital set sail for their new home, the scary stories of Klopapa were passing at the past. As we were coming in, we looked to a shore and we could see the people just lined up from the shop area all the way down to the camp. They could just land hundreds of people.

All the hundreds of residents of Klopapa came to greet this new shipment of kids and they immediately welcomed them into their world. Instead of blood on the walls and scary sick people, Bernard found beaches, birds, monk seals, lava rocks. He found other kids to play with, and aunties and uncles who invited him over for dinner in their homes. It was really great this Kalokokon patients, when they came down they came down with their fish and dried fish. People call on and pee, he's going and we just dig in.

Let's just say to that pig out, "Good Hawaii food." Even better, they were parties.

They always had an excuse for a celebration, and they were at least a three-patient orchestra.

They could go take their dancing out. Everybody dancing had their time for all two the patients. Bernard started going to church. He became a Catholic. Even though the disease had affected his face and hands, Bernard felt comfortable enough to begin to sing and accompany himself on the auto harp.

Compared to the hospital in Honolulu, living in Kalokapa felt free. But there were still restrictions. Kalokapa was run by the Hawaiian Board of Health. Patients could not leave and travel to other islands. They had jobs and chores, and they still had hand-sense disease. I was in the hospital for a long period of time.

The doctor had looked down my throat and said that was so bad that sooner or later it would have to do it for the army. That was a reality. Bernard's condition got so bad, doctors considered cutting a hole in his throat,

Placing and breathing in feeding tubes if the disease progressed.

But at this point, there were treatments for hand-sense disease being used in other places,

as just not a Kalokapa, and they were working.

The success rate was so great. And yet our physicians here refused to even consider it. Their rationale was that it was still experimental, and there was no guarantees. The people were not asking for guarantee.

Without the medication, the guarantee was you would die. That's it. We're in the same form. So, the patients of Kalokapa came together and demanded to get this new treatment, or take the administration at Kalokapa to court. The pressure worked. The drugs came.

They were the miracle drugs. They changed our lives. They riveted it. Bernard started to heal. More on that story, 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 Etten, 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. Bernard Puningaya had been at Kalokapa for more than 20 years, before the drugs to treat handcensus he's arrived.

And that's also around the time that Anway skinsus Law first went to the north side of Molokaii.

I started going to Kalokapa when I was 16. I'm now getting social security. So, it's been a lifetime. It was the 1960s. And the patients at Kalokapa were still legally forced to spend their lives on this peninsula,

with jagged cliffs and whipping winds. But the disease was no longer a dead sentence. Kalokapa was a very lively place in those days. And there was a gathering place called Mariano's Bar, which is where everybody, you could go meet people in.

You'd be in there, and everyone would buy you beer, and you'd leave with a pile of six packs there. And Mariano, the owner would save them for next time. I'm sure that is where I met Bernard.

And I can't even remember what year it was.

Bernard was a people person.

He was always out at the parties and functions of Kalokapa,

singing and playing music. There was one. We all have the alphabet song. Where it was called Kalokapa. And it was like K-A-L-A-U-P-A.

And it was like you would say Kalokapa on my hometown. After his Bernard was skeptical of this white teenage girl, a lot of the residents were. But I kept coming back. And the question always started being,

"Are you spending the night here?" Because if you spent a night, it showed you had more commitment than if you just flew in and out. And eventually, on-way got a grant to start recording oral histories of the residents of Kalokapa.

I mean, you naturally go and you talk about when someone was taken away from their family in the pain and the separation. But we also made a point of talking and recording people's talents. You know, if they were painters or musicians and things like that. She recorded people playing ukulele, reading poetry,

and telling their life stories. And eventually, on-way convinced Bernard to sit for two on-camera interviews.

That's what you've been listening to this whole time.

So, that was another question. Yeah. No, I'll start. Okay, let's go back a little bit to some of the things at the way beginning. How old were you when you...

A lot of their conversations had to do with Bernard's work in local politics and advocating for the residents of Kalokapa? So Bernard was on the Citizens Committee that studied the laws and, you know, they were still fumigating mail. They were doing all these outdated things.

Kalokapa at this point was a medical colony that was over a hundred years old. There were no new residents because the drugs were preventing outbreaks of hand-sense disease elsewhere. And yet, the laws keeping people in Kalokapa had not changed since the 1860s.

I was about a hundred and four years we had isolation. To realize that our laws were so octased and so familial times, obviously. Even though there were no longer any valid medical reasons

To maintain an isolation policy.

Yet, they still had here to that.

So Bernard worked with other residents and patients to repeal the law.

In 1969, the government of Hawaii repealed the law. Bernard was 39 years old.

For the first time since he was six years old, he could travel wherever he wanted.

And one of the first places he went was his first home, Honolulu. And after more than 20 years away, during which time there was World War II and Hawaii became a U.S. state, the world had changed. And now that this morning and the surroundings, you see the beauty of my Hawaii.

Took a little walk into the town, and there's this famous moment where the government tried to knock that building down. Bernard began living in Honolulu in a residential treatment facility for people with hand-sense disease. It was called Hale Mahalo.

And there's this famous moment where the government tried to knock that building down.

And Bernard is photographed getting arrested and dragged out of the apartment with other protesters.

We dare to challenge the state and say, "No, we won't go, we won't let go." And you know, Hale Mahalo is our home. You may not do with us as she had been doing for the last hundred last years. ♪ I keep fighting my way to the sea ♪ ♪ Walks are a country where hiding in the meaning ♪

♪ Turn right around to see the mountain ♪ ♪ Towers of comfort and darkness again ♪ This song you're hearing right now is the only recording I've heard. It's the only recording I could find of Bernard singing in playing Otto Harp. He's playing with guitarist Peter Kahloha, and another Otto Harpist named Eme Calani Calahile.

It's a song he wrote reflecting on his own history and the history of Hawaii.

It's called "We're Birds Never Fly."

Oh, my gosh. I played it for Yolio. ♪ Birds never fly ♪ ♪ Birds never fly ♪ It's a mournful song.

But I also see a lot of joy in just the fact that he's playing it.

He wrote it. He was supposed to be gone. He was supposed to be dead to his family at age 11. He's okay, look. What I'm going to do is I'm going to tell a story.

You can see it on video that I've had Hanson's disease. I'm singing about this whole history, and he's like a bard. I'm now going to tell you the story of my life. This is what's happened over decades, and you're left to live with it. Yeah.

Just to COVID, wrote about the style and era in a way that is not about saying, "Okay, here's millions of people died." Because I don't have capacity to understand what millions of people means. Right. Just like 8,000 people sent for having Hanson's disease. Like exiles.

That's too much for you to understand. Yeah, how many families look? I mean, let me give you the encyclopedia of all the names of the families. Okay, what am I going to do about it? Right.

But here's song like that. I can hear it over and over again. And I could pass it on to you, and you could live with it. So I asked you all if you would learn the song and play it with Bernard. Oh.

Does it make sense when I wrote? Okay, good. I'm going to turn it a little louder, so you can hear it better. Yeah. And I'll play just very quietly, so that it just kind of matches well.

Alright, here we go.

Yeah.

That's great. That's great. That is great.

Bernard lived the remaining years of his life traveling the world to promote the dignity and rights of people with Hanson's disease.

When he was back in Hawaii, he split his time between Honolulu and Kalapapa, where a lot of his old friends still lived in their seaside homes. I lived in West Virginia by that time, and he would call me up, and we would, you know, sometimes work on things.

That's why one day he called me and he said, "I know you're going to think this is weird,

but what you give the ecology at my funeral." So I said down. And then when did that day come that you had to go? He died in 2009. It'd be very 2015-2009.

Bernard had two services, one in Honolulu and one in Kalapapa. His body was buried in Kalapapa, and a cemetery called Papalua. This is Papalua.

The sister was saying that 2,000 people are buried.

Yes, this is the mass graves right here. In Kalapapa today, there are more graves than there are people. Some are in mass graves, and others are individual markers that shine bright under the hot sun. Some are ornate, others are small and worn. Some are just crosses in sandy grass.

And many have washed away entirely due to tidal waves and erosion. How's that? Is that okay? Right. It's okay.

Bernard is buried here, along with hundreds of other people who called Kalapapa home.

Yoyo is here to play for all those who have died, and for the very few who remain living here. I'm so grateful to be able to hear, and thank you for allowing our presence, my presence, to be here to honor and to pay respects for all the people

that have been part of this community. Yoyo settles into his chair, and unscrews the end pin of his cello, as he squints the sun out of his eyes. And I want to thank, especially, a good Danny for being here. I was told Danny, you've been here since 1942.

So that's about 80 years. If my math is still working. Yoyo is talking to a man in a wheelchair, flanked by nurses. He's older, and I'm standing behind him so I can't see his face, but I know he's a patient.

He came with Bernard, actually, on that ship in 1942, and he's still here. Soon, a rusty old pickup truck pulls up right next to him, and there's another man, another patient. Out of the 8,000 people who are forced to come to Kalapapa,

these two men are the sole survivors. The history of Kalapapa is not over, but now it's a challenge. How do you do justice to everything? There are plans to create a memorial to the patients of Kalapapa

within Kalapapa National Historical Park, where all of their names would be engraved on a stone wall. But Michiala, our friend from the top of the show, who took us to Lani Kala and works at Kalapapa, says, "Not everybody agrees with that decision."

So for me, it's rough because because of the park service, we have to remain neutral. Professionally, I have to remain neutral. But as a descendant of a patient, I get to say that personally, like, no,

we don't want his name on that. Hmm.

This is the first time that Michiala admitted to me

after no insurance, speaking with her for hours, that she had a relative who was a patient at Kalapapa. She won't say who, but I can tell that the admission comes with a lot of baggage. And so she says that there's a much simpler,

much more discreet and personal way to memorialize the people who came to Kalapapa. If we know a story is like, it used to come to this beach and go fishing all the time, go and stand in the water there and have a moment

and see your prayers.

How do you connect with your ancestor who is a patient?

We chant, we sing to them, we dance. I just talked to them all the time.

I feel like they're always here.

They like you here.

And I think they like me being here,

because there's so much I had to leave.

They find some reason to remove my other opportunities.

They're going to miss you. You can't leave them. Yes, it's how I feel. In life, the thousands of people forced to Kalapapa had so many of their freedoms taken from them,

and so much of their identity. But in death, their energy, their mana, what made them who they are, remains here in the land. One of the things that I've been learning in Molokai is that energy is key to life.

And one of the things I've learned from sciences,

energy is never destroyed.

So if this were true, it means that the energy of our ancestors, of all the people who've traveled, come here, is not gone.

So here's the way to call them through music.

And so much. Do you hear that bird? If you listen to enough of this show, you know that I'm going to say that's got to be Bernard. And maybe some of the other eight thousand people

who came to Kalapapa are here too. And as I stand here, listening to Yoyo, I hear the ocean, I hear the wind. I hear the people who gave their mana back to this land that are still here.

And I'm connected to them. When you hear that piece that you feel, that's them. What an honor to spend. Thank you very much.

Daddy, thank you. Thank you so much. I hope it pleased you a little bit. Is it? Okay.

Good. That's what the music is here for. Keep that. Okay. All right.

Thank you very much. And the next episode of our common nature. We stay in Hawaii. We go a little bit deeper into how music and chanting can connect us to the deepest parts of our existence.

I just have a whale of a time. And it's the finale. So it's going to be a go one. Hope you listen. Our common nature is a production of WNYC in soundpostings.

Hosted by me, Anagan Zollis produced by Alan Gophinski, with editing from Pearl Marvel. Sound design and episode music by Alan Gophinski, mixed by Joe Plored, Fact Checking by Anna Alvarado, our executive producers are Emily Boteen, Ben Mandelkern,

Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays. Our advisors are Mira Bert Wintonic, Kamakadillas, Kelly Libby, and Chris Newell. Special thanks to Colopapa National Historical Park, Michiala and Kayoki Peskaya,

Valasin of Kahohana Ocolopapa, Uncle Bobby and Patty, and Anway Skins' Law. And also to Joan Lander of Namaka Okaina,

for her recording of where birds never fly.

If you want to watch the video of Bernard playing it,

it's in our show notes. 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. 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.

Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Flanthropies. See you next time.

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