My Grand niece Tata was staying with us, and what a blessing that was. For one I had a lot of learning to do. I had only brothers no sisters, I had only sons, no daughters. So having a niece live with us was a huge change. Mind you she was beautiful so even more so I was not polite to any guy coming around. It was the same for my sons as well. We were so over protective of her that it drove her nuts. She eventually moved to live with other college girls and was able enjoy little more of the college life. I was always worried, Sylvianne would always tell me too relax she's ok. But when she did come to stay on some weekends i was happy. Any ways she was here for school, but like her dad and of coarse the dna on that side of the family is pretty thick with musical talent. I decided to do a project that would include her, her cousins her dad "Rod Danny (Roco)" and uncles. So I decided that we would take some of the old Tahitian songs and put a twist to them. Give it that mojo eh eh. I remember going over some of the songs that we could possibly do, and "Te Ume Horotini" was one of them. I remember Tata listening to the song and was like no tonton. The version we listened to was from the 50's. I think. It was a YouTube version of the song. What was cool was that it had her great great grand aunt Loma in it. I was able to convince her that the version we were going to do would be killer. So......production began. I called my brother in law Roger "Roro" Tetuanui to come on board as the co producer. He would handle the music side of the project. No matter what, these songs had to have that Tahitian element. I would add the twist and most of the vocal production.
Roger and I went with this latino vibe that we felt was cool, I dropped a beatbox and changed the sound of it and we had this vibe that made you go Yeah. By the way did I ever tell you how talented my brother in law Roger is. He's a fricken mean musician. Every time I get to work with this brother I'm not worried at all. When the music was done, I played it for Tata and she was like yeah tonton. The song was different. We stuck to the melody but changed the musical approach. I can't tell you how much fun it was to do. We dropped all the vocal harmonies and leads. Roger added his vocals on the hook and bam we had this modern twist to a song that was 40 years old. During this time I was listening to some of Timbaland's work and loved the twists he would do on the tale end of some of his productions. So I wrote the tag out for the song and manipulated some of the sounds and tracked the vocal tag and now the song was done. During this time I was working a lot with a very dear friend and engineer Charley Lukela. He took me under his wings and allowed me to work as his assistant for a long time. We did a lot of recording together for about 16 years. Every-time Roger would fly in, Charley would pick him up and off they would go. I was able to learn how to become a recording engineer from this quiet Hawaiian. His passing was a huge blow, he was a great friend. Charley mixed the album. We then released the album in Tahiti and Japan. The album is still doing well. Did I tell you much fun I had...................Every now and then when I get into this crappy mode where I question my musical abilities....I'll go back and listen this album and remember the fun I had with my Family and tell myself.... mean this project and I was a part of it. I don't need to win awards. The memories I have are golden...Take a listen to the original and Ours....Let me know your thoughts..........
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