Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over The Rainbow, sheet music, Noten, partitura, partition, spartito

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Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

The history of the Hawaiian shocked the world with his song and his funeral at sea

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole returned to the voice of a people with a hit universal. But he died at 38 years old, without being able to see how her angelic voice and his ukulele passed the borders of Hawaii with his unforgettable version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

A scream of euphoria broke the gentle murmur of the waves, while a large clay vessel dark inclined toward the salty water: the ashes of Iz fell to merge forever with the foam of the sea, under the watchful gaze of at least 10 thousand fans who attended his funeral.

Iz was, in reality, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, a prominent musician Hawaiian who came to the ears of the world for his sweet voice, his ability to play the ukulele, and his famous version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the song from The Wizard of Oz, which amount to hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. But it was her massive funeral which turned him into a local hero and in the biggest icon of the Hawaiian culture in the world.

On June 26, 1997, he began to cum the voice, when his smiling face appeared on the front page of the daily most-read of Honolulu, the capital of these islands in the Pacific Ocean. Iz had died of a respiratory deficiency and from a series of ailments that plagued by its obesity. Because Iz was not of a size small: he was almost 1.90 meters and weighed, at the moment of death, more than 450 kilos.

His death brought a painful memory for the family. His brother Skippy they also had died shortly before, with just 28 years old, by a cardiac arrest that arose also from obesity. Both Israel and the Skipyy were famous in the islands have been part of the Makaha Sons of Ni ihau, a musical group that managed to popularize Hawaiian music beyond the hapa haole, a folk rhythm that had been bastardized by the American culture from versions racist or sexual that had nothing to do with the essence of the islands of the Pacific.

The “sons of Makaha” had managed to generate other music, one that knew how to interpret the spirit Hawaiian and offering lyrics and melodies that native speakers were able to show proud. Therefore, it was not strange that thousands of people attend the sea to fire this afternoon in the summer of 1997.

Iz, who had been a young man of a problem during his teenage years, would print his voice into the ears of the world from a recording at the last minute, in 1988. Legend says that the owner of the study received a call from a representative drunk just when I was about to close his establishment, and after dealing with a group of girls who singing out of tune. The voice babbling of the drunken promised something good, and his promise was fulfilled.

Ensure that the floor boards creak when he entered Israel, with the 250 pounds I weighed it then and his ukulele, an instrument that have not enjoyed the popularity that it gained in the last decade, and that, as its size is tiny, it looked like an object of ridicule in the arms thick of the musician. But then, her sweet voice intoned a fusion of two songs that are still recorded in the eardrums of many: joined Somewhere Over the Rainbow with What a Wonderful World, of Louis Armstrong.

However, the tape remained forgotten for five years in the office of the studies. Only when Iz attempted to launch his solo career, the moment in which he maintained to his wife and his daughter with help from the State, it was when the song was released. The success was as massive as it is unexpected, as the Hawaiians didn’t appreciate how much this tenor Native American music as his songs more policies, which was to recover the true spirit of the Hawaiian language to the process of Americanization.

Years later, and when the musician was not to be a witness of your success, this song would come to all parties: the toy store Toys R Us included it in one of their advertisements, and the film grew fond substantially with the voice of Iz. “Finding Forrester”, “Do you Know Joe Black?”, “You have an e-mail”, “As if it were the first time”, “Madagascar” and the short of Pixar’s “Lava” included his iconic song, and it became an icon of popular culture.

Throughout his life, Israel became the musician’s most popular islands, but their overweight complicated even more of their presentations, and finished to an abrupt end when she was only 38 years old. Then, their music still wasn’t able to look beyond the boundaries of its archipelago native to reach the ears of all the planet.

After the news of his death, governor Benjamin Cayetano allowed his remains to be viewed in a public ceremony in the town hall, an honor that had only enjoyed a senator and a governor in the past. The criticism for opening up this space to someone who was not a politician elected not long in arriving, but the officer maintained his firm decision and said that Israel was not only a giant of the music, but a real treasure for Hawaii.

Before the flags to half-staff spent 10 thousand people, who came to pay their respects to the idol dead. They exchanged photos, and flowers, and a musical concert closed the ceremony around the coffin, made of wood collected in different points of the archipelago.

A few days later, when the body had already been cremated, thousands of people were grouped together on the beach, Makua, a few kilometers from the place where he was a resident musician, on the island of O’ahu. In canoes, and other vessels, larger, they stepped into the blue of the ocean to find the point of their final break, between the deep waves of the Pacific.

When the urn dark rose in the sky, thousands of cheers and screams elated, broke the silence of the afternoon. Since the banks could hear the sound of the horns of the cars, and hundreds of flags with the letters I – Z flamed in the sky. While the ashes are blended with the salt of the ocean, the wife of Iz and thousands of other fans took to the water for a swim for the last time with Israel, the giant managed to become the voice of all Hawaii.