Soul Man
Records fill the floor-to-ceiling shelves in a living room corner of Roger and Leimomi Bong’s apartment in Kaka‘ako. There are nearly 3,000 albums, the result of over a decade of collecting rare and often out-of-print vinyl. Luckily, everything is organized.
“We have records from Hawai‘i, which are alphabetized,” says Roger Bong. “Then there’s everything else, all sorted and separated by genre.” The “everything else” includes albums like “Reassemblage” by Portland electronic group Visible Cloaks and “Aimez ces airs” by French-Afropean duo DjeuhDjoah & Lieutenant Nicholson, albums that Bong uses to DJ with and just happens to love. Still, his Hawai‘i records are the star of the show — groovy, funkadelic, and/or soulful albums produced primarily by local artists. Among them are Mike Lundy, Robin Kimura of Greenwood and Robert Shinoda of Nueva Vida, whose sounds permeated Hawai‘i’s music scene from the 1960s to the early ‘80s, before to the latter-day reggae boom.
If you haven’t heard these names before, you’re not alone: Bong himself only learned about many of these musicians in the last few years. “I first got interested in vinyl during high school, around 2004,” Bong says. “Some skateboarding friends and I decided to make hip-hop beats, so one guy brought over a bunch of records from his auntie’s collection. I still have some of those albums today; I’ve been collecting records ever since.”
In 2010, Bong made a critical find: “Hawaiian Breaks,” a mix released by Japanese hip-hop record producer DJ Muro, comprised of funky jams by Hawai‘i musicians from the ‘70s. Bong knew a few songs from the hour-long mix, but not all of them. He decided to try and compile a tracklist for anyone else that discovered the record, and who might be curious about which artists sang what. Bong posted his findings online in a new blog he called, “Aloha Got Soul.”
“It became a kind of scavenger hunt where myself and, eventually, other like-minded individuals went looking for any info we could to identify these songs,” says Bong. Along the way, he began discovering records by other artists. Aloha Got Soul grew from a website for obscure track listings and album reviews into a digital treasure trove of Hawai‘i’s soul music history. He interviewed veterans of the local music scene, like “Sheriff” Norm Winter of Radio Free Hawai‘i, Phil Keat of soulful singer-songwriter duo Wofford-Keat, and veteran vocalist Al Nobriga.
Eventually, Aloha Got Soul evolved into a record label itself. It began reissuing old LP tracks —like Mike Lundy’s “Nothin Like Dat Funky Funky Music” and “The Rhythm of Life,” the first two tracks on DJ Muro’s Hawaiian Breaks — on new 7-inch vinyl, decades after their original release. The label also began releasing new music by up-and-coming artists, continuing the evolution of Hawai‘i’s local sound.
All the while, Bong’s own record collection continued to grow. While visiting Japan for “Soul Time,” a series of monthly Aloha Got Soul parties that began at Bevy Bar in Honolulu (but has since reached London, Chicago, and Kyoto), he connected with Japanese DJs who were obsessed with Seawind, a ‘70s jazz fusion band led by Hilo singer Pauline Wilson. “I went on my phone to look up their records, and found some random albums by other artists who later sampled Seawind in various mixes. One record only had two copies left, so I ordered one and another DJ ordered the other one,” Bong says.
Other records were received as gifts: “Mike Lundy came across the preliminary test pressing of his original album. He sort of gave it to me, but I’m really just holding it for him in safekeeping,” Bong says. “Another standout record is Peralta, by Ray Peralta, which has an incredible, almost hand-drawn colored pencil album cover image. The music itself is beautiful too; it goes from classical guitar to soft rock, with an Antônio Carlos Jobim-inspired medley they do.” Original copies of Peralta are difficult to find, according to Bong, and if they do appear for sale online, prices run close to $150. A few months ago, Bong connected with Ray Peralta and secured the artist’s permission to re-release the record. This should add another layer to the original album’s significance, while also making the music itself more accessible to newcomers and lifelong fans alike.
Still, for hardcore vinyl enthusiasts looking to build a specific collection, dropping serious money on super-rare albums is simply part of the game. Unlike unlimited streaming services, like Spotify and Soundcloud, or music collectors who trade digital tracks between iPhones and computers, record aficionados either own a physical album or they do not. In this way, vinyl might have more in common with fine wine or comic books as an item to collect. Bong believes the albums accrued are “very much a representation of what your tastes are, who you are, and the person you have been.” Some records he’s owned for years and no longer pack a punch; others resonate with him now more than they ever did. Regardless, he believes that music — and Hawai‘i’s music — is worth preserving.
“My life was affected by this music made 40 or 50 years ago, because this physical medium was able to transcend time. The reason why I’m trying to put records back out into the world now is so that someone like me, in 40 or 50 years’ time, will pick up this record and maybe their life will be affected, however small, in a big way,” he says.
“Some people might look at collecting as a solitary activity, but I think when it comes to records, it’s collaborative. I swap with friends, sometimes I pick up extra copies to give away; it’s a process of discovery. Even now, I’ve been able to connect with new friends all over the world because of the fact that I’ve become a little obsessed over this niche pocket of music from a different time in Hawai‘i.”