ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hi, it's Ana. Um, I want to start this episode with something from last episode, when I asked Miki‘ala

ANA GONZÁLEZ: How do you connect with your ancestor, who was a patient?

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And she said

MIKI‘ALA: We chant, we sing to them.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Chanting. What is chanting in Hawai‘i specifically? Is it really so powerful, so all-encompassing that it can connect Miki‘ala or anyone to things we can’t see? 

MIKI‘ALA: When you chant, the vibrations effect 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. 

MIKI‘ALA: And 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 cannot hear that anymore, but the universe, can. And so our chants are our contribution to the orchestra of the world.

Yo-Yo Ma: 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.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: That’s Yo-Yo Ma and I’m Ana Gonzalez. This is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. And today, we're going to 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.

 Yo-Yo Ma: I just have a whale of a time.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Great pun. Oh, why, why, why did you want to try to communicate with the whales? Like where was the inspiration for that from?

Yo-Yo Ma: Well, whales are our mammal relatives. They obviously have a sophisticated language. And, they are sentient beings, as are we. And yet, we don't know their language.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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 Payne, 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 their family’s songs.  

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

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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. 

Yo-Yo Ma: And I listened, I heard, my goodness, these are sounds that are kind of in the register of the cello. They are absolutely replicable on the cello. And I just thought from just a musical point of view, I wonder if I were to replicate some of those sounds, in the way that, you know, I go to a different country and I'm learning some words and I'm going to try out my vocabulary.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our trip to Hawai‘i 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

CHANTING

Snowbird Bento: I chant a lot.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Snowbird Bento and she’s a teacher of Hawaiian music and culture. She’s an expert in chants, or mele.

Snowbird Bento: Everything I chant is my prayer. 

SNOWBIRD  CHANTS

Snowbird Bento: As we chant, we're actually putting out vibration into that universe and expecting response.

CHANT CONTINUES

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Snowbird tells me she chants to affect the weather.  To carry histories of people, plants, and animals. And to protect things.

Snowbird Bento: And you're asking for your people to come help you, give you what you need. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And Snowbird was one of the first people Yo-Yo called when he was organizing a concert in Honolulu.

Snowbird Bento: I won't lie. I about screamed my head off and fangirled and I was like, aaaaah hahaha

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Turns out Snowbird actually played cello growing up.

Snowbird Bento: And I had a picture of young Yo-Yo sitting with his cello and his eyes were closed and he was like in this position. And I thought I'm going to keep practicing because one day this is the guy that inspires me. Like I'm gonna, I would just love to meet him. I never thought I was that good of a cello player.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: In this concert, Yo-Yo was set to play all six of the Bach cello suites. If you don't already know, playing all the Bach cellos suites is a tour de force in cello performance. It's about two hours of solo cello. And it’s one of Yo-Yo’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.

SB SINGING: 

Snowbird Bento: I decided to perform “Ka Uluwehiwehi.” It speaks to this time in the existence of our land when everything was in balance and healthy.  And so what I attempted in my performance was to create this space, that even for a minute, we can touch that type of beauty and perfection. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: But in the last verse, the energy changes from a meditation on the beauty to a directive to the audience.

Snowbird Bento: He ali‘i ka ‘āina, he kauā ke kanaka. 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.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Human beings have the tendency to think of ourselves as separate from the world around us. An, even better. We think we can control it. That we're on top. But, in this mele, Snowbird is saying that's not how it works here. So, if Yo-Yo is going to communicate with whales, he's going to have to meet them where they're at. He can't just expect to walk out of a Waikiki hotel room and play for the whales as they swim out on the beach. Yo-Yo is going to have to enter the space where whales live. And for Snowbird, that place exists in the depths of the ocean and in the deepest parts of our brains. It's a place with a Hawaiian name.

Snowbird Bento: Po. For some, “po” means the cosmic night. Po is a source. Po is origin. Po is darkness. Po is black. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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 Po. 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. Snowbird’s ancestors also used sound to communicate through the ocean.

Snowbird Bento: In my own family we have stories of my great great grandfather feeding sharks by hand, chanting to them and they swim in. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Snowbird refers to her family and the sharks and the whales as Kanaloa people because In the Hawaiian creation story, the ocean is ruled by Kanaloa

Snowbird Bento: Yeah, Kanaloa is one of our four major akua, 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: A Hawaiian deity or god. Kanaloa lives within the po and controls the ocean and all of its creatures, which are mostly mysteries to us. 

Snowbird Bento: We don't know half of the creatures that live in the deep parts of the Kanaloa

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Because do you know how much of the oceans human beings have explored? Five percent!  Just five. Which means 95% of the oceans are unknown to us. Which means, they could be anything living in there. Undiscovered creatures and portals and maybe things beyond the physical 

Snowbird Bento: Kanaloa represents a subconscious mind. The Kanaloa realm is open to us when we allow for us to cross over from the conscious to the subconscious. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I think it’s a good time to tell you how I first met Yo-Yo. It wasn’t through Arthur or Sesame St or seeing him live or even through this podcast. It was something else. And I'll tell you about it after the break. 

BREAK

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. This is Ana. And I want to tell you how I first met Yo-Yo Ma. It was through a memory passed down to me.

PHONE RINGS

MOM: Hey Ana. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hey mom, what's up? 

MOM: I was just chewing on a hot brownie and I couldn't. Laughs

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Keep chewing. I also had a work question I wanted to ask you about. For the Yo-Yo podcast. 

MOM: Okay.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Do you think it'd be okay if I talked about him playing at Aunt Beth's funeral in the show?  

MOM: Absolutely. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah? 

MOM: 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, it'd be an honor. 

MUSIC

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The year before I was born, my mom's sister, Beth, died of breast cancer. It was a shock to everyone who knew her. And Yo-Yo was one of those people. Their kids went to school together.  And I was always told with this sort of disbelief from family members that Yo-Yo Ma played at my Aunt’s funeral.

MOM: Well, it was just so extraordinary and unexpected. There'd been a big snowstorm, so there was a lot of snow on the ground. Like, a foot or two. You know, like, a lot of snow. And it was, um, 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 his stool down for him to sit on. I didn't even know he was there. And then he sat down on the stool, and he started to play.  

Yo-Yo Ma

MOM: It's him playing that, that is what I remember about her burial. It's that moment.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You don't remember anything else? 

MOM: No. Like it's one of, you know, those 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.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: When you think about it now, does it feel like it's still, like, present, like, still happening almost? 

MOM: Absolutely.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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, in the Kanaloa realm. 

I didn’t tell anybody about this connection I had to Yo-Yo. It just never felt right. And when I got the call to maybe join Yo-Yo out on some trips in nature and to make a podcast, it felt like a strange boomerang. Like a small, unexpected bit of fate coming back to me. But I held onto it. I didn't tell him until we were in Hawai‘i.

Yo-Yo Ma: The most amazing moment was sitting on that plane 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. 

Yo-Yo Ma: And you tell me.   

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Oh yeah. 

Yo-Yo Ma: Do you remember Beth Pile? And I had known you already for a while, you know? So it's like I saw you in West Virginia, we talked and this and like and and then boom. You land and then suddenly we're connected.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: From before I was born. That was the year before I was born.

Yo-Yo Ma: It's hard for me to kind of wrap my mind 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. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Do you feel bad though now? Cause I don't want to leave you feeling bad.  

MOM: No, no. I mean, no. It's just, it's some, you know, when I think of  Beth's death, I always think of just how unfair life is. It was just a terrible thing that happened.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, 

MOM: So, you know if we can any way to honor her, is a good thing. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Cool. That's what I'm trying to do. It's probably Aunt Beth trying to do it, honestly. That's probably how I got this whole thing  

MOM: I'm sure it is.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: She's probably like, “Oh, that would be interesting.”

Yo-Yo playing in concert: bach cello suites

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo is onstage 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. 

Yo-Yo Ma: I associate playing with having an elevated consciousness where you have access to your subconscious. And I think the performing part is a deliberate discipline to get those portals open so you have maximum access to your subconscious. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So over the past 60 plus years, Yo-Yo has been opening those portals in his mind to mesh his conscious and subconscious.  All that imagery that Yo-Yo said he envisions when he plays Bach Cello Suite No 1

Yo-Yo Ma: The images of water…You start to see flying things….

ANA GONZÁLEZ: That all lives in Yo-Yo's personal po. It’s the untouchable place human beings have yet to explore, where light fades. It’s where my Aunt and her memory remain living. It’s a realm Yo-Yo dips into it every time he performs where he uses sounds to navigate his universe, just like the whales. 

Yo-Yo Ma: And if you have access to that, you have access to a vast repertoire of ideas, memories, or, or just trash [laughs]. You know. But somehow when, when you're performing, You're aware of that much more. 

Snowbird Bento: I know exactly what that feels like.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Snowbird again

Snowbird Bento: 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 close and I just, I go. 

PERFORMANCE

Snowbird Bento: 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. Cause they'll let me know. They'll signal if it was good. If it moved them. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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. Yo-Yo and Snowbird both navigated through portals opened between their conscious and subconscious to access the po. 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.

BREAK

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. I’m Ana in Hawai‘i with Snowbird Bento. 

Snowbird Bento: I was about three years old when I was first introduced to Hōkūle‘a on the shoulders of my uncle. He walked me down into the water and he said, this is Hōkūle‘a, bebe. You know, one day this canoe will take you around the world. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hōkūle‘a is a double-hulled canoe with 2 massive sails. 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. A group of activists and culture keepers came together to build this ship, and learn how to navigate the seas as their ancestors did, and to form a crew who could move through the open ocean with just the stars. Hōkūle'a is more than a feat of sailing and engineering. It represents a fierce devotion to Hawaiian culture and a hope that it will remain. And today, Hōkūle'a is gonna serve as a vessel for us as we navigate the realm of po and kanaloa and hopefully connect with some whales. We met the Hōkūle‘a in Kawaihae harbor on the island of Hawai‘i, where by the way, Mauna Loa the volcano, was erupting for the first time in almost 40 years. It’s so cool that I wish for the first time this was a movie like with video and not just a podcast. But as we approached Hōkūle‘a, the red glow of the lava coated the harbor and we gathered to board. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Also, I'm Ana, by the way.

LEHUA: Lehua, nice to meet you. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lehua, nice to meet you.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I met with Lehua Kamalu, one of the captains and primary navigators of Hōkūle‘a

LEHUA: We are about to take Hōkūle‘a out of Kawaihae Harbor on a short sunset sail. It's a beautiful afternoon and I think, you know, invite the whales and the ocean to listen to something maybe they haven't quite heard before from the deck of a canoe. Gonna be super amazing with Yo-Yo on board, a number of our elders and kupuna and practitioners.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: There are about 40 or 50 people on this working port. It's a real mix like Lehua said: older Hawaiian people who know Hōkūle‘a well, Yo-Yo's team, and a man who called the group together. His name is Nainoa Thompson. He's the CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society that runs Hokule'a, and he's a legendary navigator in Hawai‘i. 

Nainoa Thompson: But just quickly, there's a lot of people that want to come on this trip when he 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, whether it's our culture. So that So when everybody was calling us saying, we want to come, we were asking them, what are you willing to protect? 

OTHER PERSON: Hola. 

NAINOA: There's a thousand thank yous. We don't have time. [fades out]

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The sun is beginning to set, and the winds are rolling in. There is like twenty of us who go over this short plank and we're on Hokule'a. All these clouds are moving in and drizzling rain on us and suddenly a double rainbow appears over Mauna Loa, which is spitting lava into the clouds and I find Yo-Yo.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: How are you feeling? 

Yo-Yo Ma: 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. We'll then see whether it's possible to make some form of contact through their songs. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Do you think, yeah, how do you think it's gonna be producing that?

Yo-Yo Ma: Well, I think possibly as with any two living beings, if you spot one another, there's a greeting. You know, there's some form of recognition. And if we could try and get to that, that would be a, that would be an amazing thing because then what happens after that is. a relationship, you know? 

LEHUA: Yo-Yo, can I put this on you? 

Yo-Yo Ma: Why? 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Someone comes over and puts a lifevest on Yo-Yo. We’re all kind of stumbling around on this ship as it undulates on the calm, glassy waters.

LEHUA: Sure. So that you fall off. You fall off. I have no place to fall off.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: People are throwing rope and going under deck to grab supplies. There's a group working together to row the long oar on the back of the canoe, which helps the ship move without wind. One of them pointed to an urn she brought on board with her.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Your mom is, is this your mom? 

ROWER: Yeah. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Wow. Well, I'm glad she's here. Yeah. She'll tell us where to go.

ROWER: You know her well.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: A little ways down the canoe, there are marine biologists with audio equipment.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hey, Lars. Hi, how are you doing? Good. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lars Bejder is the director of the Marine Mammal Research Program in the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology

ANA GONZÁLEZ: How are you feeling before we set sail? 

LARS: I'm so excited. Look at this background. Look at that rainbow right there. Two of them, right? Two of them. Yeah, it's going to be awesome.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lars specializes in marine megafauna aka big ole ocean animals. Like whales. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Take me through like the science-y side of what's gonna happen right now. What are you planning on doing? 

LARS: Yeah, so it's a little bit early, but the whales have started showing up. So if we're lucky, we're gonna put a hydrophone, so an underwater microphone, in the water, um, and that's gonna be listening for whales and snapping shrimp and all kinds of other things that are in the ocean.And then at the same time, Yo Yo's cello is going to be connected to a speaker that we're going to put in the hull, that hopefully will project the sounds into the ocean. And those sounds we 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 whale song.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Let me break this plan down a little bit. So these waters and all of 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 into the waters. So, Lars and his colleagues have rigged up the wooden hulls of the Hōkūle‘a to be natural amplifiers. Yo-Yo will play, and his cello will shoot out through the ocean 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.

AUDE: When, uh, Yo-Yo’s performance starts, we'll have, um, the hydrophone recording and hopefully we can record what's happening underwater.  

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Aude, 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.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Have you ever done anything like this?

AUDE: No, this is the first time. It goes back to what sound is and, and it's a wave. And wave travels and transmit and what is sound and what is a wave and waves are everywhere.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. And how long do they last?

AUDE: Mhmmm

ANA GONZÁLEZ: 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

ANA GONZÁLEZ: All right. I'm excited.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Moments later, Hōkūle‘a sets sail

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And we're off.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo is busy setting up his cello with the marine biologists, but out of the corner of my eye, I see Snowbird. 

Snowbird Bento: 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.

CHANT UP

Snowbird Bento: As we sailed out and when we started to move away from the pier, I kept my eyes scanning the horizon in front of me and I started to chant. 

CHANT 

Snowbird Bento: 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 Kanaloa people, like the whales, and see if the Kanaloa people want to make their presence known. And then went into asking for my, my kupuna 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 or on the canoe are the audience. Who's the audience? Kanaloa Ma.

The last portion of the chant says, E hō mai ka ‘ike, grant unto me wisdom. E hō mai ka ikaika, grant unto me strength. E hō mai ke akamai, grant unto me knowledge. E hō mai ka ‘ike pāpālua, grant unto me the ability to be able to see the things that others may not see. And then the last line is, E hō mai ka mana, grant unto me this spiritual power. 

And when I finished it, I said, ‘Āmama. Ua noa. (The prayer is said. The kapu is done.), and I clapped twice. And when I clapped twice, right off my left side, 45 degrees, I saw the tail flap.

SEEING WHALE 

Snowbird: And that was it. Nothing else. I didn't see it breach. I didn't see it blow air out, just the tail flap. Pom. And it was gone. And I was like, you saw that, right? 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The mood was different after that. And the focus turned to Yo-Yo, who sat in the glow of Mauna Loa's lava and the double-rainbow crown and dropped the endpin of his cello.

He played a medley of all the pieces he's been playing throughout this series: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Amazing Grace, a Catalan folk tune called “Song of the Birds,” the Prelude to Bach Cello Suite No 1 in G major. And we waited by headphones, listening underwater for a response. Nothing. But Yo-Yo had another idea: maybe if he played the sounds of whales that he learned to replicate, maybe some whales would call back.  

WHALE SOUNDS

SOUNDS SHOOTING OUT

Yo-Yo Ma: I think the only thing that I can count on is purity of intention, you know? You know, we, we mean no harm going there. The intentions are benign.

Snowbird Bento: I watched how he played, how he closed his eyes, how he moved and I thought “they're hearing you and they'll respond to you in the way that they will respond.”

ANA GONZÁLEZ: But the water remained quiet.

Snowbird Bento: 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. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: We don't know if Yo-Yo's music or whale sounds reached any whales. After the tail flap, we didn't get a response. But through our attempts to communicate with the whales, we thought like them. We entered the realm of Kanaloa. We all accessed the po with help from Snowbird and Yo-Yo. And I think they felt our presence.

YO-YO Ma: that whole trip was magical. I remember those double rainbows. And, you know, and are they signs? Are they just natural occurrences and, you know, all coincidences? And, um, we don't know, right? We probably will never know. And whatever we know, we're trying to bring as, a peaceful offering, and if they choose to engage, uh, uh, which in our case they didn't really, that doesn't mean that, uh, we can't try again and see what happens because that's what people do.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Because it all comes back to knowing our place in this world. If we are truly connected to the world around us, we are listening, observing, and striving to understand something we can’t yet see or touch, but know exists. 

Snowbird Bento: 1000 percent. That is the way Yo-Yo affects his environment. around him. If he's in his subconscious and he's just playing to play, the cello and he become 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.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: On each one of these trips over the past 3 years, I have been fortunate enough to experience the Yo-Yo universe. Everywhere he drops his endpin and picks up his bow, he takes in the energy of the land and the people and he becomes that conduit 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 coal country riverbeds. From a snowy New England cemetery to the deck of Hōkūle‘a. Yo-Yo plays to rebuild our connections to each other and the world around us because that’s what music does. It’s a form of love. And in Hawai‘i, they have a word for that kind of love. 

Snowbird Bento: 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 and compassion. If I say to you, aloha kāua, love and respect, understanding dwells between you and I. The world needs that.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So the last song of Yo-Yo's Waikiki concert, the last song of the series, is “Aloha ‘Oe.” Farewell to Thee. It was composed by Queen Lili‘uokalani, the last reigning monarch of the Hawai‘i islands. And the story is, she wrote it as a love song, a mele ho’oipoipo. But over the past 150 years, it’s become a symbol of all the good and all the bad in Hawai‘i. People mourning their loss of sovereignty, but also enjoying luaus 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 needs to hear it. 

Credits: Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings 

Hosted by Ana González

Produced by Alan Goffinski

With editing from Pearl Marvell

And original music by Alan Goffinski

Mixed by Joe Plourde

Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado

Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton and Jonathan Bays.

 

Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell.

 

Special thanks to my mom, Maura, 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 listen to the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo, Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg, 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, and to my aunt, Beth Pile, Until we meet again.