Kalei Yamanoha, Touring Musician, Composer, Studio Session Musician
New Orleans, LA and Sonoma County, CA (where he is currently sheltering in place)
Kalei Yamanoha, sheltering in place in Sonoma County
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Aside from your creative work do you have any additional source of income?
Yes, I am a professional accordion repair technician. I fix accordions when I'm not touring and performing, it keeps my brain busy and the accordion communities instruments in top shape!
Who do you live with and how do you feel about that?
Well, right before the quarantine happened, I was on 3.5 month tour as a musician with a 23 person radical puppet theater called Bread and Puppet Theater based out of Glover, Vermont. We were living out of a bus touring the United States with a very political giant puppet show. The outbreak of Coronavirus caused our tour to be cancelled so I decided to come to California to stay with family until this blows over. Currently there are 7 people living in the home I am staying in.
How are you spending your time?
Luckily my side job as an accordion repair tech has been keeping me busy while quarantined in Sonoma County. It's a job where I can have zero human interaction and spend many hours isolated from other people. It's sort of ideal and maddening. You have to be somewhat mad to be an instrument repair person. I've been spending a lot of time practicing and composing new music, cooking, practicing ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language), going on solo bike rides on abandoned mountain roads, and partaking a reasonable amount of cannabis all the while.
How is the pandemic impacting you?
Well, it has had quite an impact on my life very suddenly. I was on a 3.5 month international tour as a musician with a puppet theater that we had to stop three weeks in because of the coronavirus and everyone went home. So I went from an extremely packed schedule with over 70 shows in the US, Canada and Mexico from early February to late May, to all of a sudden having more free time than I've had in a decade. I'm supposed to have another tour that is going to be from early June to late October where I music direct for a touring tent circus show. We're waiting for this to blow over so hopefully we can still continue with that tour. I have taken a bit of a financial blow from this, as most of my income comes from performing and now there's no gigs! Although, I am happy to have some accordion repair work to help supplement during the meantime. I'm fortunate at the moment, where my living expenses are quite low because I gave up my home in New Orleans to be on tour for 8 months straight and am currently staying with family. My sister is an ER nurse so this is affecting my family pretty heavily, and we all are being very intense and diligent about being sanitary as we have high risk people who live in our home. I personally know a few people who are sick, all who live out of state, but they are doing well and on the road to recovery now.
What do you want to accomplish personally and/or professionally during this time?
I'm using this time to practice my instruments, compose songs for my next tour with the circus, get back into shape, make a game plan for the next phase of life; after my next tour I'll be moving to Hawai‘i, where my family is from, to pursue music and continue my studies in Hawaiian language and history.
What kind of world do you want to see on the other side of this?
I want to see a world where people have realized that basic universal income and healthcare are not radical ideas and are actually helpful to a healthy society. I hope that we can as a planet make better decisions to make our time here more sustainable for future generations. If I may speak in Hawaiian briefly, Inā ʻaʻole ʻoe e mālama pono i ka honua, e hana nō ia i ka mea e pono ai ia e hoʻoponopono hou iā ia iho. Manaʻo wau e hiki iā mākou ke ho'ōla mai kēia maʻi, a lilo i mea mālama pono i ko mākou honua i ka pau ʻana.
This translates to "If you don't take care of the Earth, it will do what it needs to repair itself. I hope we can recover from this disease and come out of this with better practices for our planet"
How can people find you and support you and your work?
I do not currently have a website, but all of my recordings can be found at www.oddjobensemble.bandcamp.com