Two Maui men to hit the red carpet at Grammy Awards in New York City | News, Sports, Jobs
Baldwin High School graduate Josh Tatofi is nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album for his album “Pua Kiele” at the 60th Grammy Awards in New York City.
Baldwin High School graduate Josh Tatofi has lived and breathed the life of a singer, playing at local bars until 1 a.m. since he was a teenager.
On Sunday night, he hopes to reap the rewards of his hard work with his debut Hawaiian music album, “Pua Kiele,” nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album at the 60th Grammy Awards in New York City.
“It’s a really blessed feeling,” Tatofi said Wednesday. “It’s real surreal to be here representing Hawaii. It’s definitely been a roller coaster for sure.”
Tatofi will be joined on the red carpet by 2003 Maui High graduate Jason Baum, honored for his work on Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE” video, which is nominated for Best Music Video. The video has racked up nearly 430 million views on YouTube and won six awards, including Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards in August.
The Grammy trip is Baum’s second after working on Arcade Fire’s “We Exist” video that was nominated for 2015.
Maui High School graduate Jason Baum garnered recognition with his second Grammy nomination for his work on Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE” video, which is nominated for Best Music Video.
“I don’t want to jinx anything, but I would like to think we have a very good shot,” he said of Lamar’s video.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Tatofi began playing music on stage at 8 years old with his father, Tivani, who was one of the original members of the acclaimed reggae band Kapena. At 13, he moved with his family to Makawao after his grandfather was called to be a pastor at a Maui church.
As a freshman in high school, Tatofi began taking music seriously and started playing at local bars several nights a week. His schedule consisted of waking up at 5 a.m. for school, practicing football after school until 7 p.m. and performing at bars until 1 a.m.
Often, he would eat dinner during his set or grab food on the go right after practice. In his senior year, he was flying off-island and sometimes missing school Friday to play at private events and concerts.
“That’s where the boot camp started for me,” he said. “It sounds kind of crazy now that I think about it, but I thought everybody had the same kind of life.”
Tatofi recorded his first album with the popular Hawaiian reggae band Ekolu shortly after graduating in 2009. He then toured with the band along with Fiji, Common Kings and others on and off for five months throughout Hawaii and on the West Coast.
“On the first album, I was just excited to release my own content,” he said. “There was a lot of learning for me to do in the music industry and learning the business.”
The 26-year-old singer returned to the studio in 2016, but he switched to Hawaiian music out of his love for its sound and its similarities to rhythm and blues. He grew up listening to soulful singers such as Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson.
“I knew early on I wanted to stick to ballads,” he said. “I had an R&B and soul background, and I live in Hawaii so I wanted to fuse them both.”
Although he had found his sound, he still needed to learn the language — or at least enough to sing. Tatofi is fluent in Tongan, but knew little Hawaiian before starting the album.
“Hawaiian language is far from how the lyrical music is written,” he said. “It’s like English and Shakespeare English.”
Tatofi would later release his album to critical acclaim and success, capturing Male Vocalist of the Year and Island Music Album at last year’s Na Hoku Hanohano awards. He credited Kapena DeLima, keyboardist for Kapena, for helping him with the album.
“We had a ball making this album,” Tatofi said. “We knew it was going to be a good album, but we didn’t know it was great, like the people made it out to be.
“I’m just living the dream right now. I’m on cloud nine.”
While Tatofi has found success in front of the microphone and camera, Baum has become a behind-the-scenes veteran.
The 2003 Maui High graduate has produced 70 music videos and has worked on many more in other roles. His latest project with Lamar, though, proved to be one of the most difficult.
“I would definitely put this video on the list of one of the more stressful shoots I’ve been on,” he said Tuesday. “The expectations with the budget and trying to do two videos over the course of four days was very challenging. We also had to keep the songs very secret so that the music wouldn’t get out because the album hadn’t been announced yet.
“On top of that, we had to turn around the first video in a short amount of time. I spent two weeks working from 5 a.m. to midnight to get this project delivered.”
The music video shot last year in March was filmed at the same time as Lamar’s other video “LOVE,” which required a strict time schedule. Baum worked 20 hours many days planning shooting schedules, communicating with various departments and often scouting locations after a full day of filming.
After the music video was released online, it immediately drew praise for its numerous camera effects that included motion control and a trick called “tiny planet.” The trick showed Lamar riding a bike while being filmed with a 360-degree globe effect.
“I definitely was overwhelmed by the outpouring of admiration and support for it,” Baum said. “It was such a marathon to get the video completed, so it was hard to sit back and enjoy the video as a product. To have it get released and have people immediately pick up on it and watch it and share it — it definitely made all the struggle worth it.”
* Chris Sugidono can be reached at csugidono@mauinews.com.
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