I never actually met IZ, although I was lucky enough to chat with him many times thanks to the Internet. Back in the mid-1990's he used to be a regular in the chat room at hotspotshawaii.com run by Robert"Rabbett" Abbett and at hawaiilink.com, which operated for a couple of years and was run by my friends Brian and Kathy Durham.
I was relatively new to Hawaiian music and only owned a few CDs including one of IZ's. I couldn't believe that both he and Keali’i Reichel actually visited hawaiilink from time to time. At first I knew very little about IZ other than what I read and saw from his CD. I knew nothing of his difficult past or numerous health problems. Online he seemed to be just another Internet friend who had a deep love of Hawaii and Hawaiian music, both of which he loved to chat about.
It was only after his death ten years ago, on June 26, 1997, at the young age of 38 that I learned that because of his size the only way he could use his laptop was to lay on his bed and hang over the edge to type using a pencil eraser, since his fingers were too big for the keys. That alone speaks a lot about IZ. He saw the Internet as a new way to make friends around the world.
Back then, many folks used fancy names when logging into chat rooms. One day when I was chatting with IZ, he asked me if I knew what my name was in Hawaiian. I told him that I didn't. He told me it was Keone and that he was going to call me KeoneZ from then on. He told me that the next time I came to O'ahu he wanted to give me a big hug. I didn't make that trip in time.
When I learned of IZ's death, it was a shock. I knew he hadn't been online in quite a while and I had read that he was having many health problems. Still, his death was a shock.
For several years after his death I couldn't listen to his music. It made me too sad. Slowly, however, and in large part because my wife was also a huge fan, I started listening again. I haven't stopped.
Often when I'm in Hawaii on a press trip, one of the writers asks me about Hawaiian music and asks for suggestions for CDs. I always tell them to start with IZ.
It was several months ago that I read that Mountain Apple Company and IZ's former Executive Producer Jon de Mello was going to release a new CD of IZ's music in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of his death. I read that they were taking a number of IZ's hits and mixing them with an orchestral background.
At first I was a bit skeptical about this new venture. For years it was just IZ, his ukulele and me, the listener. I own all of his earlier albums with the Makaha Sons of Niihau and the album he made with the Hawaiian Style Band and remembered that his voice never was overpowered by others. Pretty quickly, I started to look forward to the new CD which was appropriately named "Wonderful World."
I still laugh when I think how I can ask a hundred people here on the mainland if they know who Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is and no one knows. Then I ask them if they've ever heard the song "Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World" sung by the fellow with the ukulele. Almost everyone says they have. After all, the song has been used in commercials, TV shows and several movies. What better title for IZ's "last" CD.
I'm not a music critic and I won't pretend to be one here. All I can tell you is that in my opinion Wonderful World is a masterpiece. It brings an all new appreciation for IZ's talent and most surely the talent of the folks at Mountain Apple. Above all else it shows us what could have been if IZ hadn't left us so young.
IZ didn't live to see how his music spread around the world to hundreds of thousands or millions of new fans. IZ never had the chance to perform with an orchestra, but we now know that if he had, it would have been ... wonderful.
