Scott C.S. Stone

Hardcover with CD, 128 pp. 

A ghostly echo rises as the leader of the Royal Hawaiian Band lifts his arms into the air. The music swells, then seems to hold its breath-it falls, then slips into a haunting melody form Hawaiʻi's yesteryear. Historians call the music a linkage, something that pulls Hawaiis colorful past into the here and now. But the band members know it is more-perhaps the ethereal voice of a long lineage of bandleaders and musicians, of singers and those who remember themselves as the King's Band, only later to pay allegiance to a new territory, then to a new state. Since 1836, this living legacy has stirred audiences throughout the islands. And it lives on, through the sounds and spirit of the Royal Hawaiian Band of today.