Dr. Marie Jocelyn U. Marfil (PhD ’15) was one of the nominees for Compilation Album of the Year in the 2024 Nā Hoku Hanohano Awards for her work on the album Kāwili 2.
One of the album’s producers, Maui attorney Lance D. Collins, told HPR last year, “The first album [Kāwili] was primarily Philippine folk songs that have been interpreted and presented as Hawaiian Mele. The second album is sort of the reverse of that– [we took] well-loved Hawaiian mele…and ‘Filipinized’ them.” The album’s description explains:
“The second installment of the Hawaiian-Philippine Kāwili project, a playful musical encounter reinterpreting traditional Philippine folksongs and traditional Hawaiian mele on CD. Kāwili seeks to re-envision the encounter between Filipino and Hawaiian cultures, peoples, identities and languages in Hawaiʻi.”
From March through September of 2021, Dr. Marfil created fifteen arrangements of 19th century Hawaiian songs for voice and rondalla (Philippine string ensemble.) These songs were translated to three languages of the Philippines, namely, Tagalog, Ilokano, and Cebuano. Dr. Marfil revealed in the HPR interview that the original plan was to create translations and sing in eight of the 100+ Philippine languages, but it was challenging to find translators and singers during the pandemic.
Under Dr. Marfil’s supervision as the production manager, music coordinator, and one of the producers for this project, the University of the Philippines Rondalla and the singers (including Jonathan Badon, Eugene Tunac Marquez, Anya Evangelista, as well as Hawai’i artists Malie Lyman and Kamaha’o Haumea-Thronas) then recorded the music from December 2021 through the following October.
Dr. Marfil not only supervised the recording process, she was even one of the bandurria players in the recording itself. She serves as an Associate Professor of Music at University of the Phillipines College of Music, where she is also a member, composer, arranger, faculty advisor, and the artistic director for the University of the Philippines Rondalla.
An inspired fusion of cultural, linguistic, and musical traditions required much collaboration. Dr. Marfil told HPR that it was “an achievement.” After the recordings were finished, the album was mixed and mastered in Hawai’i by Michael Grande and released in August of 2023. Executively produced by Joseph Daoang and Claire Daoang, and produced by Lance D. Colins, Marie Jocelyn U. Marfil, Kelli Heath Cruz, and Brad Watanabe, the album is available on major streaming platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, and Pandora. It is also available for purchase on CD. Like the first volume, proceeds from Kāwili 2 will go to the University of Hawaiʻi’s Ilocano Literature Language program and the William S. Richardson School of Law’s refugee and immigrant clinic.
