Josh Tatofi: Grammy-nominated music artist

As a kid, Josh Tatofi thought he had an ordinary life.

“I thought everyone’s dad was a rock star, I thought everyone played music,” he said. His father, Tivaini Tatofi, is a founding member of the local island music group Kapena. “I didn’t really know until later that my childhood was special,” the younger Tatofi said.

Likewise, he didn’t see anything special about music right away. When he was about six, his father began teaching him the basic notes on bass guitar. He would also learn guitar and piano. “I got bored of it by then,” he said of the latter. “I wanted to play with the kids next door.”

That feeling changed a few years later — “when I was eight or nine” — when he and the kids of Capena’s bandmates “were pushed up on stage to play a few songs,” Tatofi recalls. “I loved the feeling of being on stage and playing music. I wanted to be like my dad.”

He found more inspiration in R&B singers like Luther Vandross and Pepper Bryson.“I like to sing love songs and ballads,” Tatofi said.

Born in Honolulu, Tatofi grew up on Oahu in Kaneohe before moving to Maui with his family as a teenager. Tatofi’s breakthrough moment came in Kaneohe when friends from the Hawaiian music group Hū’ewa invited him to sing a song in Hawaiian on stage at a bar.

“I walked off the stage and I didn’t know it, but Kumu Hula Auntie Aloha Dalire was in the crowd,” Tatofi said. “She told me, ‘Well, I don’t know if you’re going to make a living in music, but I think you should sing Hawaiian music.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Auntie, but no, I just don’t think that’s the right thing to do.’”

A week or two later, Daryl died.

“I remember singing at her funeral and the conversations we had, and it stayed with me for a while,” Tatofi said.

His desire to remain on the island to entertain local audiences, the encouragement of his friends, and the increasing ease and excitement of creating Hawaiian musical arrangements, led him to write more Hawaiian-style works.

Tatofi admits that he doesn’t speak Hawaiian, so he composed the music first in Tongan (his family’s native language), then in English, and finally asked friends who were fluent in Hawaiian to help translate.

“Just saying ‘I miss you’ is a little bit difficult when you try to write it in English and then translate it into Hawaiian,” he said. “In order to properly say ‘I miss you’ in Hawaiian, I have to write it in Tongan first because once I translate it from Tongan, it becomes ‘The morning mist hangs over me all day.’ That part is just unbearable for me because it tortures your brain and your heart at the same time.”

Tatofi wrote his first Hawaiian song, “Pua Kiele”—“Little did I know at the time, once we released that song, it would change my life forever,” Tatofi said. His debut album, also called Pua Kiele, was released in 2016 and won two Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards.

He hasn’t let success go to his head. “I’m still a practitioner of Hawaiian music and Hawaiian culture,” he said. “I’m still learning.”

Josh Tatofi appears on a new episode of PBS Hawaii Song: Hawaiian Song Tradition. His bandmates Travis Kaka played rhythm guitar and backing vocals, and Laupepa Letuli played lead guitar and backing vocals. The show also featured hula dancers from three different halā tribes: Hula Hālau ‘O Kamuela, Hālau Hi’iakaināmakalehua, and Hālau Ka Liko Pua O Kalaniākea.

Source: PBS Hawaii