SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 10, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Award-winning Hawai’ian singer-songwriter Paula Fuga is bringing her distinctive sound all the way from the islands to Salt Lake City this week.
Acclaimed for her originality in song composition and spellbinding, soulful vocals, Fuga is one of Hawai‘i’s top female musicians. A poet at heart and an accomplished ukulele player, she is set to perform at Kingsbury Hall on Friday, Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m. as part of the UtahPresents 2024-25 season. Fuga has collaborated with artists such as Ziggy Marley and Jack Johnson, and has toured extensively with Johnson, nationally and internationally, including to Australia’s renowned Byron Bay Blues Festival. She has performed at venues including Madison Square Garden and the Sydney Opera House, and is a three-time guest artist at the White House.
Fuga, who was born and raised on the island of Oahu, was orphaned as a child and taken in by her grandparents. She started to write poetry, then blossomed into a songwriter when she began playing ukulele in high school. Her first album, “Lilikoi,” garnered her a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for Most Promising Artist in 2007. In July 2010, she released an EP titled “Misery’s End,” and in 2021, her album “Rain on Sunday” came out on Johnson’s label, Brushfire Records. She is also a cultural ambassador, using her talent as an instrument to help bring about positive social change within the islands and beyond.
Fuga chatted with Gephardt Daily over the phone from Hawai‘i.
We asked her what audiences can expect from her show. Her current tour began in Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this month, and will wrap up in New York City in October.
“Well, I’m a storyteller, a natural storyteller, so I love telling the stories of how I wrote my songs and then playing them, but sometimes I forget I’m there for music, and I just tell my stories,” she said. “They’re often funny, so people are cracking up laughing; I remind myself that I’m not a comedian, I’m a singer. I had a chance to open for a very famous comedian last year for five shows in Honolulu in Hawai‘i. You know the comedian Ali Wong? I learned so much from being a part of her shows that it really inspired me to do some comedy in the future.”
She added: “I have a bass player and a pianist that will be accompanying me. It took me a long time to figure out the perfect combination of instruments to accompany me, but yeah, I love it, it’s bass, piano and ukulele. The perfect compliment for me right now.”
Fuga told us more about how she got her start writing poetry.
“Well, I’ve always been interested in writing poetry from when I was a child making rhymes. I feel like I would try to say whatever it is that I wanted to say in as few words as possible,” she said. “I always had a love for music. As a child, as young as four, I already knew that I was going to be a songwriter, because I started processing lyrics to songs while I was listening to them, you know? I’d have an opinion about the songs. And I’d say to myself: ‘Hmmmmm, this is a cool song, I’m going to write a song like this.’ I was just very aware of lyrics. My grandmother always imparted a strong belief in me that words are so powerful. I was always careful, because of what she would say. ‘Be careful what you ask for, because it might come true,’ or: ‘don’t ever lie and say that you’re sick, because then you’re going to get sick.’ She would feel offended if anybody lied to her, and she would say: ‘when you lie to me, it’s like you’re telling me that I’m stupid.’ Because she already knew.”
We asked Fuga what sort of music she listened to when she was growing up.
“Well I loved everything; my grandparents listened to Jimmy Swaggart, Engelbert Humperdinck, my grandmother loved listening to gospel music, she would dance with me to Puerto Rican music,” she said. “My grandmother was part Puerto Rican, so we’d listen to that type of music, and my grandparents always played instruments. My grandfather played ukulele, guitar, and the organ. They had one in the living room when I grew up. I would always sit there and like, fiddle with it.
“I listened to everything. Reggae music was really popular here in Hawai‘i when I was growing up. I love Motown. Aretha Franklin is one of my favorite singers, so are Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Karen Carpenter. My mom, she loved listening to female singers singing love songs. And so when I grew up, I really loved that too, the love songs that she would listen to, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston. And then here in Hawai‘i, we have our own local music scene, so I grew up listening to groups that probably nobody knows outside of Hawai‘i; Teresa Bright, who just passed away. She was a big, influential female vocalist here in Hawai‘i, and had a kind of jazz flavor to her sound. And I grew up listening to her sweet, beautiful voice.”
We also asked her about the importance of collaboration in her journey as a musician.
“I’ve been so blessed to collaborate with a lot of different people,” Fuga said. “It’s so important because even just in my own music, it’s a collaboration with the artists, with the musicians that help me record the music. And these are songs that I’m writing from my heart and soul, because I can’t do it on my own, I need the collaboration, the music, the mana, the soul of others to make my music come alive. I’m so fortunate that I get to collaborate with people like Ziggy Marley, Jack Johnson, all my friends who I love so much. A lot of those opportunities, especially with Ziggy, it was because of Jack and Jack’s friendship and influence in my life and my career. He sort of took me under his wing and let me tag along to some really cool experiences. And I’m just so grateful for his friendship and love.”
We also asked her about the importance to her of representing Hawai‘i and its people.
“Well I don’t really go out with the intention of representing Hawai‘i and its people, because I am a representation of Hawai‘i, and my people,” she said. “It’s not something that I have to consciously think about, it’s something that’s ingrained in me. Because even as a child, my grandmother, she instilled this belief in me that she said: ‘wherever you go, you represent me. You represent your family. So watch what you do, watch what you say, because whatever you do, it’s a reflection of me.’ So just like that, wherever I go, I already represent Hawai‘i because I’m Hawai’ian. It’s the place that raised me and nurtured me and all the beliefs that are my foundation of who I am as a person, it’s because of where I come from. I know it sounds a little gimmicky, but the Aloha spirit, it’s something that you cannot just learn. It has to be ingrained in you that you’re raised with it in your life. So I take that with me wherever I go.”
She added: “In Hawai‘i, we have this thing where you treat wherever you go as if it were your home. When you travel, you are respectful of the environment that you’re in. You don’t throw rubbish everywhere. And so when I travel, when I tour anywhere, I treat every place as if it were my own home, as if it were my place, and I try to treat people with kindness and Aloha. That’s how I represent my home and my people; having Aloha and care, genuine care for people and places that I encounter.”
We asked Fuga if she enjoys the practice of touring.
“Yes, because I get to see different places,” she said. “Wherever you go, there’s something beautiful; I remember seeing a calendar from Utah, and it was a star calendar, because the stars over there are so brilliant. I wish I had room in my luggage to bring my really good camera, because I would love to go shoot the stars; I just don’t have the capacity to lug around a camera and a tripod. On this tour, I was invited to do some things with a college, one of the youth correctional centers, because of my childhood; I used to be in foster care. My parents got divorced when I was young, and there was a lot of domestic violence and drug abuse with the adults that were in my life as a child. I do a lot of things with nonprofits over here at Hawai‘i. I’m an advocate for youth, and I try to encourage them as much as I can, and I try to be an example of what they can achieve in their own lives. And I tell them: ‘it doesn’t matter where you come from, what matters is the choices that you make for your future. You’re not powerless, it’s not hopeless.’ I give them hope and encourage them to believe in themselves and believe that they can achieve anything that they set their heart and minds on.”
We also asked her what is next for her after the current tour.
“You know, I’m also a filmmaker,” she said. “I just made my first short film. The purpose is to teach kids about Hawai‘ian history and culture, things that are no longer common knowledge. I want to make movies about those things. It’s the first film I’ve made; I never even made a music video before this film. So that’s being released here in Hawai‘i, it has its official premiere in October, and then I’ll be flying to New York to premiere the film at another film festival over there in October. So I’m really looking forward to that. I can’t wait, because after that, I’ll be able to take it into the schools and show it to kids and talk to them, and it’s just another thing they can do. So anything I can do, I always tell the kids that they can do. If I came from where I came from, living homeless on the beach, eating from a trash can, you know, at one point in my life, they can do anything, you know?”
Finally, we asked her if she has any dream collaborations, and if there are venues she’d still love to play.
“I really love India.Arie,” she said. “I’d love to record a song with her. She actually asked to be a part of my last album, but I had already turned in everything, it was already ready to come out, and I couldn’t do anything about it. But I have a song that I wrote that I would love her to be a part of, and she’s somebody that I would love to have as part of my next project, my next album. My dream collaboration also would be Stevie Wonder. If I’m dreaming out loud, I wish I could collaborate with Stevie Wonder, Ed Sheeran.”
As far as venues, she says that Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Morrison, Colorado, is on her bucket list.
“That’s still my dream venue I’d like to play at one day,” she said. “When I was a kid, there were some really negative adults in my life that were abusive, mentally and physically. This one guy, he was taunting me, and he said: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I thought for a second. I looked away, and in the corner of my mind came this big, tangible vision; a dream. I know now today, that my guardian angel was watching that interaction and was like, ‘hell no, we’re going to give her the biggest vision ever.’ I was standing on a stage, holding a wireless microphone, in front of a huge audience that went up like a wall in front of me, while a white-purplish light shone down on me, and I could see that light reflected on the people’s faces in front of me. And I could see the chrome of the drum kit in the corner of my eye, and I knew that that was mine. And when I looked at the people, I could see the light on all their faces and I knew they were there for me, and in that instant, I knew that I was going to be a singer and I knew I was going to travel all over the world playing music.
“And then as an adult, after YouTube came out, I started seeing content at Red Rocks, and I was like, ‘This is the venue in my dreams.’ I recognized it. I never told anybody that I thought it was Red Rocks. But when I told somebody else about my vision, and I’ll tell people the story over and over again, exactly the same way that I just told you, my girlfriend is from Colorado, and she said: ‘Oh my God, I think that’s Red Rocks.’ I know Red Rocks is calling to me, and I know that I was keeping that vision so that I could endure terrible things in my life that were yet to come. I needed that vision so I could hold on to it, and have something to hope for, in spite of whatever was going on before my eyes. I knew there was something magical in store for me and my life.”
In addition to her public performance at Kingsbury Hall, Fuga is also performing and teaching in several community engagements through UtahPresents ReachUP program. These events include a student matinee for K-12 students at Kingsbury Hall, a discussion with University of Utah students in Pacific Islands Studies classes, and two professional development events with teachers. One of the professional development workshops, taking place at Mana Academy on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 1 p.m., is free and open to community members. It is suitable for learners 18 and older. Fuga will be teaching Hawai’ian music for K-12 educators; to participate, you can register here.
For the performance at Kingsbury Hall, ticket prices range from $10-$50, with $5 tickets for U of U students and $10 tickets for non-U students, and are available at 801-581-7100 or by clicking here.
