The album is rooted in Uchiyama’s discovery that, despite the presence of Africans and African Americans in Hawai‘i since the early 1800s, their stories have rarely been woven into mainstream narratives. Mariners, teachers, physicians, musicians, and laborers from the Atlantic world settled in the islands, some seeking freedom from slavery and prejudice, others drawn by new opportunities in the Pacific. Yet their memory was largely silenced. Uchiyama, recognizing the centrality of mele (song) in Hawaiian culture as a vehicle for remembrance, chose to address this gap not through lecture or textbook, but through music itself.

Dr. José Valentino Ruiz
The Medium