A longtime Maui singer who juggles a professional music career with teaching and political activism will perform at the ProArts Playhouse on Friday.
Nara Boone, the former lead vocalist with the acclaimed “‘Ulalena” show, will pay homage to her family and her favorite music.
“I want to tap into the kind of music that I love and the songs that have inspired me over my 35-plus-year career,” Boone explained. “I love soul and R&B, but I sing all different kinds of music.”
Boone also wears many different hats — she’s featured on Marty Dread’s latest album, teaches music at Haiku Elementary School and is a spokesperson for the Maui Housing Hui, which advocates for renters. In 2022, she ran for the Makawao-Haiku-Paia residency seat on the Maui County Council and advanced from a field of five candidates before losing to Nohe U’u-Hodgins.
The ProArts show on Friday will serve in a way as a remembrance of her father, photographer Chico Boone, who was killed in 1996 while cycling on Maui, and her late mother, Tina Garzero, a well-known midwife on the island.
This multitalented artist will sing “stuff that means a lot like Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry,’ just with the memory of my father singing it off key while he washed dishes and had his headphones on so he couldn’t hear himself. And probably ‘Time After Time,’ which I remember one day we were just getting home from school and the song was on. We sat in the car until it was over, sharing Skittles, because he was saying what a great song it was.”
Among her original songs, she will perform “Echo Remains.”
“That one is about my mom’s death. When someone leaves us, the echo of their love still remains with us,” Boone said.
The third oldest of nine kids, Boone learned how to read music as a student at Haiku Elementary School and later studied classical music in college on the Mainland, but she didn’t initially view herself as a singer in her family, deferring to her talented older sister Chana. That changed one evening after a party in Spreckelsville.
“My sister Chana was the singer of the family,” she said. “We would all sing in the car when my parents would pick up hitchhikers. We thought it was so cool if we could sing a song in Hawaiian and in English. Then, in my freshman year of high school, I went to a party. My sister wanted to stay longer, and I wanted to go home, so I jumped in the car of other Haiku kids that were heading back. I was singing to the Bob Marley ‘Legend’ album that was playing, and the guy in the passenger seat turned around and he’s like, ‘have you ever wanted to be in a band? I’m Marty.’ That’s how I started with Marty Dread. My sister Chana and I became his backup singers. It was Marty Dread and Culture Shock.”
Boone has contributed to a number of Marty Dread’s albums, including “On the Beach,” “Next Level” and his latest recording, “What You Mean to Me” on the song “Enchanted.” She has sung on around 25 albums, including the soundtrack of the groundbreaking “‘Ulalena” show.
Boone spent 10 years with the innovative production at Lahaina’s Maui Theatre, which featured original Hawaiian music by Keola Beamer and Nona Beamer, and chants by Charles Ka’upu and O’Brian Eselu.
“It was pretty amazing, incredible,” she recalled. “It was its own university. The cast, we all kind of grew up together, started having kids together, just all of it. I used to sing and walk on stilts, and I used to play the queen in the fall of the monarchy. What we brought to the state was the beginning of aerial work in Hawaii. It was the first show that wasn’t a luau that showed authentic Hawaiian culture in a way that it hadn’t been shown before. I was one of the two lead vocalists for the first 10 years that I did it.”
After the show’s demise, she was invited to audition for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
“I got into their database where they pull all their talent from and I’ve auditioned for five or six different roles over the last 13 years,” she said.
Cirque du Soleil is currently developing a Hawaii-themed show that will debut in late 2024 in Waikiki.
Over the course of her career, Boone performed with Maui’s Crazy Fingers for many years, opened for The Wailers in Los Angeles and sang at various Maui resorts, including The Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua.
“My main one is the Ritz,” she said. “I was there two to three nights a week, usually with Liz Morales. We were there the night before the fires. Driving through Thousand Peaks the car was crawling because it was a dust storm. We couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. Obviously I haven’t performed there since.”
And, she has had the opportunity to really rock out on Maui.
“About five years ago, I was asked to take part in Zeptember, the Led Zeppelin tribute show, and I discovered how much I love that,” she said. “The last Zeptember that we had before COVID, I sang four songs, more than anyone else, including ‘Kashmir’ and ‘The Rain Song.’ It felt really scary to take on Led Zeppelin as an R&B singer, but it was just so fun.”
Boone will bring her array of talents to “An Intimate Evening with Nara Boone” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the ProArts Playhouse. She will be backed by Josh Hearl on guitar, Jonathan Cua on bass and Jordan Kamikawa on drums. For tickets, which are $30 for premium seating and $25 for regular seating, call (808) 463-6550.