Every Day is Earth Day

The Lana'i High and Elementary 4th graders are a special group of kids--since the completion of our song "Singing to the World," they have been inspired to create more great art and music.  Brooke Belista, who had some of her poetry featured in "Singing to the World," brought new song lyrics into school soon after "Singing to the World" had been completed. In collaboration with myself and another student, Dian Ozoa, "Every Day is Earth Day" was created.

I was so impressed with the students' writing and motivation and it drove me to create the best song I possibly could.  Coincidentally, we had a field trip coming up where we would go down to Mauna Lei beach and pick up trash.  Our class was entered in a contest called "Debris From Our Sea," where the goal is to create artwork out of the plastic debris collected from the beach.  I decided that I must get the song recorded as quickly as possible in order to go through the same process as "Singing to the World," and also shoot a music video.  I was very lucky, and had the support of both 4th grade teachers, the school administration, and even a high school teacher, who lent me her recording studio for several school days.

We also had a lot of help setting up the field trip--Castle and Cooke generously donated two of their shuttle buses to transport us down the other side of the island.   Luckily, we were able to finish our recording of the song before the field trip, and had the class do a live performance down at the beach.  Other than Mrs. Patterson hurting her ankle, the field trip was a complete success.  We had seven truckloads of trash, and there's still a lot more down there--Mrs. Patterson hopes to make this at least a yearly event.

After returning to school with all of the debris, the students were asked to make artwork out of it.  Here are some of the creative designs they came up with:

We sent our completed music video, along with pictures of our artwork, into the "Debris From Our Sea" contest, which is being sponsored by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.  We got a very positive response immediately, and although the contest winner hasn't been announced, they've featured our video in their blog as a special sneak peak into the "Debris From Our Sea" contest.

My brother happens to work at Sea Life Park on O'ahu, and they're holding a big Earth Day event on April 22nd.  He's been helping me with several things on this project, including creating the great design for our iTunes cover and possible T-shirt:

 

We've been invited to perform our song live and show our music video at Sea Life Park for their Earth Day event, and have gotten a lot of help from a lot of people to make it happen.  The Lanai High and Elementary School Foundation has been working with the Class of 2020, and generously partnered with Island Air, donating plane tickets and transportation for six students and two adults to attend the event!

I feel extremely blessed to have gotten so much help, and worked with so many good people.  We hope to make the most of our opportunity, and share our song and message with the world.  Pasted below is the music video, and the lyrics to the song:

Every Day is Earth Day

Lyrics by Brooke Belista, Dian Ozoa, and Matt Glickstein

Music by Matt Glickstein

Verse 1:

Every day is Earth Day

Pick up the trash around you

Reduce, reuse, recycle

That’s what you’ve gotta do

We all have a role to play

So let’s clean the earth today

Verse 2:

Every day is Earth Day

Help the fishes in the sea

They’ll be very happy

Get rid of all debris

We all have a role to play

So let’s clean the earth today

Bridge:

Every little thing you do

Helps keep the planet green and blue

Turn off all the lights

See the stars so bright

Everyone unite!

Verse 3:

Every day is Earth Day

Go out and plant a tree

Take a walk instead of driving

There’s no gas, it’s free!

We all have a role to play

So let’s clean the earth today

Bridge:

Every little thing you do

Helps keep the planet green and blue

Turn off all the lights

See the stars so bright

Everyone unite!

Verse 1 (repeat):

Every day is Earth Day

Pick up the trash around you

Reduce, reuse, recycle

That’s what you’ve gotta do

We all have a role to play

So let’s clean the earth today

Exciting Updates for "Singing to the World"

Since my last post, a lot has happened--I'll start with some exciting news about our song, "Singing to the World:"

After I finished the recording of the music, I started sending the song out to various organizations, and one of the places I sent it was to an organization called Pillars of Peace Hawaii.  I saw that the Dalai Lama would be visiting Hawaii in April (this was towards the end of February), and thought our song matched well with the Dalai Lama's message.   I was pleasantly surprised when a woman named Mary Charles responded enthusiastically.  It turns our Mary owns Hotel Lanai here on the island of Lana'i, and I had played at a fundraiser she held a few years ago, so she knew who I was.  Mary offered the services of her husband, Tom Kiely, who is the Chief Executive Officer for Xterra TV.  Tom was nice enough to send over a TV director, Chris Bednarek to do a professional music video for our song!

During the coordination of bringing Chris to Lanai, we found out that Jake Shimabukuro would be doing a concert at the school gym, as well as a presentation for the students at Lanai High and Elementary School. I got in touch with Jake's PR team, and when he came to the school, I was able to have a conversation with Jake and tell him about our song.  He was extremely generous and down to earth, giving at least an hour of his time to come to our class and learn and play the song "Singing to the World" with our students.   He even gave our class a private concert after we were done shooting our music video.  To top it off, that night at his concert at the gym, he called the students and I up to perform our song live, and he even let me use his custom Kamaka ukulele!  It was certainly an experience neither the students or I will ever forget! Here are some pictures from that day:

We had originally planned to do the video shoot at our beach cleanup field trip in March, but weather forced us to reschedule.  The day Chris Bednarek came over, we were lucky, and had just enough good weather to get all of the shots he needed.  I gave him prior footage I had taken of the kids, as well as the video from the day Jake Shimabukuro came to visit.  Chris took all that back to O'ahu, and edited everything, and came out with an absolutely fantastic music video.

Soon after the production was complete, we found out from Mary Charles that our music video would be shown at both speaking events the Dalai Lama would be giving on April 14th and 15th at the Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, O'ahu!  I am lucky enough to be attending with five high school students and another teacher.  The 4th grade class will be able to view the event via live streaming in one of our classrooms at the school.

I will be posting more updates on this exciting project after the event takes place, so please stay tuned!