Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 16, Number 1, 1 January 1999 — The lady is a harpist [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The lady is a harpist

By Paula Durbin PUMEHANA DAVIS carries on one ofWaikiki's most elegant traditions. She is the harpist in its elegant hotel dining rooms. A mainly self-taught musician, Davis discovered her instrument early. As a baby, she was allowed to crawl on the base of her older sister's harp. She learned to stand by i pulling herself up on its pillar and 1 hanging on. By the time she was 1 four, she was playing the piano, ■ and when her sister moved out, she ■ took over the harp. Predictably, ■ she turned into a prodigy and was ■ playing professionally with the I Maui Symphony by the time she I was 15. When Davis graduated from the I Academy of the Pacific, she took I five years off to work as the bookI keeper for her father's medical

practice. Then she started paying her dues with a weekly gig at Roy's Restaurant. From there, the route to a career was unusually direct. "In an interview for an article, I told

a writer that I wanted to play during tea at the Moana Hotel," recalled Davis, who knew that historically the Moana had a harpist on staff since the days its grand salon was known as the ladies grill, where kama'āina socialites gathered for tea and bridge. When the comment appeared in print, she wrote to the hotel, apologizing for being so bold, and enclosed a resumē and photo

just in case. "Everything fell into plaee," she added. Unfortunately, Davis recently left the Moana when the hotel management felt the need to downsize. But she'll be in the Sheraton's Hanohano Room for Sunday brunch in January. Davis, who traces her Hawaiian roots to the Lyons family, has chosen four Hawaiian songs for her first CD. But for her hotel audiences, she sticks to movie themes, classic rock and classical music. "Whatever suits the guitar, you ean get away with on the harp," she said. "I play 'nahenahe' music." Davis' silken sounds are an element in the discrete luxury still to be found in Waikīkī, and she has no problem with that. "I don't mind playing as background to food and conversation," she said. "People should just sit back and have a good time." ■

"Davis'silken sounds are an element in the discrete luxury still to be founa in Waikiki."

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