|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Back when Hawaii was a monarchy, hula dancers performed for the kings and queens. Through rhythmic movements of their hips and hands, they interpreted the lyrics of Hawaiian songs.
Keeping this tradition alive in Menlo Park is Aline Younge, an 80-year-old who got her start in singing and dancing at the age of 70. She performs regularly in and around the area, at venues like Little House, a community center in Menlo Park; Rosener House, an adult day care center; Peninsula Del Rey, a senior center in Daly City; Chit-Chat Cafe, a Pacifica coffee shop, and also at birthday and retirement parties.
Besides hula dancing, Younge sings and plays the ukulele. She also plays the piano but prefers performing with the ukulele. She performs either with her five-member band of seniors who call themselves the Hardly Strictly Hawaiian Aloha Band, or with her friend and neighbor Jenny B-G, who also plays the ukulele; in fact, Younge discovered her practicing on her porch one day, while walking down the street.
Younge has been with the band for about five years now and has been performing with Jenny B-G for little over a year.
“I would like to start branching out on my own,” said Younge, during a Zoom call with this publication. In addition to Hawaiian songs she also loves singing “oldies,” or songs from the ’60s and ’70s. “I can’t do a lot of things with the band; I like to sing old songs and the band is not really into that.”
Younge, who is originally from Hawaii, moved from Honolulu to San Francisco in 1964, where she studied business education at San Francisco State University and went on to become a high school teacher for the next 20 years. She moved to Menlo Park in the early 1980s and has lived here since, barring a brief stint in Portola Valley.
While in San Francisco, she taught subjects such as typing, shorthand and record keeping. “Computers had just come out, we actually had a sorting machine, we taught (programming languages) Fortran and Cobol,” she said, aware that many youngsters today might not be familiar with these acronyms of yore.
Younge always loved listening to music, especially rock ’n’ roll. “I sang with the CD,” she said. Singers and bands she admires include Tina Turner, Cher, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Simon & Garfunkel, and Little Anthony and the Imperials.
However, she didn’t consider pursuing music or dance professionally when she was younger. Why not?
“I’m Japanese … my mother was born in Hawaii but my grandparents came from Japan,” she said. “Teachers are revered in Japan; you’re high up on the scale of honor. So my mother told me ‘be a teacher, be a teacher, be a teacher, be a teacher,’ — she guided me and nagged me and I became a teacher!”
‘I never thought I would be a singer, much less an entertainer, but sometimes your friends push you in different directions.’
Aline Younge
At some point she wanted to be a ballet and tap dancer, “just like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly,” but got a chance to really explore the world of dance and music only in her 70s. “I never thought I would be a singer, much less an entertainer, but sometimes your friends push you in different directions,” she said.
The story goes thus: When she was 70, a friend of hers asked her to go with him to Doelger Senior Center, a senior home in Daly City. That was where she first encountered the ukulele, through a weekly class.
“Then I met some people there and this one guy said ‘You should take singing lessons’ and I said ‘Yeah right!’” Younge recounted. But she nevertheless got goaded into the idea and started singing lessons with Amy Obenski, a decision that put her on a path that led her to her future band members Randy Wong and Carolyn Chin. “They wanted me to join their Hawaiian band after a while so I did that.”
Her musical ambitions were far from accomplished, though. “And then when I was 78, I said ‘Well, I think I want to do a CD’ — it was on my bucket list,” she said. She struck this item off her list last year with her CD titled “Remember Me,” a collection of both “oldies” and Hawaiian songs that she gives away for free.
“This sounds kind of bizarre but I thought, you know, at my celebration of life they can play my CD!” she joked. “I can sing at my celebration of life!’
While her audience comprises people of different ages, she particularly enjoys performing for the elderly. “It’s really important to me to give people hope,” she said. Often she sings to seniors who’re unwell or have Alzheimer’s disease. “I don’t want seniors to think that they have to sit at home and vegetate.”
She leads by example. “At the age of 70 I started all of this and now I’m 80. I want to be an example of what can be done. It does take hardwork and a lot of practice but that’s good because it takes up our time!” she said.
Her secret sauce to starting a new creative endeavor at this age is discipline. She took up running in her early 30s and used to run 10 miles, three times a week, until very recently. Nowadays, she makes it a point to go on regular 2-mile walks.
“I’ve always been a very disciplined person,” she said. “I might not be the smartest one in the classroom but I always used to get the best grades because I studied the hardest. This is how I am. I put a lot of effort into practicing. When I set my mind to do something, I’ll do it. I work hard at everything that I do.”
Younge became a grandmother in September and frequently flies to Somerville, a suburb of Boston, to visit her son Eric, her daughter-in-law Erica and her grandson.
About her son’s reaction to her musical endeavors, she said, “He’s very proud, he thinks it’s amazing, but because he never heard me sing when he was growing up, I kind of feel he might be a little uncomfortable with it … but he’s totally proud of me.”
