best overall
Story By Mike Overall, Photo By Lindsey Little

The musical terrain where singer Lisa Ahia dwells, whether she’s delivering her eloquent and provocative vocal stylings from a nightclub bandstand, in a recording studio or from a concert stage, flows, sweeps and swells with melody. The melodic line gives her voice entree to the song’s harmonic and rhythmic mysteries, from which she draws the melody and its attendant poetry, the lyrics.

Even in the privacy of her own home, where’s she is apt to be her own harshest critic, Ahia lives for and with the melodies that her father, a professional guitarist and vocalist himself, first taught her to love when she was a teenager. And he taught his daughter well, exposing her to a wide variety of music – Hawaiian, Polynesian, jazz, Brazilian, and the magic of the American Popular Song, a la such genius composers and lyricists as George and Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and the inimitable Cole Porter.

Ahia, born in California but reared in Hawaii by her father and mother, Samuel and Honorina Ahia, on the sun-drenched islands of Oahu and Maui, said she began singing “standards” – the timeless canon of popular songs that emerged in the first half of the last century, with melodies and lyrics created by superb talents who drew from such rich sources as Tin Pan Alley, the Broadway stage, Hollywood’s Golden Age, the blues and America’s classical music, jazz – at the age of 19.

“Some of the very first tunes Dad taught me,” she said in arecent interview, “were ‘Time After Time,’ “But Not for Me,’ “Corvocado’ and ‘Skylark’. I can remember at one point nearly every weekend I would go to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in Waikiki where Dad has a house gig...six nights a week. Mom would take me down there and Dad would invite me up to sing three or four tunes, even sometimes more if I did a good job.”

Lisa, who has performed extensively in Jonesboro and throughout Arkansas and the Mid-South with her husband, world-class trumpeter Gary Gazaway, is the vocalist for Giant Steps, a Jonesboro-based jazz group. She also performs duets with her friend and accompanist, pianist Joy Sanford of Jonesboro, and has worked gigs with many of the finest musicians in Arkansas. Her latest CD is Lisa Ahia Live at Villa Marre with the Buck Powell Trio.

“I keep going back to my father when I look back on my career in music,” Ahia said. “I can remember when I first heard a recording of Ricky Lee Jones singing the (Rodgers and Hart) standard, “My Funny Valentine.’ I thought she did a beautiful job...and immediately wanted to learn the tune, so I went to Dad and asked him if he would go through it with me. I began singing it, and by the time I got to the bridge (the middle section of the song), he kindly stopped me and said that I must learn the melody first.... He said it was all right to listen to other vocalists sing these tunes, but most of the time it was their interpretation of the melody instead of the composer’s version. At that pointhe started to sing and taught me the correct melody, after which he made me a tape of Chet Baker (the great American jazz trumpeter/vocalist) singing 25 or more songs and told me that Chet was one singer who pretty much stuck to the melodic line, in addition to his incredible trumpet playing.”

Listening to the late Chet Baker, Ahia said, “taught me how important the melody is. From that point on I have always learned the written melody of every song I will sing...which allows my voice to be much more creative in tone, expression, phrasing, diction and breath control.”

Ahia’s life took a seminal turn when, in 1991, she met Gazaway, a graduate of Arkansas State University, at a show he was performing in Maui. Mercurial of temperament, unconventional in his way of living as well as in his music, and an artist of great improvisatory and melodic depth, whose mentors range from Miles Davis to many brilliant exponents of Brazilian music with whom he has performed through the years, Gazaway bears some resemblance to a human dynamo. Still, Lisa and Gary did not end up the star-crossed lovers an armchair psychologist might have predicted at the outset of their life together. Although much that constitutes their personalities seems disparate Gary rarely minces his words, runs at warp speed and loathes conformity almost as much as he relishes engaging himself in the derring-do of an improviser who pushes his music to the limits; Lisa, conversely, is self-effacing, speaks in soft and thoughtful tones, and acquits her professional self in a manner that is mild but quietly resolved the opposites they possessed melded into a sense of togetherness that neither could deny. In January of 2004, the two were married in the historic Waiola Church in Lahaina, Hawaii. Now residing in Pocahontas, where Gary has deep familial roots, the two have a five-year-old daughter, Lindsey Kina Gazaway.

“Gary, as a bandleader, always strives to bring out the best of all the musicians... He was very patient with me and corrected any mistakes I made with positive encouragement,” Ahia recalled. “When we moved to Nashville, where I worked club dates and concerts with his jazz group, El Buho, I also had the opportunity to go into some of the major studios with him and record on tracks with Hugo Fattoruso and Toninho Horta from Brazil, Walfredo Reyes Jr. from Cuba, and from the group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Victor and Roy Wooten.”

On the bandstand, Ahia, who stands an imposing five feet, eleven inches tall, is an exotic beauty whose presence is arresting, even before she begins to sing. “I like to dress elegantly, with a hint of the casual, because I think the music deserves that respect,” she said.

“Sometimes I am so relaxed that I even sit on a stool so the music doesn’t come off as some kind of show. I am not there to try to impress the audience, but instead want them to feel they are in an intimate setting that is conducive to an artistic experience. That way the music is relaxed and can flow along from song to song in a beautiful, quite subtle way.”

Ahia’s musical pedigrees are the aforementioned Chet Baker, Nat King Cole, Johnny Hartman, Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Julie London, Anita O’Day, and her current favorite singer, Eva Cassidy. With her low alto voice, keen sense of phrasing and respect for the song’s lyric, Lisa Ahia caresses a ballad with warmth and deep inner feeling. And she infuses up-tempo numbers with a sense of effortless swing, of being “in the pocket of the tune,” that inspires her accompanying musicians to play with greater empathy and feeling.

Regardless of what material she chooses to sing, whether it’s the gems of American Popular Music or the indigenous music of Hawaii, her listeners usually respond to her music with alacrity. “Believe it or not,” she said, “many of the young listeners know much more than you think they would. In fact, some of them know the artists who originally recorded the songs and sometimes even the lyrics. There is an underground network of young music listeners, mostly college students, who are very interested in jazz and American songs.”

Ahia is a seasoned professional who, with grace, beauty and a reservoir of musical talent that runs as deep as her melodic soul, hears and sings the music that serious listeners always take to heart.

For more information regarding Lisa Ahia, the group Giant Steps and Gary Gazaway, email her at: lisa@elbuho.com.