I am a singer and musician who has given his work to the cause of peace through music — twenty-five years of it now. Music can turn conflict into something else. It can grow nonviolence, awaken creativity, and open the way to empathy. My hope is to keep creating alongside artists from every corner of the earth, in the name of love and peace.

No wall stands against music. It reaches past every barrier we build, and it remains one of the finest ways we have to give voice to that fierce and living love for existence that each of us carries inside.

That same feeling is the root of everything: my love for my family, for the people of this world and everyone in it — no distinction drawn from gender, age, class, nationality, or cultural, religious or spiritual background. The natural world enters the music too. I write out of respect for the stone and the soil, for growing things, for the flowers and the animals who share this planet with us.

Belonging to both East and West has taught me something simple: we ordinary people, everywhere, want the same peace. Twenty-five years of working with friends around the world has only confirmed it.

My mission is to offer whatever musical gift I have to humanity — to reach toward those who carry the weight of injustice, and to place hope and strength in their hands. Music speaks a language every person already understands. I want to use it to tell the beauty of what we are, and to build a peace that is more than the absence of war.

Hawaiʻi has been my home for twenty years. I look forward to building a better world with you — through music, and through love for life and for people.

With love, music and peace from Hawaiʻi