When 11-year-old Kailani Hart started recording her first single, “Wild Hart,” she didn’t have the whole thing written.
But she did have an idea.
“Galaxies,” she said, remembering the November recording session about four months prior from a riverside bench at Art Cafe Hemingway in Kapaa.
The finished product is reminiscent of a dance party through space, reverberating with messages of following intuition, embracing exploration and continuing on through hardship. The lyrics cruise through a musical score that makes you tap your toes.
“The first line is ‘liquid drifting through the galaxy, my heart goes on, goes on,’” Kailani said. “(Then it goes) ‘I feel the pulse through the universe my wild heart goes on, goes on …’”
The title refers to a free spirit — which perfectly pinpoints the spunky Kauai keiki — but it also harkens to the family name, and the wanderlust that motivates them to explore, travel and live creatively.
The single was sparked at the piano, when Kailani wasn’t playing anything in particular. She played a chord combination that resonated, so she took it to her music teacher. Together, they pieced together a semblance of a song.
“Then, she played it and I laid on the floor and closed my eyes and thought of lyrics,” Kailani said.
Once they had the rough outline of the song down, they started recording at Kailani’s house, with the help of her musical mother, Rebecca Hart.
“I would shout my ideas (for the song) from another room when they were working on it,” Rebecca said.
Most of those ideas didn’t make the cut, Kailani admitted, but what did make the final version was a rap Rebecca wrote when her daughter was 7 or 8 years old. The words talk about the same concepts of expansion and life without fear.
“It was the perfect fit,” Rebecca said.
Living creatively and expansively isn’t just something Kailani is singing about, either. The keiki plays in the band “Flying Phoenix,” already has a yoga teaching certification, and is an advocate for plastic-free living. She’s also an everyday, fun-loving kid who you’ll frequently find cartwheeling down the beach with her friends.
While the single is finished and is hitting the internet this week on platforms like Spotify, Kailani isn’t stopping at one tune. She and Rebecca are working on an album.
“I have all of this music, an album of instrumental, and I’ve been looking for a lyricist,” Rebecca said. “I’ve got one right here.”
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Jessica Else, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
