Iz Somewhere Over the Rainbow Story: How It Began
Most people who’ve encountered Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” assume it emerged from a deliberate creative process — label executives, professional arrangers, months in a proper recording studio. The truth is far simpler.
The Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story began in the late 1980s with a phone call placed to a Honolulu recording studio in the early hours of the morning. Iz came in, sat down with his ukulele, and captured the medley in a session that lasted barely longer than the song itself. That recording, released on the 1993 album “Facing Future,” would eventually reach hundreds of millions of listeners — mostly after his death in 1997.
The detail most retellings miss: the world took a very long time to notice.
Key takeaways:
- Iz recorded the medley in a single late-night session at the Mountain Apple Company studio in Honolulu
- The track appeared on his 1993 solo album “Facing Future,” which became the best-selling Hawaiian album ever recorded
- Global audiences discovered the song largely through film and television placements made after Iz’s death on June 26, 1997
- The medley pairs Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (1939) with Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’s “What a Wonderful World” (1967) — two separately copyrighted works united by Iz’s own arrangement
- The recording helped reshape global perception of the ukulele, contributing to a resurgence in the instrument’s popularity that extended well into the following decades
Who was Israel Kamakawiwoʻole?
Israel Kamakawiwoʻole was a Hawaiian musician whose voice and ukulele came to represent Hawaiʻi’s cultural identity to international audiences more completely than almost any other artist before him. Born in Honolulu on May 20, 1959, he co-founded the Mākaha Sons of Niʻihau in the mid-1970s and spent his career deepening the tradition of Hawaiian music revival. His weight, which at points exceeded 750 pounds, shaped his public story — but not his playing.
Iz performed sitting, his tenor ukulele looking almost small against his frame, and used his falsetto with a precision and emotional range that few instruments or voices could match. He wasn’t performing the ukulele as a novelty or leaning on it for charm. It was his primary instrument, and he treated it that way.
His place in the Hawaiian Renaissance
The Mākaha Sons of Niʻihau formed as part of what is now called the Hawaiian Renaissance — the broad cultural movement that sought to restore Hawaiian language, music, and tradition at a time when all three faced real displacement from American mainstream pop culture. Iz had a specific role within that movement: a voice that felt completely of the Islands to Hawaiian listeners, and yet proved entirely accessible to audiences who’d never visited Hawaiʻi.
That combination — cultural rootedness and universal emotional access — is precisely what made “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” work the way it did.
His cultural weight at home
Inside Hawaiʻi, Iz’s reputation preceded his international fame by years. When he died at 38, the state responded in a way that makes his standing clear: his body lay in state at the Hawaii State Capitol, an honor typically reserved for heads of state and senior government officials. Thousands came. Flags flew at half-staff.
That wasn’t celebrity treatment. That was something closer to a state mourning.
The recording session: how the Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story really started
The Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story has a single hinge point: a phone call Jon de Mello received at approximately 3:00 AM. Iz asked for immediate studio time at the Mountain Apple Company facility in Honolulu, de Mello opened the studio, and Iz arrived with his ukulele to record a medley that took very little time to capture. What went onto tape that night is what you hear on “Facing Future.”
Jon de Mello, the founder of Mountain Apple Company and Iz’s primary creative collaborator for his solo work, has recounted this moment across documentary interviews and public profiles. The call came early in the morning. The request was immediate — not the following morning, not later that week. That night. So de Mello said yes.
Iz arrived, sat at a microphone with his tenor ukulele, and performed the medley. The session was brief. There’s no significant orchestration added on top, no extended mixing process that transformed a rough performance into something more polished. The recording’s character comes almost entirely from the room that night: one voice, one ukulele, almost nothing else.
Historian’s note: The stripped-back production wasn’t a limitation — it was the most important creative decision in the recording’s history. Iz’s voice and ukulele fill the available space so fully that adding anything else would have diminished the whole. Producers working in much larger rooms with much larger budgets have since tried to replicate this kind of intimacy. It’s considerably harder to manufacture than it looks.
Two songs, one arrangement, one emotional arc
The medley’s components come from separate writers, separate decades, and emotionally different places.
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg for the 1939 MGM film “The Wizard of Oz” and first performed by Judy Garland. Its emotional core is longing — the wish for existence somewhere beyond present hardship. “What a Wonderful World” was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss and first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967. It moves in the opposite direction: a declaration of gratitude for the world as it already is, right now.
Iz’s arrangement doesn’t resolve the tension between these two emotional positions. It holds them together. And that coexistence is the reason the medley affects listeners the way it does — it contains a complete emotional experience rather than a single repeated feeling.
“Facing Future” and the slow rise to recognition
The medley first appeared commercially on “Facing Future,” released by Mountain Apple Company in 1993. The album sold well within Hawaiʻi and among the Hawaiian diaspora, establishing Iz as a major solo artist well beyond his work with the Mākaha Sons — though its global reach was, at that point, still years away from developing. “Facing Future” eventually became the best-selling Hawaiian music album ever recorded, a distinction it held for years.
But “best-selling Hawaiian album” is easy to misread if you’re picturing an immediate global chart event. It wasn’t that. It was one album reaching deep within a specific musical community, finding an enthusiastic audience, and then waiting. The song was on tape. The album was in stores. The world, for the most part, hadn’t yet noticed.
Key milestones: from late-night session to cultural institution
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| May 20, 1959 | Israel Kamakawiwoʻole born in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi |
| Mid-1970s | Co-founds the Mākaha Sons of Niʻihau; joins the Hawaiian music revival |
| Late 1980s | Records “Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World” in a late-night session at Mountain Apple Studio, Honolulu |
| 1993 | “Facing Future” released on Mountain Apple Company; becomes Hawaiʻi’s best-selling album |
| June 26, 1997 | Iz dies from respiratory failure at age 38; his body lies in state at the Hawaii State Capitol |
| 1998 | The medley appears in “Meet Joe Black,” introducing it to a global audience for the first time |
| 2004 | Featured in “50 First Dates,” extending the song’s reach to new audiences |
| 2010s onward | Streaming platforms build the recording’s cumulative reach to hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide |
The 1997 entry in that table deserves more than a single row. The Hawaii State Capitol lying-in-state honor is not one extended to musicians as a rule. Hawaiʻi extended it to Iz. The flags came down. Thousands gathered. Within the Islands, the loss registered at a level that his international audience — still mostly unaware of him — couldn’t yet comprehend.
How the medley became a global phenomenon: the Iz Arc
The Iz Arc is the three-phase framework that explains how a late-night Honolulu studio session became one of the world’s most-heard recordings over more than two decades. Each phase has a distinct mechanism, a distinct audience, and a distinct set of decisions behind it. Most histories of this song tell Phase 3 as if it were the whole story.
Phase 1 — The intimate recording (late 1980s–1992). Iz captures the medley at Mountain Apple’s Honolulu studio with minimal production. It exists on tape, known to virtually no one outside the Mountain Apple orbit.
Phase 2 — Island recognition (1993–1997). “Facing Future” is released. The album finds its audience within Hawaiʻi and among the diaspora. Iz becomes a figure of genuine cultural weight in the Islands. He dies on June 26, 1997, before the song has traveled anywhere near as far as it will go.
Phase 3 — Posthumous global discovery (1998–present). This is the phase most people think of when they think about the song’s story. It began with film.
The placements that carried the medley worldwide
In 1998, the film “Meet Joe Black” placed the medley in front of a wide international audience for the first time. It was the first major signal that the recording had something well beyond regional appeal. “50 First Dates” (2004), set in Hawaiʻi and built around the kind of warm nostalgic emotional register the song inhabits perfectly, followed. The television drama “ER” used the medley in scenes of particular emotional weight, the kind of placement that causes viewers to seek out the recording directly.
Each of these was a licensing decision made after Iz’s death, managed by Mountain Apple Company and his estate. Jon de Mello’s role in stewarding those licensing choices is an underreported part of how the song reached the audiences it did. Phase 3 isn’t just a great recording finding its moment — it’s also a label making specific decisions about which uses to permit, and when.
A vignette from the beginning of the Iz Arc
On a night in the late 1980s at Mountain Apple Company’s studio in Honolulu, Israel Kamakawiwoʻole arrived after a phone call placed at approximately 3:00 AM, according to accounts from Jon de Mello. He sat in front of a microphone, picked up his tenor ukulele, and performed a medley of two songs he hadn’t written, in an arrangement that took perhaps less time to perform than this paragraph takes to read. The session ended. The tape went into the archive. Within a decade of his death in 1997, the recording had become one of the most-streamed pieces of music in the world.
What the recording means for the ukulele
Iz’s medley placed a tenor ukulele at the center of an emotionally serious piece of music and let it carry that weight without apology. The effect on the instrument’s global reputation was significant, and it happened with no deliberate campaign behind it — the ukulele’s rehabilitation was a side effect, not a goal.
Before “Facing Future,” the ukulele held an awkward position in much of the world’s musical imagination. It was linked to Hawaiian tourism kitsch, mid-century comedy acts, and — after Tiny Tim’s 1968 falsetto performance of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” — to a specific kind of absurdist humor the instrument spent years trying to move past. Iz didn’t try to move past anything. He simply played the instrument in a serious emotional context and let the performance speak for itself. That was enough.
The source songs compared
| Element | “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” | “What a Wonderful World” |
|---|---|---|
| Writers | Harold Arlen & E.Y. “Yip” Harburg | Bob Thiele & George David Weiss |
| Original recording | Judy Garland, 1939 (The Wizard of Oz) | Louis Armstrong, 1967 |
| Core emotional register | Longing; the wish for something beyond present reality | Gratitude; appreciation of what already exists |
| Iz’s arrangement | Slowed, Hawaiian-inflected, falsetto-led | Simplified, stripped to voice and ukulele |
| Combined effect in medley | Creates an arc from yearning to acceptance | Provides resolution the first song can’t reach alone |
The ukulele’s surge in popularity in the late 2000s and 2010s — the YouTube tutorial explosion, the instrument’s sales growth, its adoption into school music programs across multiple countries — happened in a cultural environment that Iz’s recording had already softened. Jake Shimabukuro’s emergence as an international ukulele figure in the mid-2000s happened in that same environment. None of this was inevitable. But the late-night Mountain Apple session made it considerably more likely.
What most people get wrong about the Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story
Two misconceptions surround the Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story more than any others, and both flatten a complicated, decade-long history into a simpler and less accurate version of events. Each has a specific correction that changes how the recording’s impact is understood.
Misconception 1: the song was an overnight sensation
It wasn’t. The recording dates to the late 1980s. “Facing Future” came out in 1993. Iz died in 1997. And the medley’s widest global audience arrived after all of that, through film placements that began in 1998 and built gradually through the 2000s.
What looks like sudden ubiquity — the moment you started hearing the song everywhere — was the endpoint of more than a decade of slow, cumulative exposure. The sensation was incremental, built placement by placement. And the person who made the recording never witnessed the majority of it. He died years before Phase 3 of the Iz Arc fully arrived.
Misconception 2: simplicity means it required little skill
The recording sounds effortless because Iz had spent a lifetime developing the specific skills that make it sound that way. His falsetto was built over years of performing with the Mākaha Sons. His ukulele work, though rhythmically loose and unhurried in the Hawaiian tradition, reflects deep familiarity with the instrument that can’t be improvised in a single session. The arrangement itself — choosing to combine these two specific songs, deciding where to move between them, setting the tempo where he did — represents musical judgment built on decades of practice.
Genuine musical simplicity of this kind is one of the hardest effects in music to produce. It sounds inevitable afterward and is almost impossible to plan for beforehand.
FAQs
Why did Iz pair “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with “What a Wonderful World”? No interview exists in which Iz explained his specific reasoning in detail. But the pairing is musically coherent — both songs share simple melodic structures that work well on ukulele and can be played in compatible keys. Their emotional contrast, longing versus gratitude, creates something neither song reaches alone.
What ukulele did Iz play on the recording? Iz used tenor ukuleles throughout his career, sometimes custom-built to accommodate his large frame. The “Facing Future” recording is generally attributed to a tenor ukulele. Detailed documentation of the specific instrument used in the Mountain Apple session isn’t widely available in public sources.
Did Iz record the medley in one take? According to accounts from Jon de Mello and the Mountain Apple team, the session was brief and required minimal production. Whether it was a single take or a small number of takes hasn’t been precisely documented in publicly available sources. What remains consistent across all accounts is that it wasn’t a lengthy or complex recording process.
Is the “Facing Future” version the original recording? Yes. The version on “Facing Future” (1993) is the original commercial release of the medley. Later remasters and compilations exist, but the recording itself traces back to the late-1980s Mountain Apple session in Honolulu.
Why is this song so closely associated with Hawaiian identity? Because Iz’s voice, ukulele playing, and phrasing are inseparable from the Hawaiian musical tradition he spent his life inside. The arrangement carries a rhythmic quality and a falsetto character rooted specifically in Hawaiian music. And Iz himself was a figure of genuine cultural importance within Hawaiʻi — which is precisely why the state honored him as it did when he died.
How did the song reach global audiences if Iz died in 1997? Through film and television licensing. “Meet Joe Black” (1998) was a major early placement. “50 First Dates” (2004) and the television drama “ER” followed, each extending the song’s exposure to new audiences. Streaming platforms later amplified what those placements started, building cumulative reach across a timeframe the recording’s creator never got to witness.
Conclusion
The Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story is really two stories that most accounts collapse into one. The first is the recording itself: brief, direct, essentially unproduced, made by a Hawaiian musician who’d spent his life with a ukulele in his hands. The second is the path that recording took after Iz died — through licensing decisions, film scores, and eventually streaming algorithms — until it reached more listeners than almost any Hawaiian recording before it.
What connects the two stories is the quality of the original. A recording made quickly, with almost nothing between the artist and the microphone, turned out to be exactly the kind of thing that holds across decades and borders without losing anything.
If you want to understand the ukulele’s position in contemporary music, and how a four-string instrument moved from Hawaiian cultural tradition to global classrooms and concert halls, the Iz “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” story is where that explanation has to begin. At Ukulele History, we place this recording alongside the arrival of Portuguese craftsmen in Honolulu Harbor and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition as one of the handful of moments that genuinely changed what the ukulele means to the world.
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