We at Pacific Whale Foundation are happy to have the Banana Slug String Band perform at three different Maui Whale Festival events. The group is composed of musicians and educators Doug Dirt, Airy Larry, Marine Mark, and Solar Steve, who blend music, theater, puppetry, and audience participation to create a lively learning environment! To learn more about this passionate group, I spoke with Doug Dirt, artist and manager.
Banana Slug String Band began 34 years ago, when we discovered our mutual love of performing music and using theater, puppets, and interactive audience participation performances to teach environmental education in our outdoor science schools. We realized that this was an amazingly effective way to get kids excited about protecting our planet and learning about the magical ways our natural world operates! It’s our goal to continue our mission of raising awareness of environmental issues with positive, encouraging, can-do messages that instill hope and purpose with kids & adults to love the earth and share the love with everyone they know!Pacific Whale Foundation is an organization that we totally support and feel akin to in our mutual missions of raising public awareness about the beautiful biology and incredible life of marine animals. Offering the public the ability to experience firsthand, live interactions with marine life, helps build strong community support for protecting these amazing creatures. On top of that, to be offering these experiences in this most incredible environment of the sacred Maui waters, results in a forever remembered journey!Banana Slugs are very excited to be returning to present our musical edutainment for audiences here in Maui! We are thrilled to have people get to know the Banana Slugs. We have presented in over 40 states at schools, libraries, science centers, zoos and aquariums and develop curriculum and music for specific science topics.
We just finished our 12th recording, supported by Ohio EPA Grants and Foundation money, to create a CD all about pollinators, called “pollinator nation.” The recording can be found on our website: bananaslugstringband.com and also on BandCamp, iTunes, and Spotify. We wish to put a big shout out to Jack and Kim Johnson for their support of environment education in the public schools and supporting our efforts to share our music in order to help build stronger ecological understandings in elementary schools throughout the islands. Finally a big thank you to the Pacific whale foundation again for bringing us in for these performances! We look forward to a wonderful time starting on Friday! You can enjoy the edutainment stylings of the Banana Slug String Band at Maui Whale Festival events February 22 at Kihei 4th Friday Celebrates Maui Whale Festival Town Party, February 23 from 10:30-11:30am at the Kihei Public Library, and on our Keiki Concert Cruise that same day from 2-4pm.
