Mahina
has been lead to the life she has now by unexpected events and
unplanned moves she made in the past.
She
grew up in Hiroshima, Japan, listening to many different styles
of music. As a child, she listened to Japanese anime records,
as well as some classical music, such as Brahms and Beethoven.
Her parents made her take piano and classical voice lessons from
the time she was 5, describing her instructor as, “ this
awful scary teacher who taught at a university.” She also
listened to her grandfather, who was a Buddhist; read the “Okyo”
every day. To this date, she is still ignorant of the meaning
of these Buddhist chants, but it was music to her. She listened
to anything that was on TV and radio, or in the movies and at
shopping malls, and of course, lots of Japanese pop music. In
her Jr. high school years, she snuck herself into discos and discovered
80s dance music.
During
her 3rd year (9th grade year) at the strictest Catholic school
around, She decided to just quit and leave. She was running away
from the super conservative and old fashioned life style. She
told her parents that she wanted to move to California and finish
school there. She believed learning English and different cultures
would help her in the future. To her amazement, her parents supported
her decision, and soon after, she moved to California, staying
with a Scottish woman named Mrs. Sadie Hogg, who was kind enough
to be her legal guardian. She continued singing in high school,
since it was the subject she could excel in without knowing too
much English. Her studies would soon change when she got pregnant
in her senior year.
As
a young single mother, she has worked many types of jobs. She
once hosted a weekly Japanese entertainment television show, “Entertainment
Sunday”, that aired in Los Angeles, Orange County, and surrounding
areas, for a year in 1991. She also worked as a marketing- rep
for the TV station, finding sponsors and selling commercial spots.
She has appeared on TV commercials for US Sprint, and Sunkist
Orange. Other times, she juggled waitressing jobs with freelancing
as an interpreter for an agency that dealt with clients such as
the City Attorney’s Offices and insurance companies.
One
night, came a sudden urge to draw, for the first time in her life.
She was already 23 years old. Within a couple of months, she had
a sketchbook full of drawings, enough to get her a job as a painter
at a ceramic company. She painted fancy dinner plates and tea
sets for a few months, until she met Henna.
In 1997, a henna business from Berkeley, California was opening
a Los Angeles location inside a body piercing shop on Melrose
Avenue. They were looking for models to be on their advertisement.
Mahina knew the photographer, so she went to get henna done for
the photo shoot. A couple of minutes after the artist started,
she told the owner of the business that she would be really good
at this. She started working for their company, Allah’s Sacred
Earth, the following week. While working with Allah’s Sacred
Earth, she appeared on MTV “Motel California” with Bill
Bellamy and Carson Daly, E! “The Gossip Show” with Downtown
Julie Brown, and various other TV shows. The company closed down
about a year later.
When
she wasn’t working doing henna, friends came over to her
home almost every evening with guitars and bongos and whatever
instrument they had around to play. They would drink and play
music all night for fun. Lots of blues jams, The Beatles, Nirvana,
Punk Rock… anything really. She didn’t know how to play
guitar, but she played anyway. She wrote some songs with a couple
of other girls, and they formed a band for fun. They stayed together
for about a year, playing just a few shows before separating.
She also sang in another band that played cover songs at parties.
They didn’t even have a name, although she played with them
for about a year. It was with these two bands that she started
to experiment and learn more about working with other musicians
and performing live.
After
the henna shop closed down, she went to Santa Monica Promenade
and stared doing henna. In 1998, before the Promenade became such
a popular place for henna artists to work, it was a great success.
At that time, some people waited in line for over half an hour
to get henna done. It was during this time that Mahina’s
work was featured on various magazines, including “Asayan”
for Japan, and Nails Magazine, and on an instructional video for
how to do henna. She started getting gigs working private parties
here and there. Soon, she had enough event planner clients that
hired her regularly, so she stopped working at the promenade and
started a business of her own.
Atsushi,
who was the guitarist of the local band Chinga Monkey, was interested
in learning henna. So he started working with Mahina. Chinga Monkey
was a band she liked to watch perform, but they were taking some
time off from playing shows to write songs with their new singer,
Chris-Paul. One day, Atsushi let her hear a rough sketch of what
was going to later become “Arm’s Reach”. It sounded
very sweet, nothing like she expected from knowing Chinga Monkey’s
style, which was much more aggressive. She fell in love with the
song immediately, and asked if she could add back up vocals to
it. After that, she just never left their studio, doing a little
more each time. With a new sound and new vocalists, they decided
to change their name, calling themselves o.h.m. Mahina sang and
performed with o.h.m. for several years, parting ways peacefully
in April of 2004.
Currently,
7 local henna artists work with her business, Sane2K, including
two of Mahina’s band mates, Atsushi and David, as well as
Noriko, who played bass guitar for her former band. Affiliated
businesses and artists are also in Las Vegas, Nevada (Starborn
Tattoo), Texas, and Northern California, and also in Japan. Sane2K
henna booths can be found at many concerts, street festivals,
gay & lesbian pride festivals, and at o.h.m. shows.
