Trickster Magazine

Liisi Voolaid talks to Roger Bong

For years, I dreamt of going to Hawaii – touching waves in the birthplace of surfing. In 2024, that dream came true. But there was another treasure hunt I was craving: visiting a specific record store.

Back in 2016, I first read about Aloha Got Soul in Wax Poetics. Founded as a label in 2010 and opening its brick-and-mortar store in 2021, Aloha Got Soul had already become something of a cultural beacon. Nearly a decade later, fresh from a morning surf at Waikiki – surrounded by babies on boards, OG water(wo)men, and aloha in its truest sense – I headed inland, from ocean to concrete, to downtown Honolulu.

As synchronicity would have it, Roger Bong was there that day. He welcomed me and my partner with such warmth that we ended up talking music for a long while – Hawaiian records, Estonian DJ culture, vinyl digging. Later that evening, one of the Aloha Got Soul DJs, Max High, was spinning poolside at our hotel. Under a blue sky and sun umbrella, tropical drink in hand, nodding to local selections instead of global hits, it clicked: how deeply a curated musical atmosphere can shape a moment.

Traveling, I like to learn culture through music – and when filtered through a local’s ears, it becomes layered, intimate, priceless. That brief meeting in Honolulu eventually turned into hearing Roger spin records in Tallinn in 2025. After Oregon and Hawaii, he’s now settling into a Nordic rhythm, living just across the sea in Helsinki.

Here, we talk culture, music, Hawaii – and the ongoing mission of Aloha Got Soul: finding, preserving, and re-releasing Hawaiian musical gems on wax.

You caught me at a busy time. I was just in Honolulu for three weeks working like crazy. Now I’m in Seoul for the holidays with my wife’s family on her Korean side. On the way, I stopped in Seattle – where I was born – to see my mom. I’m heading back to Helsinki soon, and I can’t wait. I hear it’s going to snow.

I started collecting records in high school. My friends and I were making beats and sampling – mostly dollar-bin finds. DJing wasn’t on my radar at all. There’s still some remnants of that beat-making era on Bandcamp somewhere.

I started DJing through college radio in Oregon. After graduating, I moved back to Hawaii, and my first real gig was around 2011 at a small bar in Chinatown, Honolulu. I had no idea what I was doing. At one point, I even grabbed the mic and announced the next song like a radio host. Very un-DJ behavior.

There’s nothing quite like it. Vinyl is imperfect, and that’s what makes it feel human. Tapes are sealed in plastic, CDs feel futuristic, and streaming is completely disconnected from physical reality. Vinyl exists in our world.

Because I was already collecting records, it naturally became my DJ format. The format doesn’t really matter – each has its own fun – but sticking with one made sense. I’ve never tried to build a career solely as a DJ; the label and shop take enough energy.

I did try CDJs once. I cued up the track, hit play… nothing happened. Turns out my headphones were resting on the jog wheel. Well, you learn somehow.

My earliest memories of listening to records were at my grandma’s place in Seattle. She had Alvin and the Chipmunks kids records and some Harry Belafonte LPs. She’d put them on and we’d dance and sing in the living room – no agenda, just being together. Looking back, that feeling stayed with me. I think she planted the seed, and it took years before it really started to grow.

Honestly, it’s hard. My hobby became my profession. I wish someone had told me early on to keep a hobby completely unrelated to music. When passion becomes work, your relationship with it changes.

When I listen now, my brain doesn’t shut off: Was it mixed well? Should we stock this? Add it to a DJ crate? Reissue it? We live in a hustle culture that pressures us to monetize everything. I hate that.

So I gravitate toward experimental, ambient, environmental music – often on CD so I don’t have to flip records. Or live music. Recorded music doesn’t compare to live sound that hits your bones.

When I first visited Helsinki in 2022, I was blown away by the sound systems. Kuudes Linja, G Livelab – coming from Hawaii, where few venues prioritize sound, it felt luxurious. I’m really happy to be here.

I’m still figuring it out. Feel-good selections, not party tunes. People expect Aloha Got Soul DJs to play Hawaiian records, but I don’t want to be pigeonholed. I love house, disco, broken beat – anything that feels right or unexpected.

Two tracks that stuck with me recently: Admin’s “Ionosphere” – dizzying disco funk – and HNNY’s “Mys”. I played them at 2am at a small festival in the English countryside, and the room was pure joy.

Whatever sounds good – quality music. And music that shows Hawaii is more than ukuleles and hula. It is that – but it’s much more.

 AGS changes every year, and I embrace that. It’s a label, shop, DJ crew, YouTube channel, archive – hard to pin down.

There’s no single right way to run a label. Simplify royalty accounting early. Find a mentor – I wish I had. Define a core mission and let it guide everything. Ours is “elevate locally, connect globally.”

Mana exists everywhere. I’ve felt it strongly in Estonia – especially in the forests. Someone told me many Estonians don’t go to church; they go to the forest. That made complete sense to me.

At its core, Hawaiian music comes from a love of land and a love for people. There’s a lightness to it – sometimes spiritual – not born from pain, but from reverence, humility, and gratitude. There’s so much mana in Hawaiʻi, in the air, the sea, the mountains, and the people. Musicians tap into that, knowingly or not, and once you feel it, it stays with you.

The local scene is thriving. It’s small, supportive, and deeply connected. We need more venues, but the spirit is strong.

Record Store Day has been co-opted by major labels. It doesn’t really support local music communities anymore. Mix Plate is our response – a yearly Black Friday compilation showcasing the best new music from Hawaii, across genres.

I want it to be listened to front-to-back, like a meal you want seconds of. A lot of digging goes into it – Spotify, Instagram, word of mouth – because many younger artists aren’t releasing physically.

Everything’s looked. Discogs pricing killed the joy of digging. No surprises, no overlooked treasures.

I stick to radio, Bandcamp, and record stores. Algorithms and corporations shouldn’t decide for us – profit is their only motive.

The opportunity of having everything catered to us can be paralleled with the question of how we know how to live. I’m reading the book How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, in which she writes about Spotify playlists. If we get too comfortable letting something like Discover Weekly give us the latest music, then how do we experience the essence of life – change? Change is the only constant. Encountering something new and unfamiliar, something unforgettable, can tap into parts of yourself you didn’t know were there. This rarely happens with algorithmic playlists, which are designed to reinforce existing tastes. Odell also quotes another author, saying that if we give up the ability to choose for ourselves – to pay attention – we give up defining what we want or like, and, on a larger scale, we give up knowing how to live.

Japan changed everything for me. Incredible sound systems, deep listening audiences. Finland feels similar – people here really appreciate sound. We’re lucky.

It’s okay to buy records before you own a player. Support artists you love. Dig through bargain bins. Keep an open mind – records deserve a chance.

To help people know more than “Over the Rainbow.” That dream never ends – it guides every release.

Now living in Finland, Roger’s life is quieter – not unlike Hawaii, he admits. When he was last home for three weeks, he went to the beach twice. “That’s normal,” a friend told him. In many ways, Finland offers a familiar calm: routine, cooking, slowing down. If there were warm ocean water nearby, he says, he’d be in it – but the grounding feels the same.

Coincidentally, one of his first nights out in Helsinki ended with DJs discussing a 1979 Hawaiian funk LP – 5,000 miles from home. Proof that the music travels.

I always want people to know that Hawaiian music isn’t frozen in time. It’s living, changing, and sometimes contradictory. One label I really respect right now is Lō‘ihi Records, an avant-garde experimental imprint whose mission is to promote artists working through the realities of contemporary Hawaiʻi. Life there is full of tension – beauty and pain, spirituality and commercialism – and that complexity deserves space in the music.

There are also songs that instantly pull me back to the islands: Izik’s “The Sky The Gods Made For Me”, Na Leo Pilimehana’s “Waikiki”, or Keahiwai’s “Falling.” They carry that sense of place – ocean air, memory, softness.

For my Finnish days, Kuusumun Profeeta’s “Askeleita rannalla” has been on repeat since I moved. It felt right immediately – calm, reflective, grounding. Music has a way of helping you settle into new land without letting go of the old.

To close, here’s a recent mix from Roger Bong – imperfect, human, and deeply intentional.