Hapa Haole Hula Competition & Music Festival at Hawaii Theatre

“My kumu, Maiki Aiu Lake, performed with Pua Almeida at the age of 14 at Club Pago Pago in a cellophane skirt performing hapa haole mele. As a student of Maiki, I also performed many songs from this genre of music and dance at Halekulani Hotel and at the Moana Hotel, where Maiki still performed as a solo dancer with Pua Almeida. Our Hapa Haole Festival is intended to celebrate this genre of Hawaiian music. Native Hawaiians who were never taught to speak their native tongue, whose language was stolen away from them, wrote some of these songs. Others were written by songwriters as far away as Tin Pan Alley in New York City who had never visited our islands but imagined and romanticized through their song writing.”