Ready for a cultural adventure beyond your wildest expectations? Hawaii has it.

The 2005 Hawaii Arts Season mega-list of cultural events begs the questions: On an Island visit, have you ever chanted up the sun? Played a nose flute? Woven a fan from lauhala leaves? Attended a symphony concert featuring giant Taiko drums? Or heard storytellers reveal the tale of the volcano goddess Pele while watching the glow of molten lava as it pours toward the ocean? 

Did you know that no other state has its own language, music and dance, all dating back a thousand or more years? Beyond this wealth of indigenous culture, Hawaii hosts hundreds of events celebrating the multi-ethnic mix of the islands today. For 12 weeks on six islands, from February 25 to May 15, 2005, days and nights are jam-packed with art events and art adventures.  

In the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaii Arts Season has surpassed  the art of perfecting a tan on the list of Springtime vacation pastimes. Stage lights, foot lights and gallery lights are sunlight-bright, shining on incredibly entertaining and often unexpected artistic adventures. Theaters, malls, showrooms and hide-away eateries have entertainment to keep music-lovers humming. Fine art, and the hand-crafted arts of the Islands, can be found in museums, galleries, hotel lobbies, parks and palaces. The multi-ethnic mix of the islands guarantees festivals, fairs and parades in rainbow colors. 

King David rescues the hula 

Hawaii was once a monarchy and its royal legacy is celebrated year-round. One of the most treasured parts of that legacy is when King David Kalakaua, Hawaii’s last king, rescued the hula from near extinction. He brought it from a secreted, ancient art into the mainstream of island life. Hula is now an essential part of the fabric of the islands’ culture and is often referred to as the “heart of Hawaii.” 

Held in Hilo town on the Big Island of Hawaii, The Merrie Monarch Festival, named in Kalakaua’s honor, is the world’s largest and most prestigious hula event. Always held the week after Easter, tickets to the three nights of the festival itself need to be ordered half a year in advance. Over 5,000 hula fans come from around the world to be immersed in hula.  

Hotel accommodations are tight, but once you’ve found a place, Hilo is a “hulaholics” delight. The entire town is hula-filled. From early morning to late night, hotel lobbies host a variety hula halau (schools), dancing everything from the oldest to the most modern dances. Hawaii’s top musicians are there to play for the kumu (teacher) and dancers. The best of Hawaii’s craftsmen show and sell their arts in hotels, shops and parks.   

If a full week of hula is too much, on March 12, the most traditional hula halau in the islands will present their entire set of Merrie Monarch dances, surrounded by the golden grandeur of the 1922 restored Historic Hawaii Theatre in downtown Honolulu. Halau Mohala ‘Ilima, under the direction of kumu hula Mapuana de Silva, provides what is called “chicken skin” (goose bumps) hula concert, presenting dances and chants that are pre-contact (before Capt. Cook sailed in). For a short shot of hula, the City and County of Honolulu offer torch lighting, followed by hula and Hawaiian music, nightly at Kuhio Beach, in the heart of Waikiki.  

On Easter weekend, hundreds of Hawaiian cultural specialists, musicians, artists and craftspeople gather at the Maui Ritz-Carlton Kapalua’s Celebration of the Arts. For three days it is truly a “total immersion” experience for visitors, beginning with a Hiuwai Ceremony where visitors and artisans gather oceanside, before dawn, led by Hawaiian cultural expert Clifford Na’ole. Guests listen and quickly learn the Hawaiian words, joining in to chant up the sun in the way of the ancients. As the glow erupts over the beach the chanting voices are silent and each participant enters the ocean to “clear away all pilikia (trouble) from their thoughts.  

Next step, people weave lauhala, string lei, listen to the philosophy of Hawaiian values or learn to play a nose flute. Artisans from the private island of Ni’ihau teach guests to make treasure pieces from the prized Ni’ihau shell. Tiny as a grain of rice, these shells come only from the beaches of that Hawaiian island and are the only shell that Lloyd’s of London will insure as a precious jewel.  

From Don Ho to Hip Hop – island music hums 

The Royal Hawaiian Band, organized 168 years ago, serenades weekly at ‘Iolani Palace in the heart of downtown Honolulu and at the Victorian bandstand in Waikiki’s Kapiolani Park. In the islands, music is a daily celebration. Hotel lobbies, lounges and eateries all celebrate Hawaiian music, from the old-style boat-days “Lovely Hula Hands” to the most contemporary young entertainers.  

The master of it all, Mr. Aloha, Don Ho, fills a Waikiki  showroom several nights a week with sounds of the collective memory of Hawaii from the ‘60's to the new millennium. His fans range in age from six to 86, with the back tables often filled with pop-rock band members wanting to see and hear “the legend.”

(Yes, you will find Hawaiian music on international music charts. The lyrical sound of “slack key” guitar, the lilting harmony of Hawaiian voices, and even the exotic Martin Denny-style sounds, re-born as Don Tiki, can be heard from Japan to Germany.) 

For Arts Season, weekly concerts at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua feature the Masters of Slack Key Guitar Music. This unique Hawaiian sound has gained familiarity as slack-key musicians travel across the country, filling concert halls with the sound of backyard Hawaiian parties. Many of slack key’s guitar and ukulele masters have been named living legends in the U.S. and Europe. Ask them about it and they will humbly explain that they “just make music.”  

The Brothers Cazimero, May Day Concert, photo credit, Hawaii Arts Season

The Brothers Cazimero have taken their lilting harmony around the world. In the 70's they led the parade of visionaries who set out to breathe new life into Hawaiian music. With 30 albums to their name, worldwide concert audiences, and songs on the international music charts, it’s no surprise to see 7,000 or 8,000 fans pack into the Waikiki Shell on May 1 to see them. For more than 25 years, their May Day concert has been filled with surprises, guest entertainers and so much aloha that, by the time everyone stands, holds hands and sings the Hawaii anthem, total strangers have become old  friends.   

May 1 is May Day around the world, but in Hawaii it’s Lei Day. Nearly the entire population of Hawaii will be seen wearing a flower lei on that day. The fragrance of plumeria and tuberose wafts through the air. Flowers are the uniform of the day for bank presidents and grocery clerks alike. Outside the Waikiki Shell, Kapiolani Park is filled with lei making competition exhibits, lei sellers, children’s hula troupes and a pageant to crown the Lei Day Princess. The Lei Day festivities are not limited to Oahu. Every island has a Lei Day celebration – concerts, canoe races and art exhibits all honor this most Hawaiian of adornments.  

Not all concerts include thousands of fans. On Kauai, the Hanalei Family Community Center presents Songs of the Ancestors, with traditional slack key guitar and ukulele stylings. Continuing through the Arts Season, these small community concerts draw top musicians who enjoy the intimate afternoon, sharing their music and stories.  

Native sounds: Hawaiian chant is a time machine 

The ancient Hawaiian nose flute may not be something you find in your neighborhood marching band. It has gained national attention since the acclaimed First Peoples flautist, Carlos Nakai, began to record with noted Hawaiian musician, flautist and slack key guitar master, Keola Beamer. Beamer and many others weave the Hawaiian language and ancient art of chanting onto contemporary CDs, many recording on George Winston’s Dancing Cat label.  

At free cultural programs offered in the lobby of Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach, visitors are welcomed with a Hawaiian greeting chant that connects today with the ancient times. They can often learn to make and play their own nose flute, or watch while Hawaiian artists create intricate feather lei or pound mulberry bark into the fine kapa cloth worn by the ancient Hawaiians. Native healing  workshops, filled with information on the medicinal plants of the islands, often end with a cup of native tea.  

Waikiki, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kauai and Big Island hotels host Arts Season craft fairs and craft demonstrations. Without fail, a friend of the artist will just happen to  have a ukulele. Singing is guaranteed contagious. Hula usually follows. On the Kona Coast of the Big Island, cultural specialist Danny Akaka steps out onto the black lava, chanting a request to enter and walk visitors through fields of ancient petroglyph rock art, followed by storytelling about the ancient voyagers who first populated these islands.  

Te Vaka To Taiko -- Stages explode with sound 

Fact! The third oldest community theater in the U.S. is in Honolulu. Diamond Head Theater celebrates its 90th birthday with a season of Broadway-quality productions, including The Fantasticks in March and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in May. Ft. Shafter’s Army Community Theater will present the first community production of Miss Saigon.  

Tucked in a lush rainforest above Honolulu, Manoa Valley Theater is known for cutting-edge drama. Leeward and Windward Community College and the Ron Bright Performing Arts Center showcase young talent one step from Broadway. University of Hawaii’s Kennedy Theater stage hosts Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese and other Pacific Rim treasures rarely seen outside their home countries.  

Legends live on when Honolulu Theater for Youth presents Eddie Would Go and Queen of Makaha: Rell Sun. The stories of these two surfers and role models, Eddie Aikau and Rell Sun, will inspire even the least likely to sit on a surfboard and wait for a wave. Their stories make Kleenex mandatory. 

Thunder From The East! combines the renowned Honolulu Symphony, under the direction of Samuel Wong, and Kenny Endo, master of the giant Taiko Drum – it’s guaranteed to shake the seats of the Neal Blaisdell Center Concert Hall. When the echo stops, opera fans settle in for the world-class Hawaii Opera Theater production of Turnadot. 

Maui Arts & Culture Center hosts an eclectic, international array of performers. Te Vaka takes an audience into the heart of Polynesia with traditional log drum rhythms from Tokelauan, Maori and Samoan ancestors. Stir in beat and funk, guitar and keyboard, and expect an adrenaline rush.  Every Wednesday in March the Festival offers a Candlelight Cafe and film screening of the best from world film festivals. Other productions include ancestral creation myths and sagas of Polynesia’s sexy pig-man, Kamapua’a, as well as jazz, tap shows and Hawaii’s living legends of music.   

High up on the slopes of the continuously erupting Big Island volcano, the Volcano Arts Center’s award-winning After Dark In The Park is a magical opportunity to be within sight of the glow from a lava flow while listening to tales of the goddess of the volcano, Pele.  

Gallery cruising and schmoozing: next stop, New York 

It has been said that Hawaii has more artists per square foot than any other state. It certainly has the art action to support that theory. In downtown Honolulu, stretching through Chinatown, 20-plus galleries are open and buzzing on First Friday, offering new art adventures. Art lovers present may have an opportunity to blow glass, throw a pot or join a poetry slam.  

A short walk from Chinatown, the Hawaii State Art Museum’s exhibition, Enriched By Diversity, showcases a portion of the massive collection owned by the state. In 1968 Hawaii was the first state to enact the “one-percent law”, mandating that amount of all new state building funds be set aside for art purchase. In addition to the new State Art Museum, the walls of  Hawaii’s state buildings host more of this massive collection.   

Words and music are the feature of Na Mele Nei Concerts. Every Arts Season Sunday afternoon, at Ward Warehouse in Honolulu, local authors read from and sign new books. A free music concert introduces new Hawaiian music CDs and fine artists demonstrate woodcarving, gourd design or stone carving in the entry way to Na Mea Native Books.    

The museums on Oahu are known for major exhibits, many showing only in Hawaii. Last year the Honolulu Academy of Arts made big news in the art world as it presented French Impressionist paintings never before shown outside of Japan. Impressionist fans traveled from across the world to see this one-time exhibition.  

For the 2005 Arts Season, the Academy brings The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia, drawing on the rich variety of art from a dozen Asian countries, exploring the significance of rice for Asia’s people. Honoring both sides of the globe, its second featured exhibition is Neo Rauch Works, 1994-2002: The Leipzinger Volszeitung Collection. The Academy is also keeper of the amazing estate of the heiress Doris Duke. Arts Season tours of her Shangri-la home on Diamond Head begin at the Academy.  

The Academy of Arts Center at Linekona is home of the Honolulu Printmakers and their 77th Annual Exhibition. They are the second oldest printmaking organization in the U.S., often bringing in internationally known printmakers for workshops.

Wandering the lush sculpture-filled gardens of The Contemporary Museum, perched high above Honolulu, offers spectacular views of the city. Inside, its galleries are filled with a fine contemporary art permanent collection and traveling exhibitions of international stature. 

In Lahaina, Maui, “Friday Night Is Art Night.” Galleries serve refreshments, artists paint in corners, and every inch of wall space is filled with new, vibrant island art. Wow Wednesdays! at the Shops at Wailea give collectors long afternoons to talk with artist about their Hawaii inspiration.  

Everybody loves a parade (think Polynesian potluck) 

Imagine a 40-foot long, fire-spitting dragon wending it’s way through Waikiki. Add in Taiko drum marching units, kabuki dancers and Japanese hula troupes and you have the Honolulu Festival. More than 5,500 Japanese artisans converge on Honolulu for a week of cultural celebrations that can otherwise only be seen in Japan.  

Visitors, joining island families, making weekend visits to Honolulu’s Kapiolani Park, can find themselves treated to lessons in cooking Okinawan doughnuts, Tahitian coconut husking, Maori dance lessons or something Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Samoan, Vietnamese, Tongan or European. Hawaii’s diverse ethnic mix provides a mini-lesson in the cultures of the Pacific Rim without the stress of flying to foreign destinations.  

Beyond The Beach 

The 2005 Hawaii Arts Season, sponsored by the Hawaii Tourism Authority and the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, is filled with hundreds of art events on every island. Escaping winter may be the number-one reason for spring travel to the islands. No matter the age or the interests of the visitor, the Arts Season allows choices of theater, symphony, opera, art exhibitions and cultural experiences unavailable in any other U.S. destination. Hotels participate with special travel packages; many include  special event tickets.

Lynn Cook is a Hawaii-based travel and cultural tourism writer who has lived in the islands for more than 30 years. She writes for local, national and international consumer and trade publications. She can be reached at: 808-737-2757 in Honolulu.