PICTURE this.

You’re in Waikiki, under the open, evening sky, but it’s not silent — you’re surrounded by people, thousands of them, some near you in chairs facing a stage, others wandering the booths and trees and puka of the International Market Place, where you sit, and beyond that, on the streets of Waikiki, and beyond that, on the beach, in the tall hotels, hole-in-the-wall hostels and tourist traps. The sound of a parrot cawing may float in from the street, over the hum of travel and commerce.

Entertainers in the hotel bars are setting up, playing or breaking down, some of them Hawaiian, some haole, some children of musicians who were children of musicians. There are hotel workers, and surfers coming in from the water out there, too — pursuing pleasure, yours or their own.

That’s Waikiki. And there you are, at the endpoint of this living history. Not all of it is harmonious, or even desirable, but nevertheless, it embodies a tradition of Hawaiian art — of music, dance and gathering.

In front of you — a stage, a screen, another dimension, and a portal into the story of Waikiki. You’re about to go back in time, to a place where oli (chant) and hula began, and follow along as the music of Hawaii — much of it percolated in Waikiki’s showrooms — wends its way to the present. A performer walks on stage. Sound fills the open air. You’re in Waikiki.

You’re part of a "Return to Waikiki."

MAKANA, Buck Giles and Sakara Blackwell, partners in art and business, teamed up to create "Return to Waikiki," a luau show with music, vaudeville, video and hula.

They want to bring back the feeling visitors had in decades past, when Waikiki was more connected to Hawaiian/Polynesian tradition, more welcoming, more jubilant.

Makana calls the variety show "the incredible story of how Hawaiian music came to be, from its pre-Western contact roots of hula kahiko to the Hawaiian music renaissance of the 1970s and beyond."

The show includes Makana, known for his mastery of slack-key guitar; Giles, a steel guitar player most recently in the Resophonics; Lono Kaumeheiwa, a founding member of Maunalua; drummer-percussionist Richard Marquez; upright bassist and vocalist George Lopez; pianist Adele Chu; hula legend Auntie Florence Iwalani Koanui; and dancer Pua La’a.

Giles and Makana, friends since they were teenagers, have an easy partnership based on their mutual love for Hawaiian music and ambition to bring it to the world.

They conceive of the show as theater — with performers in character, as various eras from the ’30s to more current times are portrayed. "When you first come in to it, you might not even recognize us," Makana says. "It will be like tuning in to a 1940s radio show."

"We’re in love with the old Hawaiian music, the old Waikiki, when music and showroom extravaganzas held sway," says Makana, "and I wanted to bring that feeling back."

When we met for the story at the "Return to Waikiki" sales office, on a second-floor platform looking over the International Market Place shops, trees and artificial waterfall, Giles and Makana were in character, joking around in classic aloha shirts and loose summer trousers.

They walked up carrying coconuts, chopped at the top and inserted with a straw. On a warm day in Waikiki, it was classic refreshment.

BLACKWELL’S family is in the restaurant business, and their Bluewater Shrimp & Seafood Market has been in Waikiki for just over a year. Her father had been urging her to help put together a luau/dinner show in the Marketplace for some time. When Blackwell, who has worked as an event producer and more recently as a real estate agent, put together a major party this year for filmmakers, she started to see the possibilities. And the ball started rolling, fast.

"We dug in and pulled together our resources. We used each other to bounce things off of," Giles says.

"We’ve been up till 3 in the morning, for a month, imagining everything," Makana said. "It’s been fun, but we’ve been up late."

In preparation for "Return to Waikiki," the performers have been practicing in a Diamond Head home, and Makana has been collecting vintage instruments — including a double bass, an upright piano … and a Chinese gong.

The performers have costumes ready. Music has been written. And a video backdrop will help reinforce the illusion of traveling through time, from pre-contact mele oli and mele hula to the hapa-haole extravaganzas of the 1930s, and on through the Hawaiian music renaissance.

"This is where it all took place," Makana said, out of his chair, gesturing around the Marketplace. "There is existing value here, without having to break it and rebuild it. …

…"We just want to bring back the good old days, and nobody’s going to stop us."