Deandre "Kamele" Brackensick, who advanced Wednesday to become one of 25 finalists on Fox’s "American Idol," was born and lives in California, but his musical soul and spirit reside in Hawaii, friends and relatives said.

"We brought him into Hawaiian music when he was very little," said Nick Price of San Jose, Calif., a former resident of Mililani and Brackensick’s hanai grandfather. "From there he has blossomed."

Brackensick, a 17-year-old with long curly locks, reached the top 40 in last year’s "Idol," but his falsetto-inflected version of "This Woman’s Work" during this season’s auditions inspired judge Jennifer Lopez to say the judges would be "crazy people" not to advance him this year.

Brackensick has worked with many local musicians, including singer Starr Kalahiki and the group Na Palapalai, Price said. He also is well known in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Hawaiian community, singing with many Hawaiian music groups there, said Keli‘i Amantiad of Ka Nalu, a group based in Hayward.

Brackensick is also trained in hula and danced and sang at the Merrie Monarch Festival in his early teens. He has worked with Kapua Dalire-Moe of Halau Ka Liko Pua O Kalaniakea for the last five years.

"Prior to actually joining our halau, he actually taught himself, he kind of followed along from what he saw," Dalire-Moe said.

She said she first met Brackensick at the airport after the festival.

"He was just sitting around playing the ukulele and singing," she said. "He was singing in that falsetto voice that he’s perfected … and that’s what actually caught my attention."

Brackensick, in a video for "Idol," said he wanted to participate in the show to overcome his shyness, a characteristic that Dalire-Moe said was evident when he started his hula training.

"It was hard to get him to try to do anything," she said. "If he was alone by himself, it was just a natural instinct, but to try to get him to perform it in front of people, we had to kind of persuade him.

"He’s grown a lot, come out of his shell, and it’s nice to see that he’s taken his love for music and uses everything he’s learned."

Price said Brackensick is also a well-respected student at Oak Grove High School, a racially mixed school in San Jose, where he was elected homecoming king. Price said someone from the school told him that he hoped Brackensick wouldn’t compete in "Idol" again because "he was the only one who could bring the unity at our school. He’s able to go into all the groups and bring them together as one."

Price said Brackensick lived in Hawaii for a few years as a child before relocating to San Jose. He said he and his wife, Fran, bring Brackensick to the islands a few times a year.

"He is going to be moving to Hawaii full-time as soon as he is able to get out from under whatever he has to finish up with," said Price, admitting that may take a while. "His dream has always been to study the Hawaiian language. He speaks it pretty fluently and he’s taught himself."

Though Brackensick has received a lot of advice from Hawaiian musicians over the years, only recently has he started taking voice lessons with an opera teacher "to solidify that bottom range," Price said.

"But most of it is a gift, with his sound, since he was young," Price said. "I mean, at 2 or 3 years of age, he was singing."

Brackensick and the other 12 male finalists will perform at 7 p.m. Tuesday on Fox (KHON), with the top 12 women taking the stage Wednesday. Viewers’ votes will determine which singers will be eliminated Thursday.

Correction: Nick Price is a former Mililani resident. An earlier version of this story said he lived in Pearl City.