That this is the landmark 60th anniversary year of the Merrie Monarch Festival, and the first year the ultimate hula competition is coming back full strength after three years of pandemic disruptions, means there are more events and details to coordinate, more people to herd, more complications and worries for festival President “Auntie” Luana Kawelu, and she is hardly sleeping.
Kawelu is the unpaid volunteer with the daunting responsibility of heading the world’s most prestigious hula competition and festival, a weeklong blur of festivities drawing tens of thousands of people into quiet Hilo this week. Despite her exhaustion and the magnitude of her duties, it’s still her patient, pleasant voice most often answering the festival office’s constantly ringing phone.
She’s so stressed that “sometimes I say I’m going to quit this darn thing and I grumble,” Kawelu jokes with a small laugh.
But she won’t quit. She knows she and her family and small army of volunteers are the keepers of a massive legacy, of hula and the Hawaiian culture, of the community and the festival and its founders.
“I have my mother’s picture right above me,” she says, referring to a lei-draped photo of the late Dorothy “Auntie Dottie” Thompson, the festival’s previous president and the force widely credited with leading the festival’s growth into today’s revered event.
“You cannot undo what your mother did,” Kawelu says. “You just gotta do it.”
Extra excitement over the complete return of this year’s festival is palpable in nearly any discussion with a festival attendee or performer. The pandemic forced a devastating cancellation of the “Olympics of hula” in 2020, required competition performances to carry on without a live audience in 2021 and limited audiences inside the iconic Edith Kanaka‘ole Multi-Purpose Stadium in 2022.
Now that formal COVID-19 restrictions are no more, many call this the first year “fully back.”
The 60th anniversary has added the revival of the rare Royal Coronation Ball to the lengthy slate of events. The Ho‘olaulea returns today after being last held in pre- pandemic 2019. Among the most anticipated additions to the stage lineup are Ho‘ike performances on Wednesday night by some hula halau who hail from the festival’s earliest days, plus a tribute to the late kumu hula Johnny Lum Ho by a group of his haumana, or students.
“I wanted to acknowledge these old-time dancers because they laid the groundwork for what is happening today,” Kawelu said.
The last time the Royal Coronation Ball was held was the festival’s 50th anniversary. “The king will crown himself, as (King) Kalakaua did before, and then he’ll crown the queen,” Kawelu said. “It’s sold out. People are so anxious to come with their finest holoku and their nice Hawaiian outfits and come to enjoy the night.”
The 23 competing hula halau and 12 Miss Aloha Hula competitors have practiced long, grueling hours, meticulously built their costumes and fundraised for months. Hilo businesses and craft-fair vendors are geared up for crowds the likes of which they haven’t seen in years. Fans have planned their itineraries and their best Hawaiian attire, talking excitedly of reunions and the thrill of finally being able to see people smile sans masks and gather in the stadium without limits.
However, Kawelu still wants attendees to exercise caution, especially with the COVID-19 rate rising again in Hawaii, at a 10.2% testing positivity rate statewide.
“We are trying to get the message out that we still need to be mindful that the COVID pandemic is not over,” Kawelu said. “We are asking that if people are not feeling well, that they be respectful of the others in attendance, particularly our kupuna, and that they refrain from coming. We all know the effectiveness of masking and hand-washing, and we call upon the audience and participants to practice appropriate health and safety measures.”
The Merrie Monarch Festival is dedicated to the memory of King David La‘amea Kalakaua, who was “known as the ‘Merrie Monarch’ for his flamboyant and fun-loving ways,” according to the festival website. Kalakaua was elected king of the Hawaiian nation in 1874 and reigned until his passing in 1891. He was known as a patron of the arts, especially music and dance.
The festival’s entering its seventh decade has prompted Kawelu to marvel at how dramatically it’s evolved, and how it should keep going. That tickets for the hula competitions consistently sell out almost instantly, for example, wasn’t always so. In its earliest days in the mid 1960s, the festival had no hula competition and was a tough sell, even when a $1 button bought admission to all events.
“Not everyone in the public knows how it was back then,” Kawelu said. “We had exhibition hula. We had pageantry of the king and the royal court. We had a barbershop quartet and a King Kalakaua beard look-alike contest. There was a bicycle race from the King Kamehameha statue in Kohala to Kalakaua Park in Hilo. We used to have a relay race where they would pass on live mullets as a baton relay. This was what the festival was at first, because the festival first started as a way to help the economy because of the tsunami,” the 1960 tidal wave that killed 61 people in Hilo and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes and businesses.
Thompson assumed the reins of the festival from 1968 until her passing in 2010. Competition in hula was added in 1971, as the renaissance of Hawaiian culture was flowering, each feeding the other over the years. This year, 14 competing halau hail from Oahu, four from Maui, three from Hawaii island, and one each from Kauai and Washington state.
Even the competition itself has since evolved. Each judge used to display a single overall score on a placard after each performance, similar to certain Olympic competitions, Kawelu said. Now the seven judges drill down to fine points such as thematic interpretation, adornments and language, and the halau train and prepare for that. Scores and rankings are held in secret until the awards segment late Saturday night.
The popularity of the Merrie Monarch Festival has only grown with expanded coverage on TV, internet livestreams, social media, and the travels of kumu and spread of halau to other states and countries. Yet the festival’s approach to ticket sales is still decidedly homegrown: Ticket requests must be in writing, postmarked in snail mail no earlier than Dec. 1, and Kawelu waits at least five days afterward for the last properly postmarked requests to straggle in before she conducts random selections and seat assignments.
After about half the 4,200 tickets are given to the halau; the remaining 2,100 or so are meted out in random selections from the thousands of requests that pour in from across the U.S. and around the globe.
Kawelu knows the leadership and administration of the festival must evolve in time. She refers to daughter Kathy Kawelu as the person who will take over the festival next, and says proudly, “I’m also training my granddaughter.”
But asked to speculate whether the Merrie Monarch Festival itself will change further for the changing times, Kawelu demurs. She knows there are occasional calls by hula fans to move the festival to a larger venue or even to Oahu, but “Merrie Monarch is Hilo. I won’t take it away,” Kawelu says firmly. “My philosophy is, it’s lasted this long. Why change something that works?”
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Merrie Monarch Festival
Today through Saturday, Hilo
Hula competition
Edith Kanaka‘ole Multi-Purpose Stadium, 6 p.m. (sold out)
>> Thursday, Miss Aloha Hula
>> Friday, group hula kahiko (ancient style)
>> Saturday, group hula auana (modern style) and awards
Other major events
>> Ho‘olaule‘a with performances by local halau, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium, free admission
>> Royal Coronation Ball, 4:30 p.m. today, Nani Mau Gardens (sold out)
>> Ho‘ike exhibition performances, 6 p.m., Wednesday, Edith Kanaka‘ole Multi-Purpose Stadium (sold out)
>> Merrie Monarch Hawaiian Arts and Crafts Fair, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium and Butler Buildings, free admission
>> Royal Parade, 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Downtown Hilo
The hula competition will be broadcast on KFVE and livestreamed at hawaii newsnow.com/merriemonarch. Find Honolulu Star-Advertiser coverage at staradvertiser.com/merrie-monarch. For more information on the Merrie Monarch Festival, visit merriemonarch.com.
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Editor’s note: Esme M. Infante is a student of Halau Na Mamo O Pu‘uanahulu, one of the halau competing at the Merrie Monarch Festival. For all festival coverage, see staradvertiser.com/ merrie-monarch.
