Hawaiian Concert Guide Podcast Show 702 - Royal Flush
Welcome to another inspiring edition of the Hawaiian Concert Guide. Episode 702, titled Royal Flush, is a heartfelt musical journey through aloha for family, love of place, worship, memory, and the unmistakable beauty of Hawaiian harmony. This episode moves gracefully from contemporary Hawaiian recordings into faith-filled expressions, pauses for a fun and nostalgic exotica interlude, and then returns home with classic Hawaiian vocal richness.
At the top of the show, we feature a special live interview with Nick and Sam, who are visiting Hilo, Hawaiʻi for the world-renowned Merrie Monarch Festival, the premier celebration of hula and Hawaiian cultural arts.
From the vibrant energy of Hilo during festival week to the deep traditions of hula, chant, and storytelling, Nick and Sam share their firsthand experiences attending one of the most significant cultural events in Hawaiʻi. Their perspective offers listeners a glimpse into the atmosphere, excitement, and reverence that define Merrie Monarch.
The selections in this episode reflect some of the deepest values found in Hawaiian music: reverence for loved ones, profound attachment to the land, gratitude to God, and the enduring power of mele to preserve both emotion and identity. The result is an episode that feels warm, reflective, and deeply rooted.
Featured Tracks
1. E Māma - Kaleo Phillips
Album: E Mama
Duration: 4:01
Opening the episode is E Māma, a song that immediately establishes an intimate and reverent emotional tone. The title suggests a tribute to mother, and in Hawaiian musical tradition, songs honoring mothers often carry meanings that go beyond a single individual. They can also reflect family lineage, sacrifice, tenderness, and the continuity of aloha across generations.
Kaleo Phillips delivers the mele with restraint and sincerity, allowing the song’s emotional core to remain front and center. Rather than overwhelming the listener with a dense arrangement, the song appears to rely on warmth, vocal phrasing, and a steady melodic line. That simplicity is part of its strength. Hawaiian music often does its best work when it trusts the story.
As an opening track, this selection acts as a gateway into the entire episode. It introduces a theme that echoes through several of the songs that follow: love expressed not through spectacle, but through remembrance, gentleness, and deep personal connection.
Theme: Family love, reverence, remembrance
Musical character: Gentle, reflective, intimate
Why it matters: Sets the emotional and spiritual tone for the full episode
2. Puna Kuʻu Aloha - Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter
Album: Ho'i Ke Aloha - EP
Duration: 3:57
Puna Kuʻu Aloha is a beautiful example of Hawaiian songwriting rooted in place. In Hawaiian mele, land is never just scenery. It is memory, identity, relationship, and presence. To sing of Puna is to sing of a living place with emotional and cultural meaning.
Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter brings grace and emotional clarity to this performance. The phrase kuʻu aloha conveys a deeply personal affection, making the title feel like a love letter to Puna itself. This is one of the distinctive strengths of Hawaiian music: the ability to treat land as beloved, not merely observed.
Puna, on Hawaiʻi Island, carries layers of meaning through its lush beauty, dynamic volcanic history, and deep cultural associations. Songs about Puna often hold a sense of longing, beauty, and transformation. This recording fits naturally within that lineage, inviting the listener to hear place as something cherished and alive.
Theme: Love of place, emotional geography, identity
Musical character: Flowing, melodic, affectionate
Why it matters: Reinforces the Hawaiian tradition of connecting aloha with the land
3. Haleakalā - Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter
Album: Ho'i Ke Aloha - EP
Duration: 3:37
Staying with Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter, Haleakalā shifts the focus from one beloved region to one of Hawaiʻi’s most revered natural and spiritual landmarks. Haleakalā is not only a mountain; it is a place layered with story, reverence, and mythic resonance.
In Hawaiian tradition, places are often inseparable from the narratives attached to them. Haleakalā is famously associated with Māui, who was said to have lassoed the sun there. Because of that, references to Haleakalā can carry themes of time, light, wonder, and power. A song named for it naturally invites awe.
Musically, this piece feels expansive, fitting the majesty of the subject. It broadens the emotional landscape of the episode and deepens the sense that Hawaiian music can hold both personal tenderness and geographic grandeur in the same artistic frame.
Theme: Sacred place, wonder, mythic landscape
Musical character: Spacious, reverent, elevated
Why it matters: Expands the episode from intimate affection into spiritual geography
4. Goodness of God - Gregory Juan
Album: Kauluwehi
Duration: 3:41
With Goodness of God, the episode moves more directly into the language of testimony and praise. Though widely known in contemporary Christian music, a Hawaiian-oriented rendition invites the listener to hear the song through a different cultural lens. In this context, gratitude becomes more than a lyric theme; it connects naturally with the Hawaiian value of mahalo.
Gregory Juan’s performance likely resonates because of that fusion. Contemporary worship songs can sometimes feel structurally familiar, but when interpreted with island phrasing, local vocal sensibility, and an ear for relational warmth, they can take on a more grounded and communal feeling.
This track serves as an important bridge in the episode. The earlier songs honor people and places. Here, the orientation shifts upward in gratitude toward God. That movement from family and land into faith gives the episode a natural spiritual progression.
Theme: Gratitude, testimony, faith
Musical character: Worshipful, warm, heartfelt
Why it matters: Bridges Hawaiian sensibility with contemporary Christian expression
5. Hawaiʻi Aloha - Kamalei Kawaʻa
Album: Mānaiakalani
Duration: 4:56
Few songs carry the emotional and cultural significance of Hawaiʻi Aloha. This is one of the most beloved anthems in Hawaiian music, often sung at the close of gatherings as a gesture of unity, affection, and enduring connection to the islands and their people.
Kamalei Kawaʻa’s inclusion of this song is powerful within the context of Episode 702. After moving through songs of personal love, cherished places, and gratitude to God, this anthem broadens the circle to embrace the whole of Hawaiʻi. It becomes communal rather than only personal.
The strength of this song lies not only in melody but in function. It has become a song that people live with, sing together, and use to mark belonging. That sense of shared identity is one of the central treasures of Hawaiian music.
Theme: Unity, homeland, shared aloha
Musical character: Anthemic, communal, dignified
Why it matters: One of the emotional anchors of the entire episode
6. Hoʻomana Ia Iesu (feat. Ka ʻOhana Kawaʻa) - Kamalei Kawaʻa
Album: Mānaiakalani
Duration: 4:04
Hoʻomana Ia Iesu brings the episode to an explicitly devotional place. The title itself centers worship of Jesus, and the featured participation of Ka ʻOhana Kawaʻa adds a family and community dimension that is especially meaningful in Hawaiian music.
Hawaiian Christian music has long occupied an important place in the islands’ musical life. What makes songs like this especially compelling is the way they join worship with family, language, and local style. Faith is not presented as abstract doctrine, but as something lived together and sung together.
The communal nature of the performance likely enhances its emotional impact. Family voices singing in harmony naturally reinforce the message. In a broader sense, this track reflects one of the recurring motifs of the episode: love becomes fullest when shared.
Theme: Worship, family faith, shared devotion
Musical character: Reverent, communal, spiritually centered
Why it matters: Deepens the episode’s faith dimension while preserving a strong Hawaiian identity
Exotica Segment
7. Exotica Segment Intro - pik00
Duration: 4:10
This segment intro marks a stylistic transition in the episode. Up to this point, the program has focused on music deeply rooted in Hawaiian identity, language, faith, and place. The Exotica segment steps sideways into a related but distinctly different musical world: one shaped by fantasy, lounge aesthetics, and mid-century tropical imagination.
That contrast is part of what makes the segment valuable. It offers not only variety, but also perspective. It reminds listeners that “island music” has often been interpreted and reimagined far beyond Hawaiʻi itself.
8. On the Beach at Waikīkī (mix final) - Les Waikikings
Album: Hapa haole with a twist
Duration: 2:17
On the Beach at Waikīkī leans into the playful charm of tropical nostalgia. The title alone evokes postcard Hawaiʻi: surf, sand, leisure, and romance. In exotica and hapa-haole-adjacent material, the islands often become a stage for fantasy rather than an expression of local lived culture.
That does not make the piece without merit. On the contrary, tracks like this can be delightful, catchy, and historically revealing. They show how Hawaiʻi was imagined internationally and how tropical motifs were translated into entertainment music for broad audiences.
Within this episode, the song acts as a light palate cleanser. It introduces a wink of vintage fun before the program returns to more deeply rooted Hawaiian harmony.
Theme: Tropical nostalgia, leisure, fantasy
Musical character: Breezy, lounge-like, playful
Why it matters: Adds historical contrast and tonal variety
9. How dya do - Les Waikikings
Album: Hapa haole with a twist
Duration: 3:03
How dya do continues the exotica mood with a likely emphasis on upbeat rhythm, polished arrangement, and the stylized “tropical” sound associated with mid-century popular music. These sorts of recordings often present a cheerful, cinematic island atmosphere rather than a culturally grounded one.
For listeners of the Hawaiian Concert Guide, that difference is worth noticing. Authentic Hawaiian music often carries place, genealogy, language, and community. Exotica tends to carry mood, escapism, and fantasy. Hearing both in one episode can be educational as well as entertaining.
In programming terms, this track keeps the episode lively and prevents the emotional arc from becoming too uniform. It is a well-timed detour before the music returns to classic Hawaiian vocal artistry.
Theme: Escapism, retro charm, tropical stylization
Musical character: Light, rhythmic, lounge-oriented
Why it matters: Helps frame the distinction between Hawaiian music and music inspired by Hawaiʻi
Closing Selections: Return to Hawaiian Vocal Depth
10. Ka Loke - Ho'okena
Album: Ho'okena 5
Duration: 4:16
The return from exotica to Ho'okena is a return to center. Ka Loke carries the unmistakable richness of Hawaiian group harmony and poetic sensibility. Ho'okena is known for vocal blend, emotional precision, and the ability to let the song breathe.
The title, meaning “the rose,” suggests metaphor, beauty, and affection. Hawaiian songwriting frequently uses natural imagery not simply as decoration, but as a means of expressing human feeling. Flowers, winds, rains, mountains, and seas all become emotional language.
This track is especially effective late in the episode because it restores a sense of depth and rootedness after the lighter detour of the exotica set. The listener is brought back into the fuller emotional and cultural world of Hawaiian mele.
Theme: Beauty, poetic love, emotional symbolism
Musical character: Harmonically rich, graceful, classic
Why it matters: Re-centers the episode in traditional Hawaiian vocal beauty
11. I Love You - Ho'okena
Album: Ho'okena 5
Duration: 4:11
I Love You closes the episode with warmth and universality. While the title is in English, the emotional spirit aligns perfectly with the rest of the program. The entire episode has, in one form or another, been about love: love for mother, love for place, love for God, love expressed in community, and love carried in harmony.
Ho'okena’s treatment of a song like this likely gives it both accessibility and depth. Their vocal approach can make even a simple phrase feel timeless. That is one of the gifts of strong Hawaiian harmony: it elevates feeling without forcing it.
As a final track, this song functions almost like a benediction. It leaves the listener with a sense of peace and completion, gathering together the many emotional strands of the episode into one simple message.
Theme: Love, closure, emotional unity
Musical character: Gentle, harmonious, reassuring
Why it matters: A fitting final statement for an episode built around aloha in many forms
Episode Reflection
Episode 702, E Māma, is structured with unusual emotional coherence. Even though the tracks come from different artists and include a temporary move into exotica, the overall episode still feels unified. That unity comes from its central themes: affection, reverence, gratitude, and connection.
The first portion of the program focuses on intimacy and place. E Māma, Puna Kuʻu Aloha, and Haleakalā all carry a sense of deep regard, whether for family or landscape. From there, the episode opens into spiritual testimony with Goodness of God, then broadens into collective and devotional identity through Hawaiʻi Aloha and Hoʻomana Ia Iesu.
The exotica segment introduces contrast and historical perspective, reminding listeners that Hawaiʻi has often been interpreted from afar in ways that are entertaining but not always rooted. That makes the return to Ho'okena especially satisfying. Their closing selections restore the sound of home, depth, and harmony.
If there is a single word that best describes this episode, it is aloha. Not merely as a greeting, but as a way of relating: to mother, to beloved places, to God, to family, and to one another.
Track List
E Māma - Kaleo Phillips - 4:01
Puna Kuʻu Aloha - Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter - 3:57
Haleakalā - Christy Leinaʻala Lassiter - 3:37
Goodness of God - Gregory Juan - 3:41
Hawaiʻi Aloha - Kamalei Kawaʻa - 4:56
Hoʻomana Ia Iesu (feat. Ka ʻOhana Kawaʻa) - Kamalei Kawaʻa - 4:04
Exotica Segment Intro - pik00 - 4:10
On the Beach at Waikīkī (mix final) - Les Waikikings - 2:17
How dya do - Les Waikikings - 3:03
Ka Loke - Ho'okena - 4:16
I Love You - Ho'okena - 4:11
Closing
Mahalo for joining us for Hawaiian Concert Guide Podcast Show 702. May these songs encourage you to remember those you love, appreciate the beauty of Hawaiʻi, and carry aloha into the week ahead.
A hui hou and malama pono.
New Zealand