Living aloha: here's your guide to the real Hawaii—ancient temples, trendy food, taro patches, and crazy ukulele nightlife

Sunset, Feb, 2003 by Kathleen Norris Brenzel

"Ten years ago, Hawaiians had a face but not a voice," says Clifford Nae'ole, president of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association and cultural advisor at the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, on Maui. It's my last night on Oahu and we're having dinner at The Willows, a Honolulu restaurant popular with locals. "We were lei greeters," Nae'ole continues. "Today we've got native Hawaiians in positions of leadership. That's good, because without Hawaiian culture, it's dooms-day for this place. The trick," he adds, "is to preserve our culture, yet walk in the Western world at the same time."

Tricky, indeed. Like any melting-pot society, this one keeps reinventing itself. Yet look beyond Waikiki's superficial glitter and you'll find a distinctive native Hawaiian influence, especially in contemporary music, cuisine, and art.

Take the humble ukulele, introduced to the islands by sugarcane workers from Portugal and promoted heavily .by Hawaii's last king, David Kalakaua. In recent decades, it had been relegated to tourist status in hotel lounge acts, but a 27-year-old Honolulu native is changing all that.

One evening at Chai's Island Bistro, I watched Jake Shimabukuro play "Crazy G" (in F) to a mesmerized audience. Fingers dancing with lightning speed, his whole body moving with the music; he coaxed from those strings the sounds of banjo, guitar, and harp all rolled into one--soft and sweet one moment, breathtakingly electric the next. This superstar is making a whole new generation of Hawaiians think of the ukulele differently--as an instrument of jazz, pop, and symphony "What I do with the ukulele goes beyond music," says Shimabukuro. "It's about feeling free to experiment with new sounds."

Hawaiian influences are also turning up in a new breed of restaurant that fuses local crops such as Kahuku corn and Maui onions with ingredients and flavors from the Pacific Rim--and beyond.

"Fresh produce and protein from small local farms are the heart and soul of contemporary cuisine in Hawaii," said Douglas Lum, executive chef at Honolulu's Mariposa. I caught up with Lum and his surfing buddy William Bruhl, also a chef, as they were about to hit the waves. Both support diversified agriculture and related island-based industries. But Lum is putting his own spin on regional cuisine. His lobster katsu--lobster tails breaded Japanese-style, fried, then served on a bouquet of Hawaiian baby greens with a Vietnamese mango-chili lime sauce--represents this coming together of flavors.

But nowhere are contemporary Hawaiian themes being more provocatively explored than in the work of island artists. One painting I saw in a show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts--Modern Times, by Chris Campbell--shows a young Hawaiian woman dressed in a red pareo, her black hair knotted atop her head to reveal a tattoo on one shoulder. She stands, hands on her hips, facing a large white canvas spattered with dark paint. To some, her stance might suggest pondering, or trying to make sense of it all. But to me it suggests more of an acceptance, a recognition that here--as with the ukulele-is something new she could embrace.