A new music project launching in June, Pōpoloheno: Songs of Resilience and Joy, brings long-overlooked narratives of the Black community in Hawaii to national attention. The ten-track album highlights original compositions and tributes that combine Hawaiian musical tradition with African diasporic history.
Curated by Māhealani Uchiyama, Hawaii’s first hula master of African descent, the album features award-winning musicians from across the islands. Many songs are mele inoa (“name songs”), a traditional Hawaiian form of tribute. These honor figures such as President Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also featured are lesser-known pioneers like Alice Ball, a chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy. Also, Betsey Stockton, a formerly enslaved educator who taught reading and writing to Native Hawaiian children.
The project’s first release, “A Lei for Reverend King,” draws inspiration from a historic photograph of King wearing a Hawaiian lei during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Uchiyama recalls seeing that image as a child in Ebony magazine, an early moment of recognition and pride that later inspired the creation of Pōpoloheno. The project also responds to a comment from one of Uchiyama’s Black Hawaiian students, who questioned her place in her own community because of her appearance.
Scheduled to debut on May 1, Lei Day in Hawaii and the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the album underscores the intersection of cultural celebration and historical reclamation.
The title Pōpoloheno refers to the pōpolo, a dark-colored berry native to Polynesia and historically associated in Hawaii with people of African descent. Once used pejoratively due to colonial influence, the term is here reclaimed to affirm identity, resilience, and pride.
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