The festival named after one of Hawaii's former kings returns this week, celebrating Hawaiian arts and culture. Photo: Merrie Monarch Festival
An annual festival dedicated to preserving traditional Hawaiian arts and culture has been underway on Hilo Island this week.
The 62nd Merrie Monarch was started by the late King David Laamea Kalākaua, who advocated for bringing back Hawai'ian culture.
Known as the Merrie Monarch, he was the last king and second-last monarch to reign in Hawai'i in the late 1800s.
The week-long event includes performances, parades and the Miss Aloha Hula competition.
Louisa Tipene-Opetaia, who is in attendence this week, told Pacific Waves it is hard to get tickets and often people end up watching the live stream.
She said attending the festival in person is a sensory experience.
"When you watch hula, you don't just watch with your eyes," she said.
"You can feel the drum beat like going through you, and you can smell the flowers, and you listen to the chanters and you listen to the music. So it's a whole sensory kind of overload.
"You don't get that watching the live stream, as good as it is."
She said a ballot system is in place for tickets. The Edith Kanakaʻole Stadium hosts the festival every year, but only 5000 people can fit in the ground, and a lot of seats are taken by performers and their families.
"So you have to apply for tickets...it's real old school. They do it all through the mail," she said.
"You've got to send in an application form, and you've got to send in a money order. And you do that at the end of the year, so in December, and then a couple months later, you find out whether you got in or not.
"If not, you get your money order back and you have to watch the live stream with the rest of the world."
Tipene-Opetaia, who lived on the island for seven years, said previously, almost all of its traditions were banned, and King David Laamea Kalākaua was credited with the revival of the Hawai'ian culture and the Hawai'ian language.
"That's why they've named this festival after him, because of what he did to bring back this dance that actually was outlawed by the colonizers who came in.
"They tried to take these kinds of things away from us - practicing our traditional healing methods, dancing and singing our songs."
The festival wraps up on Saturday.
