An album of "traditional" hula from the cultural troupe Halau Hula Ka No'eau out of Waimea on the big island. While the full traditional form of hula involves much less dancing and more drumming and chanting, what this troupe does provide is "hula kahiko," a sort of traditional/contemporary blend of the original hula with the tourist-friendly forms that sprang up around the time of World War II and just prior. The music isn't bad, though the mix of old and new doesn't lend itself very well to this group, as they jump back and forth from name chants to ukulele-friendly light songs in pidgin English. The male vocalists tend to provide a higher quality, with the females often wavering on-and-off-key for a spell now and then. The children's chorus is also occasionally called in to provide songs that sound heavily influenced by the missionary schools set up on the islands by Europeans in the 1800s. There is a thick mix of styles presented here, sometimes working and sometimes not. When the troupe goes to a more fully traditional setting, they shine brightly. When they make attempts at the more contemporary, tourist-friendly, European-influenced music is when the trouble starts, most likely due to the automatic comparisons between them and other practitioners of the contemporary forms, many of whom stick fully to contemporary styles, giving them an advantage over those that switch between the eras of music. Pick it up out of curiosity, and use it as a starting point for further exploration into Hawaiian music. ~ Adam Greenberg