Merrie Monarch Festival

The festival began in 1964 as a community response to Hilo’s economic and cultural difficulties and was named for King David Kalākaua, whose patronage helped revive Hawaiian music, dance, and ceremony.¹ The name “Merrie Monarch” refers to Kalākaua’s reputation for celebration and his belief that cultural expression was central to Hawaiian identity.³

What started as a local event developed into a weeklong program organized by the Merrie Monarch Festival, Inc. The schedule includes a royal court presentation, an opening procession, an arts and crafts fair, exhibitions, music, and the Hoʻolauleʻa community celebration. The competition is held at the Edith Kanakaʻole Stadium in Hilo, while the free Royal Parade travels through downtown streets.¹

The competition distinguishes between the solo Miss Aloha Hula title and group performances by wahine and kāne hālau.¹ Dancers are evaluated on elements such as chant, oli, mele, posture, footwork, hand gestures, interpretation, costume, musicality, and the relationship between performers and their kumu hula, or teachers. The program generally contrasts kāhiko, an older-style repertory grounded in chant and traditional instruments, with ʻauana, a modern style that developed through later musical and choreographic forms.⁴

Competition pieces are not merely displays of technical skill: their words, gestures, adornment, and choreography communicate histories, places, genealogies, religious ideas, and relationships to the land. Hālau may spend months or years preparing repertory, arranging music, making costumes, and researching the meanings embodied in a presentation.

The festival presents hula as a living Hawaiian art rather than as a decorative performance detached from language and history. Hula integrates mele, oli, movement, costume, lei, percussion, and the knowledge of specific places; its interpretation depends on Hawaiian language and on the authority of kumu hula.⁴

Its modern prominence is linked to the Hawaiian Renaissance of the late twentieth century, when Hawaiian-language education, traditional arts, music, and political activism gained renewed public force. Kalākaua’s nineteenth-century support for hula is frequently remembered within that cultural history, especially because missionary-era opposition had stigmatized or restricted some Hawaiian practices.³ The festival also supports Hilo’s cultural economy through visitors, local vendors, musicians, and craftspeople, while its broadcasts extend performances far beyond Hawaiʻi Island.²

The festival’s lesser-known dimensions include the extensive work behind each presentation and the importance of objects that never appear as headline awards. Lei, kapa-inspired materials, featherwork, woven adornments, and carefully researched costumes can encode geographic, genealogical, or historical references. The accompanying arts fair therefore functions as more than a shopping event: it gives visibility to contemporary makers working within and alongside Hawaiian traditions.¹

The event also preserves distinctions that are easy for outside audiences to miss. A performance’s words may identify a particular mountain, shoreline, ancestor, or chiefly figure; a gesture may depend on a phrase in the mele; and an apparently contemporary ʻauana presentation can still carry older protocols of composition and teaching. Participation is consequently organized through hālau and kumu hula, not only through individual celebrity. The festival’s public scale coexists with this highly specialized, communal system of transmission.

The Merrie Monarch Festival has become a central institution in the international visibility of hula and Hawaiian performing arts. Its annual competition gives hālau a prestigious venue, while its broadcast and recorded coverage allow audiences elsewhere to encounter repertory, language, and styles that are rarely represented in commercial tourism.¹

That visibility carries responsibilities as well as benefits. Hula is connected to ʻāina, genealogy, spirituality, and community protocols, so performances cannot be fully understood through judging scores or spectacle alone. The festival’s continuing significance lies in bringing a large public audience to an art form whose authority remains rooted in teachers, students, Hawaiian language, and place. In Hilo, the event thus operates simultaneously as competition, cultural gathering, educational platform, and expression of Hawaiian continuity.

hālau hula

A school or group devoted to the teaching and performance of hula.

kumu hula

A recognized hula teacher and cultural authority; literally, a source or foundation of hula.

kāhiko

A traditional-style hula category, commonly associated with chant, older repertory, and traditional instruments.

ʻauana

A modern-style hula category associated with later musical arrangements and choreographic forms.

mele

A Hawaiian chant or song, often carrying historical, genealogical, poetic, or sacred meaning.

oli

A Hawaiian chant, commonly performed without instrumental accompaniment.