Genoa Keawe

Genoa Leilani Adolpho Keawe-Aiko (October 31, 1918 – February 25, 2008), known as 'Aunty Genoa,' was a Hawaiian vocalist and ʻukulele player and a central figure of 20th-century Hawaiian music. She was born in the Kakaʻako district of Honolulu on Oʻahu and grew up in Lāʻie. She began recording professionally in 1946 for the 49th State Hawaii record company, later recorded for Hula Records, and in 1966 founded her own label, Genoa Keawe Records, to release her music and that of family and friends.

Keawe was celebrated for her Hawaiian falsetto (leo kiʻekiʻe) and the vocal break technique known as haʻi, along with a bell-like yodel and a noted ability to sustain a high note. Her signature song, 'ʻAlika,' was composed by Charles Kaʻapa; ethnomusicologist Amy K. Stillman described Keawe as holding the tune's highest note and stretching out her breath 'for over two minutes.' She recorded more than 140 singles over a career spanning more than six decades, and her repertoire became a mainstay for modern hula.

Recording and performing with backing groups billed as Aunty Genoa's Hawaiians and, on records, as Her Hula Maids and Her Polynesians, she remained active into her 80s, performing regularly in Waikīkī. In 2000 she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. She was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 2001, earned multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards, and in 2005 received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Hawaiʻi, conferred at Windward Community College. She died in Honolulu in 2008 at age 89.