Kaulana Pakele, a Hilo-born musician who rose to statewide fame as lead singer of Ehukai and Mana‘o Company, died Monday evening after apparently drowning at Makaha Beach Park on Oahu’s leeward coast. He was 47.
Prior to his Hoku award-winning music career, Pakele was a hometown sports hero as a forward on the Hilo High School boys’ basketball team that brought home the 1991 Hawaii High School Athletic Association championship.
In 1994, Pakele became lead singer of the Hilo-based Ehukai, best known for its hit, “Moloka‘i Slide,” which captured the Na Hoku Hanohano awards for Song of the Year and Single of the Year in 1997.
In 2001, Mana‘o Company — one of Hawaii’s most popular contemporary music bands in the late 1980s and early 1990s — reformed with Pakele as lead singer joining founding members Danny Kennedy, John Baricuatro Jr. and Salaam Tillman.
Their first album with the new lineup, “Spread a Little Aloha,” was a big winner at the 2002 Hokus, claiming Album of the Year, Contemporary Album of the Year and Single of the Year for “Spread a Little Aloha.”
In 2003, a re-recording of “Aloha” took Single of the Year, this time credited to Mana‘o Company and Friends.
A gifted mimic, Pakele performed a live version of the traditional Hawaiian song “Noho Paipai” in which he did impressions of Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Aunty Genoa Keawe, the animated character Stitch and a trombone.
Shock and mourning reverberated among Hawaii’s music community via social media.
“I don’t even know what to feel or say. I’m in freakin shock,” said Jaz Kaiwiko‘o, KAPA-FM program director and former Ehukai band mate of Pakele, on Facebook. “We were just talking about an Ehukai reunion.”
Kaiwiko‘o said Pakele possessed “one of the most beautiful voices in Hawaii.”
“Plenty hearts are breaking today,” said Amy Hanaiali‘i Gilliom.
Lehua Kalima Alvarez of the trio Na Leo, who, like Pakele, grew up in Keaukaha, said she “will always love you and the kids and mo‘opuna. Rest in peace my Hilo brother.”
Pakele, who lived in Kapolei, Oahu, is survived by, among others, his wife, Lisa Huihui Pakele; children and grandchildren; and parents, Don and Lani Pakele.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.