Lei Melket and Mailani Makainai met in high school and discovered their musical chemistry in a high school talent contest. Signed by Island Groove records and recording as Keahiwai, their debut album, “Local Girls,” won them the Na Hoku Hanohano Award for most promising artist in 2002. They won the public vote for favorite entertainer that year as well.
Keahiwai recorded four more albums before they parted ways. Makainai continued as a solo artist. Melket works at the Kumon Math and Reading Center of Pearl City; she became a certified Kumon instructor in 2016.
Despite their different career paths, Melket and Makainai remained friends, and their fans remained hopeful that someday they’d be together again.
A reunion planned for 2020 was preempted by the pandemic; it took place that year on Facebook Live. Plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first album in 2021 also had to be deferred.
And so, when Melket and Makainai announced in December that they were doing a one-night reunion at the Blue Note Hawaii, the two shows sold out almost immediately.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Melket said during a recent conference call. “My wife is the one that’s like, ‘Hey, you guys aren’t getting any younger. I think you really gotta step up and make this happen.’ So we did.”
Makainai contended with a high-risk pregnancy during the pandemic, and she is now the mother of 18-month-old twins. She is ready to go despite the fact that motherhood is her “full-time job.”
“I also perform at the ‘Aulani, maybe once a week throughout the month. It helps me get out of the house, and also helps me with my voice,” she said.
“In the last seven months, I’ve been performing again and it took me that long for my voice to finally get back to kind of what it used to be. So I like to perform in general, but I also do so because if I don’t, my voice is not going to be strong and I don’t want to lose my voice.”
Melket added that they’re looking forward to “making people feel young again, and happy” at their Blue Note performances on Thursday.
“We’ll be doing our hits, for sure,” she said. “Sharing stories of that time, the ‘Early Os,’ stories about the songs, and stories about what we’re doing now.”
And for everyone who won’t be seeing them this week, she says there’s good reason to be hopeful.
“This could likely be the start of us doing a little bit more — shows in the public and possibly recording in the future. It’s been so long, and we’ve been putting it off for way too long. We see a lot of our friends now doing reunions, like Pure Heart and other bands from back in that time. We didn’t want to wait too long.”
———
Keahiwai’s shows on Thursday at the Blue Note Hawaii are sold out. For more information on Keahiwai, go to facebook.com/keahiwaimusic.
