Recently arriving back to Maui from Japan where his students won a hula competition, Kumu Hula Uluwehi Guerrero and Halau Hula Kauluokala will perform on Oct. 11 as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the J. Walter Cameron Center in Wailuku.

“Japan was absolutely wonderful,” says Guerrero. “We had we entered the Ku Mai Ka Hula competition on Maui at the beginning of September, and our kupuna ladies took second place as well as the language and music award (the ‘Olelo Makuahine Award). Then a few days later we went off to Japan to another competition in Chigasaki.”

The Chigasaki Makana Hula Festival includes an Ohana category, “with different generations from the kupuna to the makua to the keiki, all dancing in one category,” he explains. “I thought that was a brilliant idea to celebrate hula with all the generations coming together and dancing a hula. I was very proud because our halau placed first in that category. The age ranged from five years to 75 years old.”

Besides working with about 150 students on Maui, Guerrero has several hula schools in Japan, which are “spread out all the way from far up north into Hokkaido down to Kyushu.”

Back on Maui, the revered Na Hoku Hanohano Award winning cultural practitioner will feature his halau, “with my vocals and the band accompanying them,” at the Cameron Center show.

“I thought it would be a wonderful way for us to end our journey, because we were celebrating our families, and support within each other to continue our cultural practices, particularly hula and music, and just lifting up everyone and being grateful for our community,” he says. “We’ve gone through so much challenges from the pandemic into the wildfires that our community really needed to have something to divert our hardships into something positive. The Cameron Center has been a pinnacle source of nonprofits helping our communities.”

The kumu hula has a personal connection to the Center’s Hui No Ke Ola Pono Native Hawaiian health care system. “I’m a member of Hui No Ke Ola Pono, who has helped me immensely over the past several years,” he explains. “Going through their Ornish program really helped me. It helped me to lose 80 pounds in a very healthy way. I didn’t take any medication. I didn’t have any type of operation. I already have other health challenges at 65. It helped me to really gain a different, healthier way of living in my senior years. And I can still enjoy what I do, continuing to teach hula and have music in my life and being able to share that.”

On the anniversary of the August 2023 fire, Guerrero and his halau performed in Lahaina. It was especially emotional for him as he lost his uncle in the fire. “My mom’s youngest brother, Maurice Buen, they called him Uncle Shadow, perished in the fire,” he says. “It was a very hard time for us because my uncle lived there for over 50 years. He was a commercial fisherman in Lahaina. His daughter was speaking to her father the day of the fire (on the phone). All of a sudden he said, ‘I need to go because there’s a fire approaching and I need to find some shelter.’ That was the last that she heard from him. When it came to finding where he was, my uncle and I had to submit our DNA. They had to go through the tedious process of finding out the people that were lost through DNA samples. We had a celebration of life at Fleming’s Beach to scatter his remains in February.

“It was a very painful year for all of us. But through our family, through our halau, through the efforts of our community, people kept giving and continue to give, either monetarily or just spiritually. And just helping us to cope was a really big part in helping to move through this hard time. When we were asked to perform in Lahaina, it gave me time to honor my uncle and my families once again, particularly our kupuna. The Lahaina celebration was to celebrate the lives of the kupuna that were lost, as well as the lives of the kupuna who survived and continue to go through this challenging process.

“It was sad, but it was just so beautiful to see all of these people come with grateful hearts and sharing their stories and their hopes and the continuance of loving the way that we do here on Maui. I really feel being born and raised here on Maui, we have a special kind of aloha that is particularly only from Maui. I say that very proudly.”

As a musician, Guerrero has been celebrated with Hoku Awards for Male Vocalist of the Year and Hawaiian Album. More recently he has composed songs for some special places in Japan.

“During the pandemic, I was asked to go to Kyushu,” he explains. “They invited me because I had written a song several years back of an area in Japan called Kamakura, where the great Daibutsu, the Great Buddha is. I wrote about how awestruck I was to see cherry blossoms in full bloom in that city and the Daibutsu. I wrote the song in Hawaiian language, but I gave it a twist of Japanese sounding with music, and my partner Pono Fried helped put that music together.”

His song had inspired some folks in Miyazaki to contact him. “People thought that maybe if they invited me I would write a song for Miyazaki,” he says. “I found out that Miyazaki is actually the birthplace of all the different gods of Japan. We decided to integrate our two beliefs of the different gods of Japan and the Hawaii gods from Maui. So when we flew there last year in May, we took waters of all the different sacred places here on our island, and decided we were going to present not only the song, but our exchange of cultures in respect for each other. We went to all of these different sacred places and did chants and hula and were met by Shinto priests. It was wonderful. We were on the news every night and in the newspapers every day.

“We ended our time there in a huge celebration outdoors with over 500 hula dancers. They danced the song, the hula to that song that I composed, which was taught over Zoom over the past couple of years. To my surprise, it came out so beautifully. Everybody danced it with so much pride and so much aloha.”

Kumu Hula Uluwehi Guerrero and Halau Hula Kauluokala perform on Oct. 11 for the 50th anniversary of the J. Walter Cameron Center. This free event includes the Maui Pops Orchestra and runs from 3 to 6 p.m.