Anchorage

Photos: Music festival brings Hawaii to Anchorage, along with lots of musubi

A parking lot in northeast Anchorage was transformed Saturday into a small festival venue featuring Polynesian cuisine, dance groups and musicians.

The Aloha in Alaska Music Festival began in 2015 as a way to bring the best of Hawaii to Alaska and to share the culture and aloha spirit with the Anchorage community, organizer Tasha Kahele said. She and her family own local businesses Lei’s Poke Stop, Da Poke Man Express food truck and Kahele Investments.

The event, held outside Lei’s Poke Stop at Tikahtnu Commons, was blessed during a Wah Ngai Lion Performance and Dedication and was followed by numerous dance performances and a musubi eating contest, where contestants tried to eat as many of the rice, seaweed and Spam snacks as they could in five minutes. The popular Hawaiian band Maoli was featured as their headliner.

Check out more photos below.

Emily Mesner

Emily Mesner is a multimedia journalist for the Anchorage Daily News. She previously worked for the National Park Service at Denali National Park and Preserve and the Western Arctic National Parklands in Kotzebue, at the Cordova Times and at the Jackson Citizen Patriot in Jackson, Michigan.

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