On a visit to Hawaii last month, I realized that my precious memories of Nina Keali'iwahamana are now a matter of public record - recorded, that is, by public television! Nina means as much to music lovers in Hawaii as Callas or Rysanek to most opera fans. It's obvious that they inhabit different worlds (besides the happy fact that Nina is very much alive), but I don't understand why there have to be barriers between those artificial domains. The meditations of Ali Akbar Khan, the ecstatic singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or the Ali Sabri Brothers come from the same place, create the same joy for me as Placido Domingo's arias, Yo Yo Ma's cello or Simon Rattle's conducting. I cannot believe that, regardless of experience with "ethnic music," anyone who loves music would not immediately and completely fall under the spell of Nina, a luminous singer of clarity, sincerity, kind and nourishing humor, deep and affecting emotions. And the good news is that now she and REAL Hawaiian music will be much more accessible via a series of programs from Hawaii Public Television. It is called "Na Mele," music or song, but with the same kind of additional meaning as "lieder" - not just any song, but the music of a very specific and special kind. OK, OK, some say, but do we really want to deal with "Hawaiian music" when the subject is a great singer? Look at it this way: "Gypsy music" is fine, but don't confuse it with Hungarian music. Bartok and Kodaly didn't, at a time when the rest of the world did, and we are all the richer for it. The late, somewhat lamented Kodak Hula Show was fine (although too close for comfort to the Kapiolani tennis courts I frequented), but if you think it's the same as the "music of Hawaii," you have a great discovery to make. Don Ho to Nina is what "Rent" is to "La Boheme," Rice's "Aida" to Verdi's. (Why not include everything in "music"? Hey, I'm broadminded but not tin-eared.) The traditions of Hawaiian music in Stuart Yamane's "Na Mele" encompass sacred ancient rituals, the "art songs" of kupuna (the passing of knowledge from generation to generation), Leo ki'e ki'e (the uniquely Hawaiian but more contemporary male falsetto sound), the jazz-equivalent of Hawaiian nightclub music at its best, and many other categories of the genre. If you see only one program in the "Na Mele" series, which began last year, try for the one with Nina, Mahi Beamer and Robert Cazimero (of the Cazimero Brothers) - three singers passionate about the music, but also completely at ease with the material, with each other. If you come to this performance from opera or lieder, you will instantly recognize excellence in phrasing, diction, effortless, elegant projection of the very essence of music. Go ahead and cross over; what do you have to lose other than little boxes of artificial categories? Other outstanding "Na Mele" programs feature many of the great Beamer clan - Keola, Nola, Moana among them - Genoa Keawe, Jerry Santos & Olomana, Byron Yasui, Bill Kaiwa, and so on. Don't let the name Keali'iwahamana bother you. This week's San Francisco Opera "Aida" had Diadkova, Burchuladze and Pyatnychko in the cast, and they were all excellent. Those of us embracing Tatar, Bulgarian, Armenian and other exotic divas as long as they sing well, can certainly accept and relish Nina K. Janos Gereben/SF, CA [log in to unmask]