Na mele paleoleo

Nā mele paleoleo (sing. mele pāleoleo lit. "song that speaks loudly and angrily") is a Hawaiian hip hop genre that fuses rap with lyrics in the Hawaiian language, Hawaiian Pidgin, or both. It emerged in Hawaii in the late 1980s as an expression of land struggles, cultural survival, social justice, and distrust of institutional power. Through protest performances it evolved into a recorded form in the 1990s tied strongly to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. The term itself gained wider public use in that era and is associated with sovereignty-era advocacy. Recognized as a form of Hawaiian performance poetry, nā mele paleoleo continues to serve as both artistic expression and political statement.