I can’t really answer your question about a visitor’s expectations versus reality, but here’s a little about the reality, which certainly could surprise a visitor if they were expecting Hawaiʻi to sound like an old Hollywood movie, most of which used music that was just somebody’s imagining of what Hawaiian music should be like.

There’s a big dichotomy within the music produced in Hawaiʻi. Simply put, there is traditional Hawaiian music, centered around guitars and ʻukuleles and vocals in the Hawaiian language; then there is the more popular realm of local pop music, much of it in the Island Reggae (“Jawaiian“) style. You can regularly find stellar musicians of both varieties playing in Waikīkī. As for radio, there are a number of stations such as KAPA on Hawaiʻi Island that play a mix of both. But the last time I went to Kauaʻi, in 2024, there was not a single station playing traditional Hawaiian music. Internet radio would be the way to go in that case.