Yelm native, artist Nui A’alona pays tribute to Polynesian musician Fiji in cover of ‘Nothing’

Nui A’alona, a 1999 graduate of Yelm High School and rising country music artist, has released singles in years past like “Just Add Summer,” “Up in Smoke,” and “Tonight’s on You,” but six months ago in November, the musician released perhaps his most meaningful song yet.

On Saturday, Nov. 23, 2025, A’alona released an acoustic cover of “Nothing” on YouTube and has since surpassed over 60,000 streams on the track. The track itself pays tribute as a cover of the Polynesian musician Fiji’s original track. The track was also released on Spotify on April 3, 2026.

Fiji died on July 24, 2025, and according to A’alona, the Fijian singer-songwriter played an instrumental role in bringing all Polynesian communities closer together. His loss was felt by the entire Polynesian community, and A’alona felt inspired to release a tribute to the historical Pacific Islander figure.

“So in the Polynesian world — which is Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans and more — this last year we lost Fiji,” A’alona told the Nisqually Valley News on Monday, May 25. “He was a very influential figure for the Polynesian culture. He was kind of like our Elvis, our Michael Jackson.”

Fiji, the musician, was born in Fiji and eventually moved to Hawai’i — where A’alona is from. The two lived in smaller, closely intertwined communities and A’alona drew a comparison to two town within the Nisqually Valley region.
“Where we’re from, it’s this town called Hauula and where Fiji moved to in Hawaii was Laie,” A’alona said. “They’re kind of like Yelm and Rainier. They’re very closely knit. Instead of having two high schools like we do here, they have one high school called Kahuku. They’re really well known for their football program and up there in the national ranks every year.”

He added that within the local community when Fiji moved there around the 1990s, the musician began to blend his styles to include Hawaiian, Samoan and Tongan sounds.

“They called it Jawaiian. It was like Hawaiian reggae. It had that reggae sound to it, but it had the Hawaiian and Polynesian feel to it,” A’alona said. “What’s really cool is that, we didn’t notice at the time Fiji first started putting out music, that he was a lot more important to our culture than we realized. Back in the 90s, 80s, 70s, Polynesians were kind of segregated where our father’s generation and before, Hawaiians and Samoans and Tongans didn’t really get along. If someone would ask, ‘are you Samoan?’ I’d say, ‘no, I’m Hawaiian.’ Samoans would actually get offended if they were asked if they were Hawaiian or Tongan.”

Once Fiji began making this new sounding music, it wasn’t long before it was played at every Polynesian party, every funeral, every graduation and gathering.

“What he was doing at his concerts, you’d have all these different types of islanders and Polynesians come, throughout the mid 2000s all the way to the present, his music literally changed the Polynesian culture,” A’alona said. “Now we’re all Polynesian. We still are what we are, but if you ask someone we’re all Poly now.”

When Fiji passed away last year, the entire Polynesian community felt the loss, A’alona claimed. The musician’s family confirmed that he passed away at the age of 55 on July 23, 2025, after battling illness. The day he died, A’alona said he was listening to the Fijian musician’s record titled, “Nothing.”

“I thought what better way to do a tribute than to take the original and put my flavor, because I’m an artist too,” A’alona said. “How can I come up with a version where it sounds Polynesian, it sounds Nui Country, but it also sounds Nashville? We ended up making this new record and it ended up becoming a tribute, ‘Nothing.’”

A’alona felt inspired to produce an authentic tribute, and felt called to remember the artist through the cover of “Nothing” as Fiji knew members of A’alona’s family.

“Fiji started out very small. He ended up being a very world renowned artist,” A’alona said. “Where we’re from, the A’alona homestead, we do a lot of graduation parties, luaus and Fiji, when he would be in town, he was always at our parties there. He would sing and play music. It was really cool to be able to put out a record tribute like this where it feels like a tribute and not where we’re capitalizing on a tragedy.”

You can stream A’alona’s cover of “Nothing” on YouTube at https://tinyurl.com/NothingAalona.