Misophist - I think the crucial remark is: "...old style music, different scale from newer stuff. Haoles can't even hear where the notes are ...".
In Occidental music the scales are in half tones (semitones), in Oriental music (as I've heard it in the Near East and North Africa) they have quarter tones which are very difficult to distinguish for the European ear (my English-German dictionary even doesn't know the term).
Might this be the case with Far Eastern and Hawaiian music, too?

Wilfried