You know how just about every neighborhood in Hawai'i has the "rasta house"? A place where surfers put up Bob Marley pareaus in the windows, have "One Love" stickers on their trucks and play Chaka Demus and Peter Tosh music all day and night?

Friday morning, the rasta house down the street was blasting Michael Jackson from speakers in the window. Mama say mama sa ma ma coo sa. It was completely out of character from their usual playlist. It was a heartfelt tribute.

Long before his sold-out concerts at Aloha Stadium, Michael Jackson was loved and emulated in Hawai'i. He didn't have the obvious connection to the Islands that Elvis did with the movies he filmed here. He didn't cover Hawaiian songs like Bing Crosby, or have local musicians cover his songs very much, like they do Bob Marley. Yet it is so clear he had a huge impact on people here. That is one of the marvels of Michael Jackson's music. It was transcendent. You didn't have to know the guy or see him live to be connected to his work. His performances had meaning and resonance across cultures around the world.

Jackson's music reached the most remote corners decades before the information age, before even satellite communication or FM radio. When he released "ABC" and "I Want You Back" with the Jackson Five, Hawai'i was still getting television broadcasts a week late because the film had to be flown in from the Mainland. Places like Ka'u on the Big Island and the north shore of Kaua'i had only one television channel, and you could only catch radio stations at night. Yet every Gen X kid from Pahala and Hanalei knew "ABC" by heart and could do the kick-step-back-step dance the way the Jackson Five did in the Saturday morning cartoon.

His music was played on tinny radios in single-wall-construction bedrooms. It was the groove of junior proms, the one that made the entire prom court hike up their gowns and hit the slippery dance floor. The moonwalk was a test of true dancing talent, and if you couldn't do it, you weren't worth much among the recess-time pop lockers. For years, not a talent contest, school May Day performance or Miss Hawaii preliminary was without some sort of Michael Jackson-inspired performance. His presence in Hawai'i was as if he lived here.

A tribute to Jackson's life is dishonest without a mention of his terrible troubles in recent years. His music gave a generation the things he could never seem to get for himself: the spiritual uplift of witnessing true talent; the joy of a song that never gets old; the magic of an entertainer so brilliant he can make you forget your sorrow for a while.