Tag Archives: Hawai’i

by | October 25, 2024 · 6:00 am

Utopian desire and ukulele music in Japan

Historical and contemporary Japanese attitudes toward the ukulele have framed both the instrument and Hawaii as objects of idealized longing and utopian desire. This yearning embodies what Christine Yano describes as a “plucked paradise”—a concept that combines music-making on a stringed instrument with the imagery of flowers being harvested for personal enjoyment. In this context, plucking a string creates a soft, fleeting sound, while plucking a flower represents a subtle act of aesthetic appropriation. Both evoke a paradise that is temporary, sensual, and aestheticized.

Cover of a Japanese book of ukulele sheet music.

These perspectives raise important questions about the meanings that participants ascribe to the ukulele and its music in Japan. How do infrastructural elements, particularly the influence of Japanese Americans, contribute to the growth of ukulele culture in Japan? For instance, Japanese Americans like Haida “Harry” Yukihiko, considered the “Father of Hawaiian music in Japan”, and his brother Katsuhiko brought their knowledge of and enthusiasm for the ukulele to Japan in the 1920s when they visited to repatriate the ashes of their father but stayed to study at a university. Their enthusiasm for Hawaiian music and in-between status, with direct access to both Hawaii and Japan, helped foster the first ukulele boom in Japan. By examining the various dimensions involved in creating this “plucked paradise,” we can uncover the tensions, conflicts, and creative forces that shape this cultural exchange.

This according to “Plucking paradise: Hawaiian ukulele performance in Japan” by Christine R. Yano (Japanese studies 35/3 [2015] 317–330; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-82904).

Below, the Japanese duo Fukulele perform Clap your hands and sing with me, a song about world peace composed by Roy Sakuma. The group played the song at the 2022 Ukulele Festival Hawaii’s Global Play Along. The following video features the Japan Junior Ukulele Orchestra performing the same song.

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by | May 31, 2024 · 6:00 pm

The Hawaiian queen composer

Queen Liliʻuokalani was born into an extraordinarily musical family and was probably the most musically gifted of her class and time. She became Queen of Hawai’i in 1891 and reigned for two years, until she was deposed by the U.S. settlers under Sanford B. Dole, a Hawaii-born lawyer and judge who advocated for the Westernization of Hawaiian culture and government, and who later became the first and only president of the Hawaiian Republic. Under Dole’s orders, Liliʻuokalani was arrested in January 1895 and sentenced to life imprisonment; however, she was kept under house arrest in lolani Palace until her release in September of the same year.

Liliʻuokalani in 1853.

Her Hawaiian national anthem, composed circa 1868, was played at official functions for 20 years until a new anthem was written. In 1898, Liliʻuokalani wrote that her song compositions ran into the hundreds (after 19 years of composing at the time); even if that number was only half correct, it would still make her the most prolific Hawaiian composer of the 19th century.

Liliʻuokalani began her musical training around the age of seven with missionaries who taught her to sing. She was a multi-instrumentalist who was proficient on guitar, piano, zither, autoharp, and organ and was an adept sight-singer known to have developed perfect pitch. Liliʻuokalani’s early training took place during a unique period of Hawaiian history where Indigenous Hawaiian music traditions blended with Western cultures brought to the islands by sugar plantation owners and pineapple farmers.

Her aristocratic background exposed her to both worlds, as she learned about Hawaiian music, legends, and poetry along with Western waltzes and hymnody. Liliʻuokalani’s compositions often combined the melodies of hymns with storylines grounded in Hawaiian traditions. Although best known for love songs such as Aloha ‘Oe, many of her songs addressed political themes. For instance, the lyrics to one of her less-known compositions, Mai wakinekona a iolani hale, was published in a local Hawaiian language newspaper and informed people about the conditions of her imprisonment after being overthrown.

Read more in International encyclopedia of women composers (1987); find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

The painting at the beginning of the post is by Linda Ruiz-Lozito.

Listen to a 1904 recording of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s composition Aloha ‘Oe (Farewell to thee) below performed by Quartet of Hawaiian Girls from Kawaihao Seminary.

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by | July 21, 2023 · 6:00 am

Revival of hula ku‘i

The reign of King David Kālakaua holds special significance for Hawaiian traditions. After decades of missionary-led censure, Hawaiian customs became revitalized when Kalākaua encouraged their revival. Master teachers (kumu hula) were summoned to the court at Honolulu, where they enjoyed royal patronage. From the environment, hula ku‘i emerged as a new style of dancing.

The term ku‘i means “to join old and new”, and refers to the mix of old and new components of poetry, music, dance, and costume. Traditional conventions gained a new format: texts were strophic, and each strophe consisted of a couplet. Indigenous vocal styles and ornaments were added to melodies based on tempered tones and simple harmonies. Each couplet was uniform in length, most commonly eight or sixteen beats. The format mandated the repetition of the melody for each couplet, and each couplet was commonly performed twice. An instrumental interlude, popularly called a vamp, separated the stanzas. In dances by seated performers, this interlude is called ki’i pā. New sequences of movements joined preexisting, named, lower-body motifs.

The defining distinction of the hula ku‘i was accompaniment from guitars and ‘ukulele. For dances by standing performers, mele composed in the new format also had the accompaniment of ipuor other Indigenous percussive instruments. In the 20th century, performances of those mele came to be called either ancient hula or hula ‘ōlapa, referencing the division of labor between dancers (‘ōlapa) and musicians (ho’opa’a).

Read the entry on hula ku‘i by Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman in The Garland encyclopedia of world music. Australia and the Pacific Islands (2013). Find it in RILM Music Encyclopedias (RME).

The image above is of hula dancers and musicians, circa 1883. Photo courtesy of the Hawai’i State Archives. Below is a video of Hawaiian dance and music from the 2019 Merrie Monarch Festival held annually in Hilo, Hawaii.

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by | June 27, 2019 · 6:00 am

Hula, colonialism, and countercolonialism

Hula performers began touring throughout the continental United States and Europe in the late 19th century. These hula circuits introduced hula and Hawaiians to U.S. audiences, establishing an imagined intimacy, a powerful fantasy that enabled Americans to possess their colony physically and symbolically.

At vaudeville theaters, international expositions, commercial nightclubs, and military bases, Hawaiian women acted as ambassadors of aloha, enabling Americans to imagine Hawai’i as feminine and benign, and the relation between colonizer and colonized as mutually desired. Meanwhile, in the early years of American imperialism in the Pacific, touring hula performers incorporated veiled critiques of U.S. expansionism into their productions.

By the 1930s Hawaiian culture, particularly its music and hula, had enormous promotional value. In the 1940s thousands of U.S. soldiers and military personnel in Hawai’i were entertained by hula performances, many of which were filmed by military photographers. Yet Hawaiians also used hula as a means of cultural survival and countercolonial political praxis.

This according to Aloha America: Hula circuits through the U.S. empire by Adria L. Imada (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2012-30915).

Above, dancing the hula for servicemen, 1944; below, Hal Aloma with Lani McIntyre and his Aloha Islanders, 1949.

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