Growing up in Northern California as a working class white kid, I look about as close to a Hawaiian as I do to a native Iraqi. However, this did not stop my father’s side of the family from indoctrinating me with a pride of being Hawaiian.
In all honesty, I am 1/16th Hawaiian and aside from a little bit of Native American inherited from my mother; the rest of me is pure European. At first look, I appear to be your average white male oppressor; my skin tone is light, my hair blonde, and my credit score is decent. However, as I previously stated I have a fierce loyalty to the Hawaiian people.
My grandparents migrated from Hawaii in the early 1960’s looking to pick up work and support my five uncles and aunties. As they moved here, they brought a lot of the culture of Hawaii with them. They regularly held luaus (Hawaiian feasts) with the Hawaiian club, spoke pidgin which is a mixture of Hawaiian and English slang, and most importantly they brought the music of the islands with them.
Some of my earliest memories of my grandmother are riding in the car with her as Aunty Genoa’s silky soprano voice. I don’t know if I was able to fully realize it at the time, but looking back at it, my grandmother was planting a seed of what it was like back on the islands. Now, as I am getting older and am starting to see how cultures are starting to blend together, I am growing thankful for Hawaiian music for keeping alive a culture that was once almost lost.
For those that may not exactly understand what Hawaiian music is, Hawaiian music is the folk music of the Native Hawaiians. It can be easily recognized by the laid back and relaxed feel of the music. At the very least Hawaiian music consists of one singer and a ukulele. Hawaiian artists have come to include the basic elements of a band which includes a bass guitar, drums, and either an acoustic guitar or a slack key slide guitar.
Modern Hawaiian music’s roots can be traced to the Post-Contact Era when Christian missionaries began to move to Hawaii and with them brought the hymnals of their religions. As the Hawaiians began to learn the hymns that the missionaries were teaching them, they themselves began to create their own songs. (citation 1).
Most people may think that Hawaiian music is more like the theme song from Hawaii 5-0, since that song is probably the best example of a song representing a place. Those people are very wrong in my opinion. Though Hawaiians have adopted the song as a sense of pride with the University of Hawaii performing the song at halftime of a lot of football games, it is not indicative of the Hawaiian music genre. The Hawaii 5-0 theme song is more representative of the surf rock genre of the 1960’s with its fast beats and electric guitar solos.
The reason the original producers may have used this song is the relationship of surfing and Hawaii. With many surfers in Southern California adopting a Polynesian lifestyle, it could have been easy to confuse the surf rock sound of Southern California and that of the islands.
Hawaiian music through the years has been used as a window to teach the world about Hawaiian culture and history. It can be heard in movies, television shows, Youtube videos, and Hawaiian Bar-b-que restaurants. Each time the music is used it evokes the feelings of being on the island, a fact that is not lost on producers in Hollywood.
When producers of television and movies set a show in Hawaii they usually try to incorporate Hawaiian songs to help set the scene. In the Adam Sandler movie “50 First Dates,” songs by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and the band the Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau were used as a way to help the viewers suspend belief and invest in the characters being in Hawaii.
Even when movies aren’t set in Hawaii, Hawaiian music has been used to convey feelings of happiness and closure. In the 2000 Sean Connery movie “Finding Forrester,” Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s cover of Judy Garland’s “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” was used during the end credits. The end credits showed the title character playing basketball through the window of his mentor’s apartment. I was left feeling relaxed and had a sense of closure with the hero’s journey.
Hawaiian music’s role as a history of the people of the islands continues whenever it’s used surfing videos. The marriage of Hawaiian culture and surfing has been around since the first Polynesian settlers came to the islands. According to a paper found on the University of Florida’s website titled the “Origins of Surfing,” “the Hawaiians who surfed, the ali'i or high class, claimed the highest reputation”
It’s this history of surfing and Hawaiians that is brought to mind every time Hawaiian music is used in surf videos. For example, in the 2004 documentary “Riding Giants,” director Stacy Peralta uses Hawaiian music as he explains the history of surfing on the islands. To the uneducated masses of the mainland, this serves as a history lesson about the Hawaiian culture, a history that many Hawaiians feel fiercely protective of.
This brings me to the most interesting examples of Hawaiian music in popular culture, which is the rising popularity of posting homemade music videos on Youtube. On Youtube Hawaiians are expressing their pride for their heritage through the meshing of music and video clips. In a video made by Youtube user Hokoluni78, paintings of ancient Hawaiian life and pictures of modern Hawaii are shown as the song Hawaii ’78 is played in the background. The result is a haunting three minutes which mixes the pride that Hawaiians have with the uncertainty of the American influence on Hawaiian culture.
Which brings us to the real meaning of Hawaiian music and that is its importance to Hawaiian people. UFC champion B.J. Penn who was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii, walks out to every match while Israel Kamakiwiwo’ole’s “E Ala E” is played. This is vastly different then how every other fighter walks out because of the relaxed vibes it has. Almost every fighter’s walk-out song is either a hard rock song or a hip hop song that is aggressive in nature. I honestly believe that Penn does this as a way of invoking the spirits of his ancestors for the fight.
Ancestry is very important to Hawaiians and the music is a way for older generations to pass down the culture and love of Hawaii to the younger generations. In an emailed conversation between my cousins and myself, this was very apparent as they all seemed to have the same feeling toward the music. My cousin, like myself, were raised here on the mainland and have only been to Hawaii on vacations, however, in spite of this one thing that was apparent was that they all felt closer with their Hawaiian heritage thanks to the music of the Islands.
My cousin Burnadette sums up this feeling best, “They sing of the beauty of my homeland – the birth place of my family and the resting place of so many of my ancestors, including my father. Being Hawaiian is a special gift that has been given to me by my ancestors and by my God. I love listening to the music and knowing that those artists love everything Hawaiian as much as I do.”
My cousin Jennifer, who has four children of her own, explained how she uses the music to instill the pride that was given to us by our grandparents. “Being Hawaiian is important to me, and introducing my children to our Hawaiian music brings the same smile and enjoyment to their faces, as it did for me as a child. Even though I started Kira, Jasmine, and Kaylee in Hula lessons when they were only 4 or 5, it made them feel important inside. They love telling people they are Hawaiian, and we have always made sure that our homes and cars are filled with Hawaiian memorabilia whether with Leis, wind-charms, grass skirts, or music, anywhere and everywhere represents our culture.”
As for myself, I have never been to Hawaii, though I feel the spirit of Hawaii in me. Whether it was form being raised around Hawaiians, listening to Hawaiian music, going to luaus, or listening to the stories of my grandparents, the Aloha spirit is alive in me. Whenever I listen to Hawaiian music I feel a bond with all of my ancestors who have come before and with the Kings and Queens of the Kingdom of Hawaii. I am proud of where my family has come from and I am proud to say that I am Hawaii. In the words of Bruddah IZ, “us guys is forever, our ancestors, our ancestors before them.”
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