Storm Blowing from Paradise: Social Protest and Oppositional Ideology in Popular

Hawaiian Music

George H. Lewis

Popular Music, Vol. 10, No. 1, The 1890s. (Jan., 1991), pp. 53-67.

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Popular Music (1991) Volume 1011

Storm blowing from paradise:

social protest and oppositional
ideology in popular Hawaiian
music
G E O R G E H. LEWIS

All Hawaii stand together

Raise your voices . . .

It is now forever.

'All Hawaii Stand Together'

Liko Martin 1976
In the early 1970s, in the American Island State of Hawaii, popular music began a
transformation that was, to some extent, similar in form to what occurred on the
American mainland ten to fifteen years earlier, when popular music first merged
with the civil rights movement and then with the anti-Vietnam movement.
Hawaiian popular musicians, reacting to the commercially slick music of the tourist
trade and the Wai Ki Ki nightclubs, reached back to embrace the few ethnic artists
still alive and performing. They searched their island past for traditional material
and, as the movement consolidated, merged this material with their own pressing
social and cultural concerns to create a new type of music - part contemporary, part
traditional and all wrapped in a cloak of strong social protest against non-native
Hawaiians who they saw as having nearly totally destroyed their culture, their self-
identity, their pride and their sacred land. As Haunai-Kay Trask (1982, p. C2), a
spokesperson for the movement, put it:
Any society that has experienced the kind of impact the Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian
people have experienced wind up being on the bottom because they are inundated with
another culture . . . High rises, fancy clothes, and freeways - that's what United States
culture stands for. It's grotesque. They have no feeling for the fragility of life. Or flora or
fauna. Part of me hates the haoles with a passion, but part of me doesn't care. They're just
stupid and I want them to stay away.
The values and ideology of native Hawaiians, as touched upon here by Trask,
are to a great extent reactive and oppositional to those of the dominant, mainland
American culture. As such, they were linked, in the 1970s, to social reality and
action by the new music. As Clifford Geertz (1973, p. 216) has remarked of complex
symbol systems such as music: 'they are extrinsic sources of information in terms of
which human life can be patterned - extra personal mechanisms for the perception,
understanding, judgement and manipulation of the world'. In Hawaii, the new
music was just this - as it bloomed, so did the re-emerging Hawaiian sense of
pride, ha' aheo, which was intimately intertwined with the emerging struggle for
54 George H. Lewis

Hawaiian rights in the late 1970s and early 1980s. George Helm (1976, p. 3),
musician and activist, remarked: 'What we needed was to get Hawaiians active and
off their ass. Music is the easiest way I know, because people tune into music . . .
that's what I use music for'.
When the Hawaii Coalition for Native Claims held fundraising concerts on
the Iolani Palace lawn, Hawaiian musicians, singers and dancers performed from
nine in the morning, non-stop, until dusk. When there were skirmishes with land
developers, when demands were made for long-promised Hawaiian homestead
lands, when the H-3 freeway drew fire from environmentalists, when protesters
occupied the small island of Kahoolawe to protest its use as a bombing target by the
American military, the music was there, articulating an ideology of protest and
opposition to the dominant, mainland controlled political and economic culture of
the state. The lyrics of 'Hawaiian Awakening', one of the more popular of these
songs, reveals the tone and thrust of the music's concern:
Deep in this tortured island all alone

Hear the winds cry, the mountains moan . . .

A culture, a land, destroyed

By white men's greed

Taking our pride and honor,

They planted their seed . . .

We followed their rules much too long

Our protests are heard in our music and song. (Maxwell 1976)

Stand together: music, social protest and ideology

Since the music of any society or group is symbolic, and since it undeniably forms
an aspect of reality for societal or group members, it is an integral aspect of that
group or society's social construction of reality and - as such - should contribute in
a large part to the dominant and alternative ideologies of the society or group in
question (see, for example, Frith 1981, especially Part 111, pp. 159-210). It is clear,
for example, that a song such as 'Hawaiian Awakening', or Liko Martin's 'All
Hawaii Stand Together', have been significant in defining and communicating
alternative and oppositional ideologies in Hawaii in much the same way as the
works of Bob Marley did in Jamaica for the Rastafarian movement or the songs of
Bob Dylan did in America for the civil rights and youth movements of the 1960s
and early 1970s. In fact, even the 'professional Hawaiian' Don Ho, whose long-
standing tourist show at Duke Kahanamoku's in Wai Ki Ki is seen by many to be
the epitome of 'sell-out' commercial fare, refers to Liko Martin as 'the movement's
Bobby Dylan' (quoted in Hopkins 1978, p. 24).
Denisoff and Street have pointed out in their studies of the role of music in
social protest movements that if one examines just the lyrics of protest songs, one
can find many examples of diagnoses of what is wrong with the present order of
things, proposed solutions to these wrongs, and rationales for participation in the
movement - all key elements in the definition of an oppositional ideology (Denisoff
1983; Street 1986). In addition to the development of ideology through the content
of lyrics, a second important function of music is in the development of social
solidarity among group members and potential members (Cuthbert 1985). Music
appeals to, and reinforces, common values and social identities among potential
and active group members. The fact that making music is not often taken seriously
as a political activity often gives musicians and singers involved in creating opposi-
 Storm blowing from paradise 55

tional ideologies more license to reach a broader range of audiences than would be
possible for other types of political activists.
In addition, there are symbolic aspects of music that help to both define
ideology and develop solidarity that are not contained strictly in the lyrics of the
songs themselves. For example, the musical forms chosen by protest musicians
often times involve elements drawn from the 'traditional' music of the oppressed
group. These residual elements, to use Raymond Williams' terminology,' usually
involve the use of traditional melodies, transformed by the use of new lyrics, but
which are recognised by most participants as deriving from 'the people's' music
(Dunaway 1987).
Also, familiar forms of musical structure may be used, such as rhythm
patterns, tonalities or harmonics, as well as the special use of traditional instru-
ments that are a part of the specific cultural heritage of a group, to symbolically
define the music as that of the people. Finally, the style and emotional level of
presentation of the music, the body language of the performers, and the styles of
dress they choose - usually in opposition to the established way of presenting
popular music in the larger society - all serve to identify these players and their
performances as symbolic of the group.
In considering the presentation and performance of music, one has to also
take note of its ritual nature and the effect of this ritual in creating feelings of
identification and solidarity in the audience. Once an individual has been brought
into the sphere of a group's activities, the use of music in gatherings can, unques-
tionably, reinforce the feelings of communal belonging and social solidarity. Such
social rituals, when they are effective, help to emotionally charge the interests
members of these groups hold in common, elevating them to moral rights and
surrounding them with a sort of symbolic halo of righteousness. This function of
emotionally charging the interests of group members is, as Collins has suggested,
more effectively done via music, a non-rational medium, than it is via speeches,
pamphlets or other rational, language-based means (Collins 1982, p. 28). Songs
simultaneously provide a message and an emotional, euphoric and integrative
experience, something neither rhetoric nor manifesto can do. As John Street has
said of reggae music:

Its politics lie as much in its collective character as in its radical lyrics and apocalyptic visions.
Even without the words, the sounds are those of a collective resistance, of people making -
albeit briefly - a world of their own (Street 1986, p. 220).

Lovely hula hands: the commercialisation of Hawaiian culture and iden-

tity in music
The sort of ideology-building and reality-constructing so effectively done by
popular music in a society can be clearly seen in the case of the significant shifts
and changes in Hawaiian popular music that have taken place in this century - and
most especially the radical changes in the symbolic nature of this music that
occurred from about 1970 through the early 1980s, a time of cultural reawakening
and social protest in Hawaii that was labelled the 'Hawaiian renaissan~e'.~ This
cultural flowering, evidenced in Hawaiian dress, language and dance, was most
strongly tied to developments in the field of music. Until then - the early 1970s -
Hawaiian music of this century was mostly commercial. It was heavily influenced
56 George H. Lewis
and produced by the mainland American recording industry and oriented for
consumption by tourists and those on the mainland who wished to create and
preserve a cartoon image of the islands as a lush, vacation playground, populated
by smiling natives whose childish simplicity was matched only by their earthy
friendliness and welcome of visitors from afar. This image was clearly an alien one
for Hawaiians, reflecting as it did the dominant ideology of mainland American
culture and the tourist industry, even as it trivialised and, at times, openly ridi-
culed the Hawaiian identity.
Commercialisation of Hawaiian culture began most likely with American
interest in the Hawaiian Islands engendered by the Spanish-American War and
the imperialistic phase of the country, so evident at the turn of the century. By
1915, when a group of Hawaiian musicians, singers and dancers - featuring George
E.K. Awai's Royal Hawaiian Quartet - were headline acts at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition in San Francisco, a musical craze was born that was to
sweep the United States and, later, Western Europe as well (Awai 1977, pp. 5-6).
The early Hawaiian musicians - Awai, Frank Ferara, Pali Lua and the Bird of
Paradise Trio, and Sol Hoopii (who played background music for many Paramount
movies) - inspired mainland music composers, the Tin Pan Alley people, to begin
writing this sort of material for consumption. The result was a series of 'phoney'
Hawaiian songs, many with nonsense lyrics that were supposed to 'sound' like the
Hawaiian language, such as the A1 Jolson hit, 'Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula'. Appear-
ing as well were songs that were pointedly demeaning to the Hawaiian, such as
Harry Owens's (Princess Poo-Poo-ly Has Plenty Papaya', which manages to both
assert that Hawaiian women are free and unselective in bestowing their sexual
favours and to titter at, and belittle, this image at the same time. The song also
mocks the cultural heritage of Hawaii, as reflected in the monarchy and royal titles
of traditional Hawaii in lyrics such as these:
The Princess Poo-Poo-ly has plenty papaya
She loves to give them away
For all the neighbors, they say . . .
Oh me, oh my, you really should try
A little piece of the Princess Poo-Poo-ly's papaya
Sasa, sasa, sasa, sasa, say.
She may give you the fruit
But she holds on to the root
Sasa, sasa, sasa, sasa, say.
Hawaiian musicians themselves, who came to the mainland to tour in
vaudeville and theatre, gradually incorporated many of these much requested
songs into their repertoires - as well as rearranging Hawaiian classics to the newly
popular jazz beat that was sweeping A m e r i ~ aAs. ~ the first tourist hotels opened on
Wai Ki Ki, this commercial 'Hawaiian' music was the natural sound for the stage
shows and dance bands that sprang up with the tourist industry. Ragtime, jazz,
blues, foxtrot - all were used in creating songs with Hawaiian themes, but with
English lyrics and sensibilities. These hapa haole songs, played live in Wai Ki Ki and
across America by touring bands, were broadcast throughout the world on the
famous radio programme, 'Hawaii Calls', as well as being featured in films such as
Bing Crosby's 1937 Waikiki Wedding, from which the hapa haole song, 'Sweet Lailani'
won the Oscar for best song4
This music, much of it commercially produced by non-Hawaiians, came to be
 Storm blowing from paradise 57

defined as authentic Hawaiian music and was mistakenly assumed to represent

and reflect the cultural identity of the people. Although the fragile tradition of
authentic Hawaiian music was kept barely alive by some - mainly in the rural areas
of the islands - this was also true, sadly, even among Hawaiians themselves, many
of whom took on the 'false culture' and the impact of its negative images of
Hawaiians as part of their heritage. From 1930 and on into the 1950s, this
'Hawaiian Sound', much of it created in Tin Pan Alley, flourished commercially
both on the American mainland (especially in the 1930s and 1940s) and in the
lounges and supper clubs of Wai Ki Ki.
This era was dominated by Alfred Apaka, an Hawaiian singer who claimed to
be descended from King Kaumala, ancient ruler of the island of Kauai. Apaka
became a staple in the rapidly proliferating hotel lounges of Wai Ki Ki, working
early in his career as a vocalist for the band in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and later
singing songs such as 'Princess Poo-Poo-ly', 'Beyond The Reef and 'Lovely Hula
Hands' for the national radio network shows, 'The Voice of Hawaii', and the
Webley Edwards hosted 'Hawaii Calls'. Apaka also worked Henry Kaiser's
extravagant Hawaiian Village Hotel in Wai Ki Ki and the popular La Hula Rumba
nightclub. In addition, he spent time on the mainland, furthering his career as the
'Voice of Hawaii' by appearing as vocalist for Ray Kinney's orchestra in the Hotel
Lexington in New York City in the early 1940s, as well as being on national
network television in the early 1950s and in at least one Universal-International
motion picture. Apaka, characterised by his publicists as having 'one of the most
golden voices the world has ever known . . . singing out from the heart of a man
whose love for the Islands and its people is as boundless as the sea from which it
grew',5 epitomised this mainland image of Hawaii and Hawaiians.
Apaka died of a sudden heart attack just as the incorporation of Hawaii into
the American Union as a State in 1959 intensified mainland interest in things
Hawaiian. The middle-class tourist trade to the islands heated up and was reflected
throughout American popular culture, in television programmes such as
'Hawaiian Eye', books such as James Michener's Hawaii, and the infamous hula-
hoop craze. This new mainland interest was also reflected in the commercial music
of the time, which added the 'exotic' island sounds of Martin Denny and Arthur
Lyman to the commercial hapa haole standards of the 1930s and 1940s.
Completing the musical mix by incorporating into it the mainstream easy-
listening pop and country sound of the early 1960s, Don Ho stepped into the
vacuum created by Apaka's death. Ho and the Aliis, performing nightly at Duke
Kahanamoku's, rapidly became the most popular act in Wai Ki Ki, performing such
songs as 'I'll Remember You', and the ever requested 'Tiny Bubbles'. With a
mainland recording contract and hit songs that swept the easy-listening American
music market, Don Ho was, in the 1960s, Hawaiian music to most Americans. As
the Don Ho Show became increasingly bloated with hoax and hype - middle-aged
tourist women stepping on stage to be kissed by the entertainer and staying there
to be taught, and dance, the 'traditional' hula - many Hawaiians began to distance
themselves from this spectacle that commercial Hawaiian music and culture had
become. As Charles K.L. Davis (1978, p. 93), a noted traditional performer, said:

Hawaiian music is going right down the drain as far as Wai Ki Ki goes . . . it's a shame. Have
you seen (Don Ho's) show lately? Awwwe! It's the most frightening thing I've ever seen. . .
It was just dismal. God, it was awful! It's absolute amateur hour.
58 George H. Lewis
Don Ho, in his turn, defended the show and its content and intentions:
I do it because people pay me a lot of money to do it . . . So what if the show's for tourists?
What's wrong with tourists? I mean, why local people are so prejudiced against tourists?
(Ho 1982, p. 50)

Hawaiian awakening: birth of the new music

The movement for civil and cultural rights in Hawaii that emerged in the late 1960s
and early 1970s revolved symbolically around the new music, and other cultural
forms, developed in this 'renaissance'. As John Waihee, leader of the 1978 State
Constitutional Convention, at which amendments were passed to establish the
Office of Hawaiian Affairs and to address problems of traditional Hawaiian rights,
education, and lands, said, the new music of the renaissance was 'the glue that
kept the package together . . . You cannot understand how it all happened without
understanding the renaissance' (quoted in Kanahele 1978, p. 7).
That there was something new beginning to happen culturally and musically
in Hawaii was evidenced by the decision, in November 1966, of a local radio station
- KCCN - to broadcast Hawaiian music exclusively, twenty-four hours a day.

Although a good deal of the available music was of the commercial, tourist variety,
some of it was authentic, traditional and 'grass roots'. This music was being made
by a few artists, people like Genoa Keawe, Maki Beamer, Gabby Pahinui and the
Sons of Hawaii, who were performing in the old styles and keeping alive a tenuous
and fragile musical tradition - one that was supported mostly in rural and working-
class, blue-collar Hawaiian areas and venues. This music, much of it programmed
at first in order to fill the demands of twenty-four hours a day programming,
became, upon its exposure, increasingly popular with the more urban-oriented,
socially conscious and dissatisfied young Hawaiians who listened to this local
station. As the station received feedback from this highly vocal audience, tradi-
tional Hawaiian music began to make up more and more of the playlist.
Due to pressure from the owners, in 1969 the station briefly entertained the
idea of dropping the all-Hawaiian format, but abandoned their plans when they
received 4,200 letters of opposition in one week (Kealoha 1981, pp. 1, 6-8). In April
1971, KCCN sponsored a four-hour concert at the Wai Ki Ki Shell that featured
local musicians, many of whom played traditional music in the old styles. The
concert was a sell-out and a symbolic watershed in the resurgence of interest in
authentic Hawaiian music.
Much of this interest from young Hawaiians who were searching for some
sorts of cultural roots resulted not only in their increasingly strong support of the
few traditionalists who were still performing, but also in their own desire to play
this music, to be a part of this tradition and, soon following from this, to create new
music within the old traditional forms. As Krash Kealoha, then station manager of
KCCN, explained it in 1973:
Up until that point (1970), we were playing old Hawaiian music and hapa haole tunes. Then
several kids started talking to me, and it turned out they were disappointed because they
were writing their own music and coming up with their own style, and some were even
going into the studios and spending their own money - $5,000 or whatever it cost to produce
a record. But when the record came out, it wouldn't get on any radio stations . . . At first
there was a lot of resistance from our steady listeners (to us playing this new music), some of
the older people who felt anything that wasn't sung in Hawaiian was rock and roll (Kealoha
1973, p. 35).
 Storm blowing from paradise 59

KCCN, with its exclusive focus, became a key in dissemination and

popularisation of the music of the Hawaiian renaissance, as well as a source of
information about the music and the people who were creating it.
A second key to the launching of this musical movement was the interaction
between an ageing traditional singer, Phillip Pahinui, and two young musicians,
Peter Moon and Palani Vaughn. Pahinui, better known as 'Gabby' or 'Pops', had
been active musically in the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s, playing mostly traditional
music, though he was, at times, heavily influenced by mainland jazz. But his music
had not been popular enough to base a career around, and he made his living
working on street crews for the city of Honolulu. By the 1960s, he remembered: 'I
had just about given up, was worlung with the City and County then. The only
time we'd play music was when we'd finish work on the road and sit down under a
tree and strum' (Pahinui 1978, p. 38). In addition, Pahinui had been a heavy
drinker his whole life, and this had influenced his behaviour - making him erratic
enough so that he never could sustain the effort to make a successful career.
Peter Moon, and others, attracted by Gabby's knowledge of the old songs and
the techniques of slack-key guitar-playing, haunted him for lessons. As Moon said:
Gabby is a genius, you know. He really is. The guy still knows his fucking stuff. And he's a
storehouse of 40 years being in the business . . . He's just uncanny, he baffle us four or five
times a year. He'll play slack key in these real old tunings, then smile at Cyril (his son) and
me as if to say, 'see, you didn't think I had it, did you? (Quoted in Hopkins 1978, p. 21)

Gabby himself was pleased that these young musicians paid attention to him,
and to the Hawaiian music he played and thought was so important. As he said:
My music represents my nationality. My family and what I'm hearing today with all the
Hawaiian boys playing Hawaiian music . . . and I think that's what they should do . . . stick
to that Hawaiian music. Then you're talking about Hawaii itself. (Moon 1977, p. 7)

Not only was Peter Moon to learn the music and its significance from Gabby,
he also encouraged him to record again, and eventually became Pahinui's agent
and producer - launching a successful mid-life career recording as the head of the
'Gabby Band', as well as solo works and contributions to Ry Cooder's 1976
Warner's album, Chicken Skin Music. Pahinui died of a heart attack in 1980, more
popular than he had been ever in his life.
At the same time that Peter Moon was learning slack-key guitar from Gabby
Pahinui, Palani Vaughn was seriously researching Hawaii's musical past, looking
for material upon which to build a career:
We've had chanters and dancers in our family going back several generations. I started out
just looking for songs, you know, but then I got into the origins of the music . . . Peter Moon
and I were in the same graduate course in Hawaiian art history . . . We had mutual friends
and I asked him if he'd like to work on an album with me. In the process, the Sunday Manoa
was formed. (Vaughn 1979, p. 146)

The Sunday Manoa, first recorded in 1969 and the most influential of the new
Hawaiian groups, originally consisted of Moon, Vaughn, Baby Kalima, and two of
Gabby Pahinui's sons, Cryil and Bla. Not only did all these young musicians have a
strong interest and grounding in traditional Hawaiian music, they also had been
extensively exposed to the popular traditions of 1960s youth music, from Bob
Dylan to the Beatles. Prior to his involvement with Pahanui, Peter Moon himself
had gone to school in the early and mid-1960s on the American mainland, where
60 George H. Lewis

he soaked up the sounds of social change that were being created in American and
British music of the time (Hopkins 1978, p. 21).
Adding some amplification and increasing the number of instruments used,
while experimenting harmonically, The Sunday Manoa developed a style of play-
ing that pleased most of the purists, but still attracted the interests of the younger,
pop-oriented listeners. Within a month of organising in a garage in Waimanalo, the
band landed a local recording contract and was playing regularly in the Kahala
area, in many of the same clubs that were keeping Gabby Pahinui and the tradi-
tionally oriented sons of Hawaii afloat. In addition, their recordings began to be
aired on KCCN, and the band began to attract a following. Their album Cracked
Seed, recorded in the early 1970s, sold nearly 30,000 copies in one year in Hawaii - a
huge number for a local band on a local label - showing that a band could remain
faithful to traditional music and also be an economic success in the Islands.
Also important for the early success of the group was a young songwriter
who was another member of that Hawaiian art history course, Larry Kimwa.
Kimwa wrote five of the songs for the first Sunday Manoa album, and went on to
become one of the most influential and prolific of the songwriters of the renais-
sance, penning songs on his own and with other figures, such as Eddie Kamae of
the Sons of Hawaii.
Although the Sunday Manoa did not survive the 1970s as a band, its members
moved on to other musical projects that reflected their individual concerns with
Hawaiian culture and identity. Palani Vaughn began a solo career resurrecting
musical material from Hawaii's last monarchial era. He was replaced by the
Cazimero brothers - products of Honolulu's Kamehameha School, with its recent
academic emphasis on Hawaiian language and culture. When the group finally
disbanded, the Cazimero brothers went on to a highly successful career in
Hawaiian music. Peter Moon continued to write and record as The Peter Moon
Band, and was instrumental in founding and sponsoring an annual concert of
traditional Hawaiian music, Kanikapila, which has been held at the University of
Hawaii every year since 1971. Thus the members of the Sunday Manoa both
collectively as that band, and individually, in their own separate projects and
interests, were a major influence in developing and popularising this new
Hawaiian music.
While KCCN brought traditional music to people's attention and played the
new music as it developed, and the members of the Sunday Manoa showed how
this traditional sound could be shaped to compete successfully in the marketplace,
it was another group that provided a good deal of the artistic direction of the new
music, as well as forging links to its rural Hawaiian past - the Sons of Hawaii.
Eddie Kamae and the Sons are scholars who searched the musical past of
Hawaii for old songs no one had recorded and combined these songs with their
new material that, many times, sounded so 'authentic' that it was assumed to be
traditional by many who heard it. Their sound was called grassroots, or k u a' aina,
the music of respect and love by their fans. Already established at the time of the
musical and cultural renaissance in Hawaii, the Sons had a loyal following of elder,
blue-collar and rural Hawaiians. Now they became 'hot' - elder statesmen and
accomplished tunecrafters for the young musicians of the movement. A song co-
written by Kamae and Larry Kimura, 'E Ku'u Morning Dew', became, in the late
1970s, the most popular song in the state, outdrawing all other requests at KCCN
by 7 to 1 (Hopkins 1978, p. 22). It was possibly the most recorded song, as well,
 Storm blowing from paradise 61

appearing on albums by many of the renaissance bands and singers. As Keith

Haugen, a singer and performer, said of the Sons of Hawaii:
They are the true pioneers . . . It's like on the Mainland when singers would immediately
include the latest Beatles songs in their repertoires, Hawaiian musicians over here would do
the same with songs of the Sons of Hawaii . . . When they write new stuff, they're so good
they're thought of as being traditional. (Quoted in Hopkins 1978, p. 24)
The fourth major factor in the musical launching of the renaissance was the
establishment, in February of 1971, of the Hawaiian Music Foundation, set up by
George Kanahele to preserve and perpetuate Hawaiian music. In 1972 the Founda-
tion held its first slack-key guitar contest and, in 1973, began sponsoring falsetto
and steel guitar contests. In 1975, the Hawaiian Music Foundation began publica-
tion of Ha' Ilono Mele, a monthly newsletter dealing with Hawaiian music and, in
cooperation with St Louis High School, offered classes in Hawaiian music which,
over the 1970s, were taken by well over one thousand students (Ha' Ilono Mele 1981,
P P 4-51.
As Kanahele said, looking back over the decade, in 1979:
There appears to be more young and old people learning to play Hawaiian music, more
teaching and more performing it, than at any time in the past 20 or 30 years . . . Significantly,
the impetus for the resurgence in Hawaiian music has come essentially, if not entirely, from
the local community - the lyrics are in Hawaiian, the themes are Hawaiian, the composers,
for the most part, are Hawaiian. It has not come from the outside, nor from the tourism
industry. The most popular Hawaiian groups almost disdain the tastes of the visitors.
(Kanahele 1978, p. 7)

Hawaiian soul: the music of the renaissance

The new music of the renaissance had much in common with the music of many
emergent social and cultural movements, performing ideological, motivational and
integrative functions for those who performed and listened to it. It was national-
istic and, above all, celebrated the traditions of native Hawaiians, in opposition to
the cultural domination of the mainland United States and the entertainment needs
of the booming tourist industry of the 1970s and 1980s.
George Helm, a singer and activist in the movement who was lost at sea in
1977 while making the crossing between Maui and the small island of Kahoolawe
as part of a protest against the American military use of Kahoolawe as a practice
bombing range, would begin his concerts with the Hawaiian line: 'He punahele no
'e na Ka makua', which translates to 'You are the favourite of the generation
before'. In his choice of material, Helm (who, after his death, was elevated to the
status of martyr by the movement) relied heavily on songs written in the first half
of this century by native Hawaiians - songs that, in their fragile, rural voices, spoke
out against the destruction of Hawaiian culture. He called these songs Hawaiian
soul. As his close friend 'Ilimia Pi' ianai a' observed:
George came to understand the political activism, the crying hurt and the unspoken dignity
of the Hawaiians of the 1920s, the 1930s and the 1940s through these songs, which were very
dear to him . . . A connection that flowered in his generation, in the movement he was a big
part of.6
The new musical groups of this movement refused to continue the tradition of
'cute' group names of the past, like the Royal Hawaiian Serenaders or the Wai Ki Ki
62 George H . Lewis

Beachboys - names that conjured up images of happy-go-lucky brown lackeys of

the Hawaiian films and nightclubs. Instead, they named themselves after Hawaii,
the Land: The Sunday Manoa, Hui Ohana, the Makaha Sons of Ni 'ihau.
This last group name cleverly makes all the cultural connections of the renais-
sance. Makaha is an area near Honolulu that is poor, blue-collar and ovenvhelm-
ingly native Hawaiian. Ni' ihau is a small island that has resisted the cultural
onslaught of the twentieth century. The few native Hawaiian families who live
there work the land in the old ways. There is no electricity, no running water. No
one, not even the Governor of the state, is allowed on Ni' ihau without an invi-
tation. Being 'sons of this island (which two of the group actually are), links them
with the past, the land, and at the same time recalls the name of the group 'Sons of
Hawaii' and all they have stood for.
This concern with the land is a theme strongly reflected in the lyrics of the
new songs (such as 'E Kuu Morning Dew', and 'Nanakuli Blues') which celebrate
the beauty of various island places and lament their destruction by contemporary
off-island concerns, or the fact that the land - once Hawaiian - is now owned by
foreigners who refuse to treat it with the care and reverence it demands. As George
Helm said in description of these new songs:
Hawaiian views on nature are the subject of many songs and contain a true respect for
nature. Many of the songs now openly express, if one understands the words, the language
- pain, revolution; it's expressing the emotional reaction the Hawaiians are feeling to the
subversion of their lifestyle . . . Without the aina (land) and without the aloha aina (love of the
land), we have nothing. (Helm 1976, p. 3)
This love of the land and what has happened in Hawaii is nowhere expressed
better than in the lyrics of Peter Moon's beautiful 'Hawaiian Soul':
How could you leave us?

You sing your melodies

And send them out to sea . . .

You know the harmony.

They say you left

That other voices called

And drowned your laugh . . .

But I believe you know

To guide us after. (Moon 1981)

Songs have also been written and sung in support of political demonstrations
since early 1970, when protesters sought to prevent the Bishop Estate from evicting
a pig farmer from their lands in Ohau's Kalama Valley. These crusades against
actions of the large landowners, real estate developers, and the American military,
gained momentum through the 1970s and into the 1980s. As Olomana's Jerry
Santos put it:
Kawela Bay and Turtle Bay have been rezoned for resort areas, and the people who lived
there for 20 years have had to move out because their leases were traded suddenly to an
insurance company on the mainland. And nobody even knew about it . . . But if you sing a
song about it, all kinds of people will know . . . (Santos 19xx, p. 47)
Another related topic addressed in the lyrics of the new music is hostility
towards tourists and criticism of their impact on Hawaii in terms of land use, real
estate development and bastardisation and cooptation of traditional Hawaiian
culture. Walter Ritte articulated this feeling in an 1982 interview:
I hate tourists. Oh, I don't hate the tourist person - I hate the industry. We have no control
 Storm blowing from paradise 63

over the industry. It's like a giant malignant cancer and it's eating up all our beaches, all the
places that are profound for our culture. It's grabbing them. They take the best. (Ritte 1982,
p 68)
Ritte's point is made tellingly in Chip Hatlelid's 'Fujumira Store', with its
pidgin-tinged lyrics:
They wen' broke down the Fujimira Store

It's gone, you no see 'em dea no more . . .

They said they going build one shopping complex,

I wonder what they going broke down next? (Hatlelid 1977)

Songs like 'Fujimira Store' can be quite blunt in their condemnation of tour-
ism and developers, or they can be very subtle, focusing on the daily lives of
people in some romantic past time before the influx of tourism, making their points
in the traditional Hawaiian style of kaona, or hidden meaning.
Hawaiian music reflects attitudes toward life and nature. These are basically clean protests
and not harsh, but with a deep hidden meaning, which Anglo-Saxon reasoning cannot
appreciate (Helm 1976, p. 3)
The kaona style can be seen in songs such as The Sons of Hawaii's 'Na Makai 'Eha',
written by Dennis Kamakahi (1980), which describes the winds of the valleys of
Halawa, Wailau, Pelekuni and Waikolu as beautiful island women who fall victims
to a fast-talking sea captain, and in George Helm's version of 'Ku'u Pua I
Paoakalani', which he describes as:
A song written in a prison. The prison was the Iolani Palace and it was written by the late
Queen Liliukaloni. She wrote this song for a place in Wai Ki Ki that is now the location of the
Holiday Inn Motel. But at one time, oh, there used to be a beautiful garden, as expressed in
this song that was written behind the bars . . .7
This beautiful song, sung in Hawaiian, describes only the beauty of the
garden. Without the knowledge imparted by Helm's introduction, it would appear
to be an innocent prayer to beauty. With the knowledge of the introduction, it
becomes a complex, multi-layered song of protest. As with much effective cultural
protest against a powerful dominant ideology, this song's meaning is thus cloaked
and hidden - and overlooked by the dominant group even as it spreads.
Many of the new, and the traditional, songs are written and sung in
Hawaiian. This is of special import because - even with the increased study of the
language evidenced in the 1970s and early 1980s - many Hawaiians did not under-
stand it. Thus, they relied on translations or explanations given orally by perform-
ers during their live shows or, in some cases, appearing as linear notes on their
record albums. Because of this, many songs were more likely to be recognised by
their melodies than their titles, and the fact of being sung in Hawaiian took on the
larger and more general symbolic significance of a protest against the destruction of
the language and its replacement with English. In this way, the very act of singing
or listening to songs sung in Hawaiian became an act of social protest against the
dominant culture at the same time as it was an affirmation of cultural identity
within the movement.
Many of these new songs also used musical forms that were associated with
native tradition - from the chants of early Hawaii to the song stylings of the slack-
key guitarists. Many also used some lyrics from the older songs, brought into the
cultural repertoire of the new composers by artists such as Gabby Pahinui, The
Sons of Hawaii, George Helm or Genoa Keawe, with only parts of the lyrics
64 George H . Lewis

changed to 'update' the songs for their new purpose. Thus, the new songs were
located in a well established tradition of the people's music, which enhanced their
appeal to a wide range of listeners and provided a basis for grass roots identifica-
tion - a fusing of emergent pop forms of protest and residual ideologies of the
traditional song united in opposition to the dominant, commercial ideology and
music of mainstream America's version of Hawaiian culture, as heard in the music
of Kui Lee and Don Ho and others singing in the tourist hotels of Wai Ki Ki.
The instrumentation of the new songs was also an important characteristic of
their appeal. Many of the most popular performers, such as The Sunday Manoa or
Hokule'a, used indigenous folk instruments in their arrangements - instruments
that had not been a part of popular music until their introduction in the 1970s. The
slack-key guitar regained its central place in the music of the 1970s, but along with
it came strings like the fiple and the requinfa and percussions like the ipu (a gourd
drum), 'ili 'ili (stone castanets), pahu (a sharkskin drum), and a 'ulilu (triple gourd
rattle). The music played on these instruments was more polished than traditional
rural songs and chants, and many of them were played in ways that would never
have occurred in traditional settings. Nevertheless, the use of these instruments
emphasised nationalistic pride in the traditions of the people and was aimed at
establishing an identification with those traditions and people. In addition, the use
of such instruments was a self-conscious act in opposition to the forms of
instrumentation found in mainland 'pop' music or the tourist lounges of Wai Ki Ki.
Thus, the selection of instruments was also a political statement about the need to
respect Hawaiian tradition and to oppose mainland domination and cultural coop-
tation by the tourist industry.
Singers and performers of the new music also used their choice of stage
clothing to reinforce their message, wearing the simple clothing of the Hawaiian
working-class, or the traditional clothes and leis of the Hawaiian past, as opposed
to the flashy suits and uniforms of many of the Wai Ki Ki performers. As Israel
Kamakawiwaole of the Makaha sons of Ni' ihau said: 'We just us, man. We wear
our own clothes, what our mamma made us. You don't like, tough. You bettah
leave, yeah . . .' (personal communication 1982).

'Akoha Oe' or Honolulu city lights? The movement and the music today
How effective was the music of the renaissance in making changes in Hawaii? As
previously mentioned, by 1978 the movement had brought enough pressure on the
state for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to be created and for official attention to be
paid to issues of education and land tenure at the State Constitutional Convention.
The leader of that convention, John Waihee, called the music of the renaissance the
'glue that held this package together' (quoted in Kanahele 1978, p. 7). In addition,
Hawaiian was officially recognised, along with English, as a language of the state.
These sorts of changes, or accommodations, by the dominant political culture
were highly significant steps for many of those who gave grass roots support to the
movement. By 1982, the Honolulu Advertiser could write in an editorial that:
A movement which some people dismissed as short-lived and superficial has become well
established in many areas. Political changes have been the most visible .. . Most people
have a special concern for the Hawaiian people and culture, stemming in part from a sense
of injustice at the disadvantaged circumstances in which many find themselves. (Honolulu
Advertiser 1982, p. 8 )
 Storm blowing from paradise 65

And yet, for the committed hardcore of the movement, these sorts of changes
were seen as more cosmetic than real. The State had responded, some things were
different, but the underlying problems still remained. To these persons, the major
change was in grassroots support of their movement. Many who rallied around the
call in the 1970s were satisfied with what had been done, and turned their attention
elsewhere. And in Hawaii, as in mainland America, the new generation of young
people seemed more interested in carving out a place for themselves in society,
than in actively championing the causes of others. As Haunani-Kay Trask reflects:
I think many local people of races other than Hawaiian care about Hawaii . . . but everyone
wants to make you a token and say, 'Oh, you're a nice Hawaiian. This is what Hawaii
should be . . .' We are still a colony but it isn't as apparent as it was. (Trask 1982, p. C1-2)

The issues of land ownership and the effects of the expanding tourist industry
(increasingly fuelled economically and client-wise by Japan) are still important and
have not effectively been addressed by the state. Again, as Haunani-Kay Trask
explains it:
The Hawaiian religion was based on the land. Hawaiians looked at the land as something to
feed them, the westerners look at land as a commodity, to be exchanged for something else,
for money, for profit making. When you take the land away, you've cut us off from who we
are. What's the alternative?
What I see is Hawaiians serving the food and cleaning up in the hotels, and the haoles
are the upper level management. Stratification by race is an old story in Hawaii. It was true
on the plantations and it's true in the tourist industry. The tourist industry is just the new
plantation. (Ibid.)

But along with this disappointment at the lack of radical change in a political
and class based sense, it is also true that a number of important steps were taken
that certainly would not have been, if it had not been for the music and the
movement. Some of this change is difficult to measure in a political sense, but it
exists. As George Kanehele points out:
We are seeing the 'Great Gathering' of the Hawaiians - at hula competitions, musical
concerts, song contests . . . and church meetings. There are far more occasions for
Hawaiians to gather today than at any other time in recent memory, and consequently,
many more are being thrown together, leading to better communication and acquaintance-
ships - what the Maoris call 'group rhythm'. (Kanahele 1978, p. 7)

This feeling of social solidarity and ethnic and cultural pride, awakened in the
renaissance and nurtured by the music, is a force that now has to be taken into
account in Hawaiian politics, something that was conspicuously not the case prior
to 1970.
Another predictable consequence of the renaissance is that Hawaiian culture,
by becoming visible, also became marketable. It did not take the tourist and
popular music industries long to realise that there was commercial potential in the
new cultural forms. The Brothers Cazimero, originally a part of the Sunday Manoa,
have been lured to the Monarch Room of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where they
perform their 'authentic' Hawaiian music for those tourists who want to experience
the real Hawaii. Tickets for the annual concert of traditional Hawaiian music,
Kanikapila, are obtainable in the tourist agencies of Wai Ki Ki and in the major
hotels. Traditional slack-key guitar styles, resurrected during the renaissance, have
been fused with American mainstream pop by Keola and Kapono Beamer to create
the hit, 'Honolulu City Lights', a bouncy tune that has become the most popular
66 George H . Lewis

Island song of the 1980s. Even Peter Moon, looking for a hit in the late 1980s, has
reached back to Tin Pan Alley to record 'Stardust'.
As Hawaii moves into the 1990s, the General Manager of the just opened
Embassy Suites Resort on Maui, Mark Szafranski, earnestly tells the press at the
resort opening that : 'Embassy Suites has an understanding of this special land and
its loving people. We have dedicated our hospitality to furthering the values and
perpetuating the culture of the Hawaiians'. (Sun Francisco Examiner 1989, p. T4)
To which Haunai-Kay Trask, of the renaissance, would probably reply:
You want us to go dance in the hotel? Prostitute our culture? Is that what you want? Are you
talking about the 'aloha spirit?' That was never ours, you know. It was an invention of
Arthur Godfrey. (Trask 1982, p. C1)

Conclusion
Viewed from a sociological perspective of social action, popular music can be seen
as one important set of symbols that individuals utilise to construct and reinforce
their social reality. Out of symbols, ideologies are built - both dominant ideologies
of a society and others, possibly in opposition to the dominant ideologies. Using
Raymond Williams's conception of such ideologies as residual, emergent and
oppositional is instructive in analysing and interpreting the emergence of new
Hawaiian popular music in the 1970s and early 1980s. This music, and the styles in
which it was written, played and performed, were clearly oppositional in nature
and arose as protest to both the dominant ideology of the mainland and the tourist
industry, as found in the hapa haole music played in the supper clubs of Wai Ki Ki
and as a serious protest against the political and social realities this dominant
ideology supported - trivialisation of the Hawaiian people, destruction of their
land and their past, as well as the negatively perceived cultural and ecological
impacts of mass tourism. In addition, the ideology of this music was characterised
by both an emergent quality in the nature of the issues involved and a residual
quality, in that it was consciously tied into the symbols and traditions of the
Hawaiian past. Such a form, anchored as it was in both emergent and residual
forms, has proven to have had a degree of serious impact in combatting the still
strong dominant American mainland ideology that continues to be commercially
viable in the Islands.

Notes
1 Williams has made a useful distinction
between the dominant ideology and various
possible co-existing alternatives. Such alterna-
tive ideologies, created and supported by their
own cultural symbols, may be either residual
(formed in the past, but still remembered and,
to some extent, still a part of the cultural pro-
cess), or emergent (the expression of new
groups outside the dominant group). They
may also be either oppositional (challenging
the dominant ideology), or alternative (co-
existing with it). See Williams (1977, 1981) for
extended discussions of these concepts.
2 This term was coined by George Kanahele,
founder of the Hawaiian Music Foundation, in
a speech to the Rotary Club of Honolulu in
early 1977. The speech was published in full by
the Honolulu Advertiser in that year. Kanahele
spoke of the movement .n Hawaii in these
terms.
Some have called it a 'psychological renewal',
a purging of feelings alienation and inferiority.
For others it is a reassertion of self-dignity and
self-importance . . . What is happening among
Hawaiians today is probably the most signifi-
cant chapter in their modern history since the
overthrow of the monarchy and loss of nation-
hood in 1893. For, concomitant with this

cultural rebirth, is a new political awareness
which is gradually being transformed into an
articulate, organised but unmonolithic, move-
ment. (Kanahele 1977, p. Dl)
3 See Noble (1943, p. 22) and Hopkins (1980) for
discussions of jazz and its early influence in
hapa haole music.
4 Interestingly, none of Waikiki Wedding was
filmed in Hawaii, nor was 'Sweet Lailani'
recorded there. All the film's images were con-
Storm blowing from paradise 67
trived on the mainland, and the sets were
located in California.
5 Saul Sajet, Liner notes The Best of Alfred Apaka,
Decca album DXB 163.
6 'Ilima Pi' ianai 'a, liner notes on The Music of
George Helm, Gold Coin Records, GC 1001.
7 George Helm, recorded introduction to 'Ku 'u
Pua I Paoakalani', The Music of George Helm,
Gold Coin Records, GC 1001.

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