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July 31, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Rum Ration

“It hath been a constant observation, that in long cruizes or distant voyages, the scurvy is never seen whilst the small-beer holds out, at a full allowance; but that when it is all expended, that ailment soon appears.”

“It were therefore to be wished, that this most wholesome beverage could be renewed at sea; but our ships afford not sufficient convenience.”

“The Russians however make a shift to prepare on board, as well as at land, a liquor of a middle quality between wort and small-beer, in the following manner.”

“They take ground-malt and rye-meal in a certain proportion, which they knead into small loaves, and bake in the oven. These they occasionally infuse in a proper quantity of warm water …”

“… which begins so soon to ferment, that in the space of twenty-four hours their brewage is completed, in the production of a small, brisk, and acidulous liquor, they call quas, palatable to themselves, and not disagreeable to the taste of strangers.” (Captain Cook)

Beer had been the staple beverage of the Royal Navy until the 17th Century, used as a self-preserving replacement for water, which became undrinkable when kept in casks for long periods. (Colls; BBC)

Beer and ale were preferred for drinking since all kept better than fresh water, which spoiled and turned slimy in its storage casks. (Rupp; National Geographic)

But as the horizons of the British Empire expanded, the sheer bulk of beer – the ration for which was a gallon (eight pints or 4.5 liters) per day per seaman – and its liability to go sour in warmer climates, made it impractical to take on long voyages.

Wine and spirits started to take its place and when in 1655, with the capture of Jamaica from Spain, the navy was introduced to rum. (Colls; BBC)

From that point onwards, the regular supply of high-quality rum from that island as well as from other English-ruled Caribbean territories meant that the shamefully unpatriotic habit of handing out French brandy to English sailors could be dropped.

The official adoption of rum by the Royal Navy in 1731 was thus the logical choice: it gave a helping hand to the colonial lobby in the Caribbean and it also fired a pleasing broadside at the old Gallic enemy.

At first the daily standard issue was half a pint of overproof (ie very strong) spirits. Needless to say, this was quite a potent dose, especially when consumed swiftly and on an empty stomach. (Ferguson)

A big reason that the Royal Navy encouraged the rum ration was related to scurvy – an ailment that was common to sailors, who didn’t get much fresh produce that contained Vitamin C.

Don’t get confused, though: Rum doesn’t naturally contain Vitamin C in any meaningful quantity. However, it goes well with lime juice, which ships carried and gave out to sailors daily.

In 1740, concerned by the drunkenness of sailors who received half a pint of rum per day, Admiral Sir Edward Vernon declared that the rum should be mixed with water, writes Harry Sword for Vice. To that mix was added the daily dose of lime and some sugar – although the connection between citrus and scurvy wasn’t formalized for more than 50 years.

Being a sailor was tedious – when it wasn’t terrifying … “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned,” British humorist Samuel Johnson wrote in the latter half of the 1700s.

Like many funny people, Johnson had a talent for overstatement, but it was true that sailing was hard work. At sea for up to months at a time, doing backbreaking work in a highly disciplined environment where punishments like flogging could be meted out, sailing was no day at the beach.

“There was no system of imprisonment, or financial penalty,” writes Andrew Lambert for BBC, “although the rum ration could be stopped.” At the same time, Britain spent much of the 1700s and 1800s at war, where chance of injury and death was relatively high.

The demands of such a life helped to make the rum ration “a vital part of the fabric of the Royal Navy–rationed, used as a currency, and a veritable way of life,” Sword writes. (Eschner; Smithsonian)

Sailors would check their rum had not been watered down by pouring it onto gunpowder and setting light to it, from where the term “proof” originates. By volume, 57.15% alcohol has been calculated as the minimum required for it to pass the test.

For hundreds of years, Royal Navy seamen queued up in galleys from the poles to the tropics to receive their regulation lunchtime tot of rum (then name for the navy alcohol ration).

But the tradition was ended. On July 31, 1970, known in the navy as Black Tot Day, the sun passed over the yardarm for the final time and free rum was retired from navy life.

Black arm-bands were worn as the Queen was toasted. Tots were buried at sea and in one navy training camp, sailors paraded a black coffin flanked by drummers and a piper. (Colls; BBC)

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Rum Ration
Rum Ration
Rum Ration
Rum Ration
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Rum Ration
RUM RATION ABOARD HMS KING GEORGE V, 1940 (A 1777) Below deck, a line of seamen queue to collect the daily rum ration for their mess. Each man is holding a jug or bucket. The rum is being issued from a large barrel with 'THE KING - GOD BLESS HIM' on it. Royal Marines issue the rum with measuring jugs while a Royal Navy Petty Officer and Sub-Lieutenant observe. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205185139
RUM RATION ABOARD HMS KING GEORGE V, 1940 (A 1777) Below deck, a line of seamen queue to collect the daily rum ration for their mess. Each man is holding a jug or bucket. The rum is being issued from a large barrel with ‘THE KING – GOD BLESS HIM’ on it. Royal Marines issue the rum with measuring jugs while a Royal Navy Petty Officer and Sub-Lieutenant observe. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205185139
Rum Ration
Rum Ration
Rum Ration
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Filed Under: Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Hawaii, Rum, Rum Ration, Tot

July 30, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Thomas Square

On January 22, 1850, the King’s Privy Council addressed “Another suggestion to set apart a day for marking out the boundaries of the square on the Plains of Waikiki to be called by the name of Admiral Thomas was also approved of by vote.” (Privy Council Minutes, January 22, 1850)

Then, on the anniversary of sovereignty restoration that year, “At sunrise a gun was fired, His Majesty’s large standard was hoisted at the Palace, the Hawaiian ensign on the Fort, on the Hill, and on all Hawaiian vessels.”

“At eight o’clock all the Foreign Consuls displayed their flags. The foreign vessels in port hoisted their ensigns, and some of them were beautifully decorated with flags, private signal, pendants, &c.”

“Amongst them all, was conspicuous HBM’s schooner Cockatrice, being dressed out with great taste, and having the Hawaiian ensign flying from the fore, during the day.”

“The merchant’s offices, warehouses, stores, and shops were more generally closed, than during any preceding anniversary.”

“It being generally known that it had been the King’s intention, had health permitted, to have ridden out in state, to the plain, and there given the name of Thomas Square, to the exact spot on which the gallant admiral of that name, restored his Flag, numerous parties on horseback, during the day, visited the spot.” (Polynesian, August 3, 1850)

“The restoration of the Hawaiian Monarchy in July 1843 – ending the five-months-long illegal seizure and occupation by the Englishman, Lord George Paulet – created the chief, and indeed the only, notable site in Kulaokahu‘a.”

“The exact locale – the future Thomas Square – leaped into history with, literally, a bang. On the morning of July 31, two pavilions decorated with greens and a flagstaff stood on the plain east of town.”

“On the street line to the west, tents from warships in port punctuated their arid surroundings. A thick mat of rushes paved the line of march. Thousands waited for the ceremonies of the day.”

“At 9:30, Rear Admiral Richard Thomas of the British navy called on the King to sign official documents. A half hour later, several companies of English sailors and marines were drawn up on a line facing the sea, with an artillery corps on their right.”

“Admiral Thomas and his staff arrived in the King’s state carriage, while the Monarch himself came on horseback, accompanied by the household troops. The artillery honored His Majesty with a 21-gun salute.”

“At a given signal, the British flag officer bowed his colors; the British flag was then lowered and the Hawaiian flag raised amid salvos, first from Thomas’s HMS Carysfort, then from English and American warships, merchantmen and whalers, and finally from the Honolulu fort and the Punchbowl battery.”

“A great cheer arose as the wind caught the folds of the Hawaiian flag. Admiral Thomas read a long declaration, after which marines, sailors, and artillery passed in a review witnessed by Commodore Lawrence Kearney and officers of the USS Constellation. Hawaii’s sovereignty had been restored.” (Greer)

Later, the Kingdom was looking for ways to replenish a budget shortfall. “In its search for additional funds, the official eye rested on Kulaokahu‘a, also called the Waikiki Plain or just The Plain.”

“This unpalatable stretch of real estate sprawled between the American mission and Makiki Stream. An area which an overheated promoter might have referred to as one of sweeping vistas, Kulaokahu‘a was best known for dust storms and impressive nothingness.”

“It was so empty that after Punahou School opened in July 1842, mothers upstairs in the mission house could see children leave that institution and begin their trek across the barren waste. Trees shunned the place; only straggling livestock inhabited it.” (Greer)

The government proposed to raise funds by selling lots in Kualokahu‘a and placed an advertisement in the Polynesian, “Building Lots – The Minister of the Interior is prepared to sell or lease Building Lots between Honolulu and Waikiki, on application being made according to law. [Nov. 14,1846]”

“In advance of this announcement, the government had built three roads with arched stone bridges. The former were extensions of King, Young, and Beretania Streets; the bridges spanned Makiki Stream. At about the same time certain lots were surveyed and numbered”.

“These preliminary sales hardly constituted a stampede. At this rate, great civilizations might have waxed and withered away ere the Waikiki Plain became a blooming, peopled suburb.” (Greer)

“Hoping to project a more urban image of The Plain, government decreed that after May 4, 1850 no horses, cattle, or other animals could run at large there. The creatures thus addressed could not decipher this message, and more than 30 years later agents were being appointed to take up strays.”

“As 1853 ended, the lots were ‘not in demand,’ a phrase repeated by Bishop in April 1855. Apparently Kulaokahu‘a’s desert environment transmitted dry rot to land values there.”

“Bishop wrote in 1856 that he had sold his two lots at auction for $25 each. Kulaokahu‘a plots were in mid-1858 almost worthless, only two or three of all sold having been improved.”

“In the early 1850s, some ceremonies celebrated the Restoration, but the practice faded away. As a recreational mecca, the dusty waste of the Square had the pull of a sauna in the Sahara. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser in 1864 called for a public park.”

“The unfenced and unimproved Thomas Square could have been made into an ornament of the city and a lever to raise property values around it. But this decorative hoist did not materialize. Nine years later, some small prospect of a park appeared.” (Greer)

“Honolulu now had a paper park in a paper subdivision.”

“But events move slowly in this Kingdom, except in the way of contracting debt, and for a long time Thomas Square was only a name.”

“In 1882 the Legislature appropriated a small sum of money for the improvement of Thomas Square, and every session since then money, in scant supply, has been voted for the same object.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 7, 1887)

“Very fortunately the control of Thomas Square was given to the Hon. A. S. Cleghorn, whose knowledge of landscape gardening is only equalled by his desire to beautify all public parks and grounds about Honolulu.”

“In the sixties little or no attention was paid to it, and it was soon overgrown with weeds. About 1875 I took charge and had the Square laid out and piped for water, and also had a band stand erected.” (Cleghorn; Thrum 1909)

“The Banyans now growing there are from ‘Ainahau,’ while most of the other trees are from the Government Nursery. There were crotans planted round the band stand and also in clusters about the grounds.” (Cleghorn; Thrum 1909)

“The square of seven acres had been laid out to scale in circles and half circles by the Hon. Robt. Stirling, and Mr. Cleghorn worked upon these plans.”

“Walks were laid out; valuable trees, flowering shrubs and flowers were planted, and an untiring supervision was given to the work, until today Thomas Square, at a trifling expenditure of money, is one of the most agreeable places of public resort to be found anywhere in the world compressed into the same limited space on a dead level.”

“But this did not suffice. Mr. Cleghorn, when the grounds had been sufficiently improved, went around among his friends in the city and raised sufficient money to build a grand stand for the band and provide seats for several hundred people in the grounds.”

“The grand stand was erected by Mr. F. Wilhelm, and is in every respect an improvement upon that in Emma Square. It is about double the size of the latter, and has a ceiling and sounding board.”

“There are thirty-four seats on the ground, ten of which are iron, recently imported from England. The remainder are of wood and were made to order here. They are fixtures.”

“The seats were placed in position yesterday. Hon. Mr. Cleghorn personally superintended the distribution of the seats, which afford shade during the day and an opportunity of enjoying the music by night. As a convenient and agreeable resort for all classes of citizens Thomas Square will be found unrivalled.”

“A wide path, close to the outer fence on its four sides is being opened, so that pedestrians may enjoy the luxury of an agree able promenade instead of walking along the dusty road.”

“The Royal Hawaiian Band, as already stated, plays at Thomas Square for the first time this evening. We bespeak a large and enthusiastic attendance.”

“Only one word of warning: do not touch plant or flower. These are grown for public gratification and should be held sacred. Let persons in charge of children remember this.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 7, 1887)

In 1925, a Joint Resolution of the legislative session set aside Thomas Square as a public park and placed it under the management of the Park Board of the City and County of Honolulu. It remains this today. It was recently refurbished by the City and a statue of Kamehameha III erected.

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Kulaokahua_Lots-Lawa-Reg1100-1885
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Kulaokahua_GoogleEarth
No._2._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_Catholic_church._(c._1854)-Honolulu_to_Waikiki
No._2._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_Catholic_church._(c._1854)-Honolulu_to_Waikiki
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West of Thomas Square-Reg1998-1901
No._2._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_Catholic_church._(c._1854)-Honolulu_to_Waikiki-Detail
No._2._View_of_Honolulu._From_the_Catholic_church._(c._1854)-Honolulu_to_Waikiki-Detail
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Kulaokahua-early-1840s-Reg0814-Metcalf
Kawaiahao Church in 1885-Look towards Diamond Head
Kawaiahao Church in 1885-Look towards Diamond Head
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Thomas Square-Historic Hawaii Foundation
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1843 (July) - May 1845 Early version of the present flag
1843 (July) – May 1845 Early version of the present flag

Filed Under: Economy, General, Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Place Names, Prominent People Tagged With: Hawaii, Ka La Hoihoi Ea, Paulet, Thomas Square, Admiral Thomas, Sovereignty

July 29, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Mission Stations

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of ABCFM missionaries set sail on the Thaddeus to establish a mission in the Hawaiian Islands; they anchored at Kailua-Kona on April 4, 1820.

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”), about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

One of the earliest efforts of the missionaries, who arrived in 1820, was the identification and selection of important communities (generally near ports and aliʻi residences) as “Stations” for the regional church and school centers across the Hawaiian Islands.

As an example, in June 1823, William Ellis joined American Missionaries Asa Thurston, Artemas Bishop and Joseph Goodrich on a tour of the island of Hawaiʻi to investigate suitable sites for mission stations.

On O‘ahu, locations at Honolulu (Kawaiahaʻo), Kāne’ohe, Waialua, Waiʻanae and ‘Ewa served as the bases for outreach work on the island.

By 1850, eighteen mission stations had been established; six on Hawaiʻi, four on Maui, four on Oʻahu, three on Kauai and one on Molokai.

Meeting houses were constructed at the stations, as well as throughout the district. Initially constructed as the traditional Hawaiian thatched structures; they were later made of wood or stone.

One of the first things the first missionaries did was begin to learn the Hawaiian language and create an alphabet for a written format of the language. Their emphasis was on preaching and teaching.

The instruction of students in schools (initially, most of whom were adults), in reading, writing and other skills initially fell to the missionaries. The schools generally served as both native churches and meeting houses, and were established in most populated ahupua‘a around the islands; native teachers and lay-ministers were appointed to oversee their daily activities.

The missionaries were scattered across the Islands, each home was usually in a thickly inhabited village, so that the missionary and his wife could be close to their work among the people.

In the early years, they lived in the traditional thatched houses – “our little cottage built chiefly of poles, dried grass and mats, being so peculiarly exposed to fire … consisting only of one room with a little partition and one door.” (Sybil Bingham) The thatched cottages were raised upon a low stone platform. Later, they lived in wood, stone or adobe homes.

The missionary family’s day began at 4 am (… it continued into the night, with no breaks).

The mission children were up then, too; in the early morning, the parents taught their children. “We had one tin whale-oil lamp between us, with a single wick…. Soon after five we had breakfast.” (Bishop)

By 9 am, after accomplishing all domestic duties and schooling of the children, the wives would begin the instruction of the Hawaiian children – and taught them for six solid hours, occasionally running into the house to see that all was straight.

“Very soon I gathered up 12 or 15 little native girls to come once a day to the house so that as early as possible the business of instruction might be commenced. That was an interesting day to me to lay the foundation of the first school ever assembled”. (Sybil Bingham)

“During the period from infancy to the age of ten or twelve years, children in the almost isolated family of a missionary could be well provided for and instructed in the rudiments of education without a regular school … But after that period, difficulties in most cases multiplied.” (Hiram Bingham)

“Owing to the then lack of advanced schools in Hawaii, the earlier mission children were all ‘sent home’ around Cape Horn, to ‘be educated.’ This was the darkest day in the life history of the mission child.”

“Peculiarly dependent upon the family life, at the age of eight to twelve years, they were suddenly torn from the only intimates they had ever known, and banished, lonely and homesick, to a mythical country on the other side of the world …”

“… where they could receive letters but once or twice a year; where they must remain isolated from friends and relatives for years and from which they might never return.” (Bishop)

Missionaries were torn between preaching the gospel and teaching their kids. “(M)ission parents were busy translating, preaching and teaching. Usually parents only had a couple of hours each day to spare with their children.” (Schultz)

Very prominent in the old mission life was the annual “General Meeting” where all of the missionaries from across the Islands gathered at Honolulu from four to six weeks.

“Often some forty or more of the missionaries besides their wives were present, as well as many of the older children. … Much business was transacted relating to the multifarious work and business of the Mission. New missionaries were to be located, and older ones transferred.” (Bishop)

Above text is a summary – Click HERE for more information on Mission Stations

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Mission Stations - MissionHouses-Map
Mission Stations – MissionHouses-Map
Kauai-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)
Kauai-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)
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Oahu-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)
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Molokai-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)
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Maui-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congre
Hawaii-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)
Hawaii-Mission Stations-Hawaiian Congregational Churches (SCHCC)

Filed Under: Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, Missionaries, Mission Stations

July 28, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Fishponds

In ancient Hawai‘i, fishponds were an integral part of the ahupua‘a. Hawaiians built rock-walled enclosures in near shore waters to raise fish for their communities and families. It is believed these were first built around the fifteenth century.

Only in Hawai’i was there such an intensive effort to utilize practically every body of water, from seashore to upland forests, as a source of food, for either agriculture or aquaculture.

The ancient Hawaiian coastal fishpond is a sophisticated land and ocean resource management technique. Utilizing raw materials such as rocks, corals, vines and woods, the Hawaiians created great walls (kuapā) and gates (mākāhā) for these fishponds.

A fish was kapu to the Hawaiians during its spawning season, to allow a variety of fish to reproduce. Although the chief or commoners were unable to catch fish in the sea at specific time spans, they were available in the fishponds because fishponds were considered a part of the land.

The general term for a fishpond is loko (pond), or more specifically, loko iʻa (fishpond). Loko iʻa were used for the fattening and storing of fish for food and also as a source for kapu (forbidden) fish.

The two major categories of loko were shore ponds and inland ponds. Hawaiians recognized five main types of fishponds and fishtraps. The primary ocean-based ponds were:

  • loko kuapā – what we consider the typical coastal fishpond, artificially enclosed by an arc-shaped seawall and containing at least one sluice gate (mākāhā)
  • loko pu‘uone, an isolated shore fishpond containing either brackish or a mixture of brackish and fresh water, formed by development of a barrier beach paralleling the coast, and connected to the ocean by a channel or ditch
  • loko ‘ume‘iki, a shore pond with numerous lanes leading in and out, was actually a very large fishtrap, whose walls were submerged at high tide, enabling fish to enter, and slightly above sea level at low tide. Fish were not continually raised or stored inside these structures, but were trapped and used immediately after capture.

Two forms of inland ponds were used to store fish, as well:

  • loko wai, a natural freshwater inland pond
  • loko i‘a kalo, small inland irrigated taro plot ponds

In ancient times, control of one or more fishponds was a symbol of chiefly status and power. Fishponds after the Great Mahele became private property and part of the adjoining land.

Fishponds are unique in Hawai‘i in that they are considered submerged lands, yet they are real property that can be brought, sold and leased.

The commoner had no absolute right to fish in the ponds, nor in the sector of ocean adjacent to the chief’s land – all of such rights were vested in the chiefs and ultimately in the King.

In 1848, when King Kamehameha III pronounced the Great Māhele, or land distribution, Hawaiian fishponds were considered private property by landowners and by the Hawaiian government.

This was confirmed in subsequent Court cases that noted “titles to fishponds are recognized to the same extent and in the same manner as rights recognized in fast land.”

Because of their location in the coastal zone, Hawaiian fishponds are controlled by a regulatory framework where County, State and Federal agencies each exercise some degree of control over activities associated with the pond.

There is a separate chapter in the State laws (Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes -HRS §183B) that deal with fishponds. Under certain circumstances, reconstruction, restoration, repair, or use of any Hawaiian fishpond are exempt from the requirements of chapter §343 (environmental review laws.)

When I was a kid, there were a couple abandoned and derelict fishponds down the channel near our house on Kāneʻohe Bay, but I never thought of them as ponds. My first real exposure to fishponds was the pond fronting the Nottage’s grandmother’s house on Molokaʻi.

While at DLNR, I remember the fishpond restoration on Maui with Kimokeo Kapahulehua (I still proudly wear the T-shirt from their program “‘Ao‘ao O Na Loko I‘a O Maui – Revitalizing a wall Revitalizing a culture”;) likewise, Colette Machado and Walter Ritte showed me fishponds on Moloka‘i and the work school groups were involved in there.

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Paiko-Pond-Life-1937
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Old_photograph_of_the_Heʻeia_fishpond-(WC)
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Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Hawaii, Fishpond

July 26, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hapa-Haole Music

Traditional Hawaiian music was based upon mele oli and mele hula as performed in the pre-Western-contact era. Mele oli means plain chanting, while mele hula signifies chanting accompanied by hula.

Subsequently, mele hula kuʻi – chant and dance style with western influences – developed in the late-19th and early 20th centuries from mele hula. These three forms served as the foundations of authentic Hawaiian music.

In 1879 in Hawaiʻi, Portuguese musicians (Madeira Islanders) played on “strange instruments, which are a kind of cross between a guitar and a banjo, but which produce very sweet music” (this Madeiran guitar, the machete, was destined to become the Hawaiian ʻukulele.) (Hawaiian Gazette – September 3, 1879)

In about 1889, Joseph Kekuku began sliding a piece of steel across the strings of a guitar, thus inventing steel guitar (kika kila); at about the same time, traditional Hawaiian music with English lyrics became popular.

All of this helped set the foundational sound for a new music in Hawaiʻi.

From about 1895 to 1915, Hawaiian music dance bands became in demand more and more. These were typically string quintets. Ragtime music influenced the music, and English words were commonly used in the lyrics.

This type of Hawaiian music, influenced by popular music and with lyrics being a combination of English and Hawaiian (or wholly English), is called hapa haole (literally: half white) music.

In 1903, Albert “Sonny” Cunha composed “My Waikīkī Mermaid,” arguably the first popular hapa haole song; two years later he wrote “Honolulu Tom Boy,” which became immensely popular. (The earliest known hapa haole song, “Eating of the Poi”, was published in Ka Buke o na Leo Mele Hawaii…o na Home Hawaii in Honolulu in 1888.)

Sonny Cunha was also known as a talented pianist who incorporated the piano into a Hawaiian orchestra for the first time. As a composer, pianist and orchestra leader, Cunha attracted many audiences – residents and visitors alike – with his new type of music; although pure Hawaiian songs still retained their popularity among kamaʻaina residents.

The new style and tempo of Cunha’s music came to exert an enormous influence on another musician, Johnny Nobel (later called the ‘Hawaiian Jazz King;’) in 1918 Noble joined Cunha’s band on drums and xylophones, and thus embraced the new style of music. Nobel also learned composition from Cunha and began to compose in the new style of Hawaiian music.

Noble’s first rise to fame came as the leader of a major hotel orchestra, at the Moana Hotel. He felt that jazz and Hawaiian music blended beautifully and immediately began to shape the sound of the orchestra. With no brass in the orchestra, the mellow sound they produced became the standard of the time.

As a composer and arranger, Noble really became a great composer of hapa haole tunes including, “My Little Grass Shack”, “King Kamehameha” and “Hula Blues.” He was responsible for ‘jazzing up’ and making popular the traditional “Hawaiian War Chant” song.

In 1935, Noble became the first Hawaiian composer inducted into The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The hapa-haole sound was a “new wave” in the Hawaiian music scene. The new sound undeniably met the tastes and attitudes of the audience in Waikīkī in the first half of the twentieth century.

The lyrics usually expressed attractive images of Waikīkī – sand, surf, palm trees and hula girls. The new style of Hawaiian music responded to the transformation of the American pop music scene. From 1900 to 1915, it was based upon simple ragtime rhythms and sometimes upon waltz-like melodies.

The hapa-haole sound adopted jazz and blues from 1916 to the 1930s and then it incorporated the big-band sounds from the 1940s to the 1950s, rock ‘n roll in the 1950s and surf-style in the 1960s.

As time went by, the sound became less and less Hawaiian, despite its lyrics referring to Hawaiʻi.

At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, hapa-haole songs were featured in the Hawaii exhibits. The Hawaiian songs accompanied by ukulele fascinated the audience and triggered a Hawaiian boom on the mainland.

By 1916, there were hundreds of Hapa Haole (half “foreign”) tunes written. That same year, reportedly more Hawaiian records were sold on the mainland than any other type of music. And they came in all the popular styles of the day: in ragtime, blues, jazz, foxtrot and waltz tempos, as “shimmy” dances and–even–in traditional hula tempos, but jazzed up a bit.

In 1935, a radio program began, broadcasting live from the Banyan Court of the Moana Hotel on the beach at Waikīkī, and radios nationwide tuned in to hear “Hawaii Calls.” Not only did nearly every island entertainer cut his or her teeth on the program, many went on to become well known.

A number of non-Hawaiian continental musicians exploited the marketable commodity. Songs like “Yacka Hula Hicky Dula” and “Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo” reflected the Hawaiian vogue, but did not represent the hapa-haole sounds in the true sense.

In Waikīkī, composers and musicians carefully blended Hawaiian music with jazz and blues, and attached the music to the Waikīkī landscape.

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Hapa Haole Music Festival (PAI_Foundation)
Hapa Haole Music Festival (PAI_Foundation)
Hapa Haole Music Festival (PAI_Foundation)
Hapa Haole Music Festival (PAI_Foundation)
Alfred Apaka and his Hawaii Village Sernaders. Tapa room late 1950's >>> Property of The Honolulu Advertiser
Alfred Apaka and his Hawaii Village Sernaders. Tapa room late 1950’s >>> Property of The Honolulu Advertiser
Hapa-Haole Sounds
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Hapa-Haole-Sounds
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Hawaiian Sunshine
HawaiianChimes
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I want to learn to speak Hawaiian
Johhn Noble's Collection
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Let's Hula
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My Honolulu Tomboy
My Honoulu Hula Girl
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1916 Yaaka Hula

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Hawaii, Ukulele, Hapa Haole, Hawaiian Music

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