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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
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1916 Yaaka Hula

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

December 2, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Duke of Uke’

William ‘Bill’ Tapia was born in Liliha, Honolulu on New Year’s Day 1908. As a child he heard musicians playing at a neighbor’s house and became fascinated by the size and sound of the ukulele, which had been introduced to the Islands by Portuguese immigrants in the late 19th century.

He bought his first ukulele at age 7 for 75 cents from one of the first men to make them commercially. At 10 he came up with his own version of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which he played for troops headed for duty in the last months of World War I.

Bill Tapia, Stars and Stripes Forever:

The youngest of five children, he had to help support his mother after his father, a barber, left the family. At 12, he dropped out of school to play in vaudeville shows in Honolulu.

“I worked in every theater on the islands. The Hawaiian Amusement Company ran almost all the theaters, the big ones. I worked in the Waikiki Theater, Princess Theater, every theater.”

“I was a kid and I had a car that drove me around. I had to be at this place at 8 o’clock, I’d go and play a couple of songs. People would laugh and scream. Then I had to get in the car quickly and the guy would drive me to another theater. We were going like mad!”

During the day, he hung out with beachboys in Waikiki and taught tourists and celebrities to play the uke. He was a traveling musician on ocean liners traveling between Hawai‘i and the mainland.

He taught tourists to play the ukulele and wrote an early instruction manual; among his pupils were movie stars like Shirley Temple and Clark Gable.

At 19 he performed at nightclubs and speakeasies in Hollywood and at parties at the home of Charlie Chaplin. At 21 he sat in with Louis Armstrong’s band at a Los Angeles nightclub. By this time he was playing the banjo and guitar, in addition to the ukulele, and was moving between Hawaii and the mainland.

When the Royal Hawaiian Hotel staged its grand opening in 1927, Mr. Tapia played ukulele in the orchestra. In 1933, the Royal Hawaiian hired him to drive one of its touring cars — a yellow-and-blue seven-passenger Packard — to ferry the wealthy and famous to scenic spots.

He played the ukulele for his passengers and threw in a lesson for anyone interested. His pupils included Jimmy Durante, Shirley Temple and the stars of the Our Gang comedies. He even claimed to have taught a lick or two to Arthur Godfrey.

During World War II, Mr. Tapia organized entertainment for serviceman in Honolulu. But after World War II he switched to the guitar to get jobs playing jazz, his favorite kind of music, and for a half-century had almost nothing to do with the instrument that had defined his youth and middle age.

By 1952, he and his wife had settled in the East Bay. He worked mostly in San Francisco and Oakland, performing in house bands at top nightclubs while augmenting his income teaching guitar, banjo and uke.

His life took a turn in 2001, after both his wife (Barbie) and their daughter (Cleo) died. By then living in Orange County to be closer to relatives, Tapia rediscovered the ukulele on a visit to a music shop to have a guitar restrung.

After playing with local ukulele clubs and taking on students, he began performing ukulele shows all along the West Coast and in Hawai‘i.

Tapia was “discovered” as a ukulele virtuoso at a time when the instrument was having a resurgence of popularity. He became a ukulele star, twice making the Top 10 on the jazz charts, wowing concertgoers by playing the ukulele behind his head à la Jimi Hendrix.

In 2004, when he was 96, he released an album of ukulele music, “Tropical Swing.” A year later he released another, “Duke of Uke.”

He was elected to the Ukulele Hall of Fame. “He is truly an amazing jazz soloist,” Dave Wasser, a director at the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum, told The Times in 2007, three years after Tapia was inducted into the hall.

“He has a very smooth, graceful kind of style with the ukulele. It’s the kind of really soft, light touch that you get from somebody that has been with an instrument for many years.”

Tapia gave private ukulele lessons and continued performing live, including at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, where he celebrated his 100th birthday with a special concert. Bill Tapia died December 2, 2011 at the age of 103. (Lots of information here is from NY Times, LA Times, Star Advertiser, Reuters, Gordon, Spengler, Gilbert and Verlinde.)

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BillTapia-jazztimes-1935
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Bill-Tapia-holiday-July-2011

Filed Under: General, Prominent People, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Ukulele, Bill Tapia

April 7, 2013 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Portuguese in Hawaiʻi

Reportedly, the first Portuguese in Hawai’i were sailors that came on the Eleanora in 1790.  It is believed the first Portuguese nationals to live in the Hawaiian kingdom sailed through on whalers, as early as 1794, and jumped ship.

The first recorded Portuguese visitor was John Elliot de Castro, who sailed to Hawaiʻi in 1814.  During his days in Hawaiʻi he became a retainer of King Kamehameha I, serving as his personal physician and as member of the royal court.

After two years in Hawaiʻi, he sailed off to the island of Sitka, Alaska and joined the Russian-American Company under Alexander Baranov, working as a commercial agent.

Later, Whitney notes, “In (1828,) extensive fields of cane were grown in and about Honolulu, and mills were erected in Nuuanu Valley and at Waikapu, Maui. At the latter place, a Portugese, named Antonio Silva, is spoken of as the pioneer sugar planter.”

For 50 years after these early visitors arrived, Portuguese sailors came ashore alone or in small groups, jumping ship to enjoy Hawaiian life and turning their backs on the rough life aboard whalers and other vessels.

The 1853 population of the Hawaiian Islands was 73,134, including 2,119 foreigners, of these, reportedly 86 were Portuguese.  Hawaiians referred to the Portuguese as “Pokiki.”

Eventually several hundred Portuguese made the Islands their home.  Many of the settlers came from Madeira Islands (about half the size of Oʻahu,) off the coast of Africa.  They also came from the Azores, nine islands between Portugal and the US, and about 1½-times the size of Oʻahu.

The reciprocity treaty in 1875 between the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the United States opened the US sugar market to Hawaiʻi and greatly increased the demand for workers.

Jacinto Pereira (also known as Jason Perry,) a Portuguese citizen and owner of a dry goods store in Honolulu, suggested in 1876 that Hawaiʻi’s government look for sugar labor from Madeira where farmers were succumbing to a severe economic depression fostered by a blight that decimated vineyards and the wine industry.

At that time, about 400-Portuguese, a large number of whom formerly served as seamen on whaling vessels, lived in Hawaiʻi.  Then, the numbers grew.

São Miguel in the eastern Azores was also chosen as a source of labor. In 1878, the first Portuguese immigrant laborers to Honolulu arrived on the German ship Priscilla. At least one hundred men, women and children arrived to work on the sugar plantations. That year marked the beginning of the mass migration of Portuguese to Hawaiʻi, which continued until the end of the century.

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 known as the Hawaiian ʻukulele.)  (Hawaiian Gazette – September 3, 1879)

On his world tour, in 1881, King David Kalākaua visited Portugal and was entertained in royal fashion by Portugal’s King Dom Luis. That year two ships delivered over 800-men, women and children from São Miguel.  The next year a treaty of immigration and friendship was signed between Portugal and the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Migration to Hawaiʻi became popular to escape poverty and a harsh military system. The dream of settling in islands that looked like home drew workers away from offers to labor in the fields of Brazil and urban seaports of the US.

Mass immigration of the Portuguese to Hawaiʻi also came from New England and California as Portuguese came to replace Chinese workers who left plantations to open stores and work in the trades.

While Chinese and Japanese workers had come as single men, whole families came from Portugal (reportedly, forty-two percent of the early Portuguese emigrants were men, 19% women and 39% children.)

The sponsoring of Portuguese immigration to Hawaiʻi was ceased in 1888 due to its high cost and the success of efforts to recruit Japanese workers. Almost 12,000-people had moved from Madeira or São Miguel, Azores to Hawaiʻi by that time.

Many continued to be employed by the plantations even after their contracts had been fulfilled.  Others, however, sought to take up independent work and turned especially to farming and ranching.  Between 1890 and 1910, many Portuguese left Hawaiʻi and migrated to California, primarily the Bay Area.

The Portuguese have given Hawaiʻi many traditions.  In music – they brought the ʻukulele and steel-string guitar.  Try to image Hawaiʻi without sausage (linguiça,) malasada (malassada) or sweet bread (pão doce) … or Frank De Lima.

The image shows the early influence the Portuguese had on Hawaiian music and hula – the ʻukulele.  I added a couple of other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Kalakaua, Treaty of Reciprocity, Ukulele, Pokiki, Portuguese

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