A Language of Hybridity Part 1: Hula
City of Honolulu
I’ve lived in three states - including New York - since leaving Hawai’i and have made a life in each but never have I really felt connected to any of them the way I used to feel growing up in Honolulu.
My entire family is there, as is my childhood home and my nephews and niece. But hangouts have disappeared, buildings have shot up and it’s just different. So, like many people when they make the pilgrimage home as an adult, I have felt estranged more than anything when I’ve returned home to Hawaii. I’m not sure if it’s the sheer distance of time and miles that makes me feel like a stranger in the place I grew up. Flashing forward through 3 degrees and 2 decades in New York I am forced to contemplate is it different, or am I? And not Hawaiian by birth, what understanding of what it is or was do I bring forth to reference?
So I want to share with you an experience I had growing up in Honoulu, how it shaped me and how a chance morning news report of a certain double hulled canoe coming to port on the West side of Manhattan caused me to reflect on how she changed me.
And please believe it! When I found out the Hokulea was in town I cancelled all that I had planned and grabbed my MTA Card and headed down there.
On that day in June 2016, my sense of place and how I perceived both my connection to Honolulu Hawaii and my connection to Brooklyn New York shifted. And if you will indulge me in a little “talk-story” (personal history), I hope to show you how I arrived at my shift of perception.
Honolulu offered an environment to grow in that was and is unmatched. But when I write that, I don’t want to paint Hawaii as that all too familiar postcard. Hawaii has it’s front facing physical beauty and tourist appeasing leisure side. But what made my childhood and early adulthood so special was the rich cultural tapestry that was interwoven into daily experience there. So when I invoke “unmatched” I’m referring specifically to one of the only spaces I’ve seen that fosters a true cultural hybridity.
Brief Historical Context:
Hawaii is a nation whose monarchy was overthrown by the United States in 1893. The islands were colonized by the United States Government for agricultural reasons and military ones. It turns out a curious intersection of the two was that sugar harvested from Hawaii would replace Southern sugar in the North during the American Civil War. To fuel these agriculture interests a labor force was brought in from South America and Asia to help with farming from early in the era of American occupation creating one of the most diverse and integrated places in not just the Pacific diaspora but also in the United States. And to further their interests in 1896, a law was passed to make English the primary language in both Hawaiian politics and in the schools there.
Moment of Contact by Herb Kawainui Kane - prints available here
This sort of cultural erasure and suppression has always been a tool used against Indigenous cultures by the U.S. in the furthering of its White supremacist structures. The victor writes the histories in their own language so it is no surprise that one can find article after paternalist article defending the suppression of the Hawaiian’s use of their language (especially on the internet). I’d like to point to just a few of the results (whether intended or unintended) of that legislation prioritizing English – the language being nearly lost lead to other bits of first world knowledge and culture being in jeopardy. When artist and cultural producer Herb Kawainui Kane decided to move from painting traditional Hawaiian canoes to making one and later captaining one in the mid 1970’s, he had to look at non-traditional materials and navigator from outside Hawaii as neither still existed any longer.
““On that first voyage, we were facing cultural extinction. There was no navigator from our culture left. The Voyaging Society looked beyond Polynesia to find a traditional navigator to guide Hōkūle‘a: Mau Piailug, a navigator from a small island called Satawal, in Micronesia. He agreed to come to Hawai‘i and guide Hōkūle‘a to Tahiti. Without him, our voyaging would never have taken place. Mau was the only traditional navigator who was willing and able to reach beyond his culture to ours.””
— Quoted from the Polynesian Voyaging Society webstie
It is the descendants of the Hawaiian’s that held on to their culture, the diverse immigrant cultures that came as laborers and these American colonizers that make up this NON-binary landscape of Hawaii and her mixed overlapping and opposing peoples. I’m not sure if it’s the proximity of urban-island living or if it’s the distance from the “mainland” but in my experience it allows for and even encourages blurred lines at the intersections of these cultures. Where history teaches us there must be stewardship and respect of cultural tradition, it seems to be imperative to share one’s culture to grow it.
If you grew up in The Islands, you are familiar with the cultural cross pollination that occurs in Hawaii. But if not, then you may be surprised to find out that a haole-boi living in Honolulu fell in love with hip-hop in the 80’s. Now, I was no good at breaking (correcting that now) but I was a pretty heavy into rap, soul, graffiti and the latest RnB dances. If there was a Bobby Brown or MC Hammer step I didn’t pick up quickly, I wore out my parents’ VCR and my ankle socks figuring it out!
So, it was almost unfair when I tried out to dance Tahitian for our Holoku Pageant. Tahitian is challenging for both men and women. Requiring high levels of coordination and fitness.
In the men’s primary Tahitian dance move (the paoti) it was so hard to get the proper knee scissor action and simultaneous hip tilt, that teaching the tilt was often skipped. But to the surprise of our teacher/ choreographer, all my emulating classic Hammer steps made me a natural at proper full paoti. My gratitude to Stanley Kirk Burrel (MC Hammer) for unknowingly preparing me for that formative cultural nexus can’t be overstated.
Inspiration and childhood idol MC Hammer
“My path lead from Hip Hop to Samoan to Tahitian eventually to Hula Kahiko. ”
Flashing forward to my later indoctrination into Kahiko that was both late in my “dance career” but also late in that I was asked to participate because someone else had dropped out. From the beginning, I knew THIS was going to be a steep hill to climb. It was not lost on me that not one haole had danced Kahiko (at my school at least) nor was it lost on me what kind of extraordinary honor and opportunity this was. I had loved the camaraderie and even more the process of being involved in other Polynesian dance forms and I still had that youthful naïveté so I went for it
Image Credit: 1991 Merrie Monarch Facebook Group
With 6 fewer weeks of practice, the ʻalakaʻi or "guides" worked hard with me to try and catch me up to the other five young men who I’d be dancing with. It was also clear to me from the first time I met the Kumu Hula, that he was allowing this experiment but was not necessarily rooting for it. That part of the experience was illuminating to me and as someone who had and would inhabit in-between cultural spaces all my life, this fact was immensely helpful in teaching me the need to be humble, work hard and listen with care.
“Hula was immensely helpful in teaching me the need to be humble, work hard and listen with care.”
I was taught to chant phonetically and was given the story we were telling separately as I had not even the basics of colloquial Hawaiian. And in a few months, I was dancing with two huge borrowed uli uli, spending hours in a half squat leaping and swiveling my hips to the beat of the ipu (a percussive gourd).
Close up of an uli uli handle
The biggest thing is we danced well as a group. It was a profound thing we shared then we learned poise with the movement and to support each other with our energy and focus - we were as one. United in rhythm, in the craft and the ritual of Hula.
Why does one social dance? What is being communicated when we do it? Why did folks TikTok through the pandemic?
Social Dance, is at its core, intentional...done TOGETHER. Here are the forms, rules, ways and constructs - proliferated through a15 -30 second video app?
On two occasions late in the process Kumu gave me a directive I wouldn’t or didn’t deliver on; Firstly, he told me I had to quit Tahitian and focus on Hula alone which I respectfully would not do because I had committed to dance for them first. And secondly, I had to be flawless in our last recorded practice. I made one error. One or both of those things would keep me from competing with my guys in the all-Honolulu high schools Hula competition.
After that decision, it was decided that I would carry an ipu for Kumu at the competition. And that was tough as I would have a front row seat but was forbidden to dance. In this realm, though, I was a novice, an acolyte, an outsider who was brought all the way inside this incredible this special world. It was a huge honor to carry the ipu and was an effort on the part of the ʻalakaʻi to acknowledge my contribution to the group and to continue to include me.
Ka Wai Ola Magazine 1991 - Photo by Deborah L Ward
It is my experience that Hawaii and Hawaiians are kind in this regard. Reaching beyond their culture and allowing transplants in their midst. But I’d say this level of cultural inclusion, of intimacy, was remarkable. I can also share that at the time, I felt a certain level of disappointment or shame in letting down the hula halau (dance troupe). I remember I might have cried from the first sound of the chant until I was home. And although I never felt “ethnically” Hawaiian, I did feel rooted more deeply in Hawaii the place. In their love and reverence of their dance forms and traditions - that I now loved perhaps differently but LOVED - I had become something else. A hybrid. Someone who through cultural investment now occupying a space not Hawaiian but not however it is that I had shown up.
I had the good fortune to become aware of and virtually attending an Art Summit put on by Hawai’i Contemporary this last February (2021). Rich in both its programming and presentation, I cannot recommend strongly enough looking into the concepts, organizations and individuals who were involved in that summit and the upcoming Honolulu Triennial 2022.
Among the virtual presentations was one hosted by Dr. Melissa Chiu, HT22 Curatorial Director (DC) with professor, author and cultural theorist Homi Bhabha. Bhabha spoke about a desirable post-colonial shift from identity politics to interest politics. He went so far as to underline that shift as possibly necessary for our (America’s) literal survival. I am not as good a judge as he to argue that, but I would say that but my own experience with allowing my interests to drive my identity has aided in mine. The question I return to when I think about my privilege of growing up in Hawaii learning Hula; Is it Hawaii herself or the proximity in an urban-island culture that produces or requires multi-cultural translation? And now after hearing Bhabha - how do we get people into the space where they are trying to be more supple in their identities?
That’s where my hula career ended and quite literally when I think I began to drift from my connectivity to Hawaii. Graduation came quickly, college and Summer jobs. Before I knew it, I couldn’t remember the chant, couldn’t walk anywhere barefoot or even recall the names of those who shared their Hula with me…