Toward a Description of Precontact Music in Hawai'i

Abstract

A series of events and circumstances in Hawai'i in the early 1970s provided the environment that sparked the revitalization of traditions, popularly called the Hawaiian Renaissance (see Kanahele 1979). From the first, the main thrust of the movement was directed toward music, and as time went on it became clear that to revitalize a tradition as acculturated as music, it was necessary to learn what music was and what it had become. Although traditional music as it was practiced in the early 20th century still had its proponents in 1970, traditional music as it was practiced in the early 19th century did not. The mystery surrounding this early music made it all the more intriguing to the revitalization movement, and so the desire to learn about it intensified. The question of whether it is possible to describe the sound of music in Hawai'i has been raised regularly and the answers have usually been negative, but I would like to discuss some ways to approach this formidable problem. The word precontact in Hawai'i usually refers to the period before 1778, the date of Captain James Cook's discovery of the island group, and thus the start of European contact with Hawai'i. For my purposes I shall extend the precontact period to 1820, the date of the first missionaries' arrival, since contact with Western music appears to have been neglible before that time. Persistent and deliberate contact with Western music began immediately upon the arrival of the missionaries, who established schools to teach Western music theory, voice production, and hymn singing (see Kanahele 1979 and Tatar, in press). It is not possible to understand a piece of music without understanding its sociohistorical context, which corresponds to the history of Western contact with Hawai'i. For example, musical items in a program are identified as chants and/or mele, hymns and/or himeni, monarchy songs, folk songs, hapa-haole (half-foreign) songs, and contemporary songs. The words chant and/or mele are presently used in Hawai'i to designate music believed to represent music. Song is used broadly to designate any

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