HAWAII THIS AND THAT

One of the best-known songs in Hawaii is Aloha ‘Oe, which was composted by Queen Liliuokalani (1838-1917). The Queen wrote both the lyrics and the melody of the song, which is based on an old folk song from Croatia called “Sidi Mara Na Kamen Studencu.” The similarity of the two songs is amazing. Moreover, it is assumed that the Prussian leader of the Royal Hawaiian Band, Henry Berger, also brought an Austrian song with him that’s called “Die Träne," which has the same melody as well.

When Queen Liliuokalani saw a young couple embrace and say goodbye to each other, she thought of her own group’s imminent parting and composed this song. It was written after Hawaii was officially annexed to the United States in 1898. Today, Aloha ‘Oe is often sung when people say farewell.

Ha‘aheo e kua ua i na pali
(The rain proudly sweeps by the cliffs)
Ke nihi ae la i kanahele
(And passes softly through the trees)
E uhai ana paha i ka liko
(It seems to seek out the buds)
Pua ahihi lehua o uka
(Of the ahihi lehua flower in the valley)
Aloha ‘oe, aloha ‘oe
(Farewell to thee, farewell to thee)
E ke onaona noho i ka lipo
(Thou sweet one who dwells in the forest)
One fond embrace, a ho‘i ae au
(Now before I go)
Until we meet again

Chants

Chants are an essential part of Hawaiian culture. Part celebration, part prayer and part projection of spiritual power, chants throughout history were a way of addressing the gods and of achieving power in all areas of life. They were known to carry word power, mana or spiritual force, which could influence life. Many chants were considered sacred and passed on from one generation to another. Some chants could only be sung by certain individual classes, such as the alii and kahuna or priests and were kapu (forbidden) to anyone else.

Chants were used for several reasons, such as to praise someone, to change the circumstances of someone’s life, to pronounce or lift a curse, to mourn, to declare love and many others. It was believed that if a chant was sung incorrectly, it could have devastating consequences. A person could be punished by death in the most extreme case if a mistake in chanting was committed.

Chant means oli in Hawaiian. They are usually sung as unaccompanied solos with only two or three tones. When a chant is sung correctly, little or no air is coming out of the mouth while singing. This way, the chanter can sustain his or her breath through long phrases. Today, chants are sung on a variety of occasions, for example at graduations, as a blessing for a new building or at funerals.

Da Kine

These two words are heard often in Hawaii, mostly by locals. It’s a Pidgin phrase meaning “whatever I’m referring to.” This can be anything. It can be a person, an animal, a place, a food, a car, a building or even a sound. So for example, if someone says, “bring me da kine” and points on a book, he is referring to the book.

You use it when you just happen to fall into one of those short-term memory lapses that we all know and you can’t think of the name of a thing. The closest to it in the English language is “the thing” or “that thingy.” But where English is somewhat limited, da kine comes in and says it all.

What is so fantastic about this phrase is that everyone seems to understand it. When you use the two words in a sentence, people will know right away, either by telepathy or by putting together the context of your speech, who or what you are referring to. It works like da kine, like magic!

People will know what you mean when you tell them that you went grocery shopping at da kine and ran into da kine, whom you had not seen for a long time and then you had dinner together at da kine, before you went surfing together at you know, da kine.

Pronunciation:
Da is said like “dah” or like the a in Hawaii.
Kine is pronounced like “kind” without the d.

Directions

When you ask for directions in Hawaii, you might easily get confused when a local tells you to “go Diamond Head, pass Ala Moana and then turn mauka,” or to “drive Ewa for two miles and then turn makai.” When in Hawaii, you can just about forget north, south, east and west. What you’ll hear here is mauka (toward the mountains or inland) and makai (toward the ocean). If you’re on Oahu and someone tells you to go Diamond Head, it means to go toward that landmark (which is located at the east of Waikiki). Ewa means toward the direction of Ewa Beach, which is located on the southwest coast of Oahu.

Gecko

The gecko is an animal commonly seen in Hawaii. It’s a small lizard with large eyes and sticky toes. It’s about one to two inches long. It is a hospitable creature that likes to live in people’s homes. Even if you don’t like small critters like these, try not to be scared of the gecko.

The good thing about them is that they eat many times their weight in bugs. So leave them alone and it will eat insects and cockroaches that live in and around your house. Besides, killing a gecko is considered bad luck in Hawaii. For many Hawaiians, the gecko is an aumakua, or family god.

Heiau

Heiaus are an ancient Hawaiian temple sites. For many Hawaiians, it is a place of great power. They were built with robust lava rock walls surrounding flat grounds that were covered with smooth stones or pebbles. Within the walls, at the center of the heiau, altars, oracle towers and small buildings to hold artifacts were often times constructed.

Heiaus were built for various purposes. The heiau luakini were constructed by the highest chiefs and used for human sacrifice. The heiau hoola were healing temples, and the puuhonua were places of refuge where criminals (for example people who broke a kapu) could find sanctuary.

Today, ruins of heiaus can be found throughout the Hawaiian Islands. If you want to show your respect, do as the locals do and bring a small offering, such as a food or small lava rock wrapped in ti leaf, to leave at the temple site.

Kapu

Kapu means forbidden or taboo in Hawaiian. In ancient times, the kapu system regulated daily routines and set the rules for relationships within the limits for each sex and class. It provided rules for life and for the structure of society. For example, it was kapu for a commoner to stand in the presence of a chief. Women were not allowed to eat pork, bananas and certain types of fish.

Of course, abuses of kapus happened. The penalty could be severe and death sentences were not unusual, even if the person had unknowingly broken a kapu. In 1819, King Kamehameha II officially abolished the kapu system because he saw that it was a barrier between his people and the apparently better organized and equipped outsiders.

Kumulipo

This is the title of the Hawaiian creation chant, which was composed around the mid-1700s for Chief Ka limamao to recite his ancestry and tell myths of the origins of life. The Kumolipo was later translated into English by Queen Liliuokalani and published in 1897.

The 2,000-line chant tells of life and how it originated in the slime and slowly arose from simple life forms, such as the coral polyp and marine invertebrates (worms, shellfish, etc,) to more complex forms, such as insects, birds, mammals and finally humans.

The Kumulipo has gotten attention from historians and scientists because it gives a naturalistic, nonreligious account of the creation of life that is drawn from close observation. It also corresponds roughly with the evolutionary theories of Darwin, which were made more than a century after the Kumulipo’s composition.

Menehune

The menehune are a mischievous race of dwarfs, who, according to legend, lived in the old Hawaii. It is believed that they were wiped out when the first Polynesian settlers arrived in the islands. There are mainly two versions that tell of the legend of the menehune.

According to local lore, the menehune were responsible for the construction of a couple of surprising structures in the ancient Hawaii, including the “menehune ditch” on Kauai. Even though the menehune were displaced when the first settlers arrived, some people up until today believe that the menehune are haunting the islands, carrying out tricks on people.

According to scholarly view, legends like the menehune existed in various other island nations in Polynesia. Scholars say that these legends originated from a common mythology and are reinterpreted in terms of local conditions by the various peoples. In the case of Hawaii, the old legends of mischievous and smart little menehune were interpreted to refer to the lower class people, who were probably called menehune in the time of Hawaiian prehistory.

Today, the term menehune refers to people of the lower class in Tahiti. That’s why it is assumed that Tahitian settlers brought the term to Hawaii, where it was it was first used to refer to the lower class, but then transferred to the little dwarfs as a slight to the lower class people. The term for the lower classes was later changed to the present term of maka‘ainana, thus leaving the term menehune for the little dwarfs alone. Scholars are certain that no mischievous little dwarfs ever inhabited the Hawaiian Islands.

Paniolo

A paniolo is a Hawaiian cowboy. The word sounds Spanish; that’s because it has its origins there. Spanish-Mexican vaqueros, who came to Hawaii in 1832, were the first cattle handlers in the islands. They came here by the request of King Kamehameha III, who wanted them to teach the islanders how to handle cattle.

The paniolos had called themselves Espanol, but islanders simply called them paniolos.

The paniolos enthusiastically taught the people here how to manage a cattle ranch. They adapted to their new lifestyle in the islands and a new island-style cowboy race was born. Their imported culture of cattle ranching mixed with local island traits.

The paniolos’ wool ponchos, bandannas, leggings and wide sombreros gave way to jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets and boots. Their cowboy hat is often times decorated with flower or shell leis, a symbol of the successful merging of the original vaqueros into the Hawaiian aloha spirit. Today, Parker Ranch on the Big Island of Hawaii is one of the largest privately-owned ranches in the world and still functions with the Hawaiian paniolo leading it.

Shave Ice

Shave Ice is a delicious island treat, perfect on a hot summer’s day. Unlike the snow cone, which is made of ice crushed into little pieces, shave ice is shaved off a block of ice. It has a finer texture than snow cones.

The ice is than topped with fruit-flavored syrups, such as pineapple, strawberry, coconut lemon or lychee. Vanilla and chocolate flavors are also available. At most shops, you can also choose to have vanilla ice cream or sweet-flavored azuki beans on the bottom.

It is not clear when shave ice first appeared in Hawaii. However, it is believed that it was introduced by Japanese sugar plantation workers, who gathered on off days and scraped ice off from blocks of ice. When these plantation workers later left the plantations, some opened shops to sell shave ice to the people.

Slack-Key Guitar

This is a Hawaiian guitar style and its harmonious sound comes from a certain type of guitar tuning called “slack key.” While in standard guitar tuning, each string is tuned to a different note, in slack key, the strings are tuned to a chord. When a guitar that’s tuned the standard way is strummed without fingering, one can hear an unharmonious sound. In slack key, the strings produce a harmonious sound even without fingering.

It is believed that the slack-key guitar style had its origins when the paniolos, the Hawaiian cowboys who came here from Mexico, tried to play the guitar and didn’t understand the arrangement of strings that jar when strummed together. They then invented other tunings by loosening or slackening the strings to produce chords that matched the singer’s vocal range.

In the most common slack-key tuning, the G or “taro-patch” tuning, the strings are tuned D G D G B D. The “wahine” tuning consists of the notes D A D F A C, while the A tuning has only two notes – E A E E A E. Besides those, there’s an endless variety of other tunings. When playing standard guitar, the player strums chords or picks notes. With slackened strings, however, the player may pluck the melody on the higher strings and accompany it with the tuned base strings. This gives the song great richness of sound.

Ukulele

Hawaiian music would not be the same without this small instrument. The ukulele is a four-stringed guitar adapted from the guitar-like instrument, the machete da braca, which Portuguese immigrants from Madeira brought to Hawaii in the late 1870s. This instrument was also called a taro-pitch fiddle. People in Hawaii liked this small guitar because it was lighter, less expensive and easier to master than a full-sized guitar.

In 1915, the newly evolved ukulele was introduced to the musical world at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. People loved the small guitar’s unique sound and from then on the ukulele became an essential element of Hawaiian music.

The Hawaiian term “uku” means “flea” and “lele” means hopping or jumping. So the two terms together mean “jumping flea,” which is a suitable description of the way the ukulele is played – with a quick strumming action.

Until today, the ukulele is used in many different styles of Hawaiian music that include elements of reggae, rock and the traditional island sounds. The ukulele is very adaptable to all types of music and always adds its magical touch of the Hawaiian soul. Playing simple songs is fairly easy to learn and some music stores sell books with song lyrics and chords.
The instrument itself has undergone many developments. The ukulele comes in different shapes and sizes, from the classical form, which looks like a miniature guitar to triangular shapes with modern colors. There is the standard size, also called soprano, as well as tenor and baritone sizes. The latter two are larger and lower-pitched than the soprano ukulele. There are the original four-string ukuleles, but six to nine string ones are also available today.

If you want to buy an ukulele and you want it to last for some time and hold tune, avoid the cheap ones, which are mostly mass-made in China and sold to tourists. They don’t have a good sound and are rather suitable for decoration or as a souvenir. Music and special ukulele stores have a wide variety of instruments available. Local musicians favor the Kamaka ukulele, which is made of koa wood and which sounds duller than ukuleles that are made out of more resonant woods.