HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Hawaiian Effigy and the Politics of Performance
Jess Hemerly
University of California, Berkeley
Western Music & Identity
December 14, 2010
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Hawaiian Effigy and the Politics of Performance
We, the voices behind the face,
of the Hawaiian nation, the Hawaiian race
rise for justice the day has come
for all our people to stand as one,
E ala ‘e.
— Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, “E Ala ‘E”
In 1891, Hawaii’s penultimate monarch King David Kalākaua returned to O‘ahu on a
ship from San Francisco. It was not his first trip to San Francisco. Kalākaua was well traveled,
a modern statesman as far as Hawaiian monarchs go; he had met with foreign leaders and
diplomats around the world during his reign. However, this homecoming was unlike previous
trips. Kalākaua passed away on Saturday, January 20, 1891, at 2:30 in the afternoon at the
Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The New York Times obituary, bearing the headline “King
Kalākaua is Dead,” reads:
The next regular passenger steamer for Honolulu will not leave here until Jan. 27,
and it is probable that the first intelligence of the King’s death which will be
received by the Hawaiian people will be when the Charleston arrives at the harbor
of Honolulu with the remains of their King aboard (New York Times, p. 1).
Indeed, the first notice the Hawaiian people received of Kalākaua’s passing was the ship’s
return to Honolulu. As the King’s body sailed back to Honolulu, the flags in San Francisco sat
at half-mast and the ensign of Hawaii flew above the hotel where Hawaii’s last king took his
final breath.
The King’s passing was not received lightly. He was not only a monarch, but also a
patron of Hawaiian arts and music, a caretaker of their culture. He was beloved by the
Hawaiian people despite being coerced into signing a constitution that disenfranchised Asian
immigrants and his native people. Kalākaua’s sister and successor, Queen Lili’uokalani,
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describes the body’s procession from the Charleston in her memoirs, Hawaii’s Story by
Hawaii’s Queen:
At five o'clock the afternoon of the 29th of January, 1891, the solemn procession
began at the boat-landing, where the men from the Charleston had landed with the
king's remains, and from whence they took up the line of their mournful march to
Iolani Palace. It was a gloomy, cloudy afternoon. As they moved slowly up to the
gates of the palace, there was a moment's pause; and just then a triple rainbow was
seen to span with its arch the entire structure, stretching from one end to the other,
and, as it were, embracing the palace. Crowds of people thronged in, respectfully
following the king's remains, with hearts too full of grief to speak of the deceased
sovereign even to each other (Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter XXXIV).
Kalākaua lay in state in Iolani Palace, a building that represented not only Kalākaua’s worldly
and decadent taste, but also the sovereign power of the Hawaiian kingdom. Like Kalākaua, Iz
was a beloved cultural symbol of native Hawaiian descent, a musical king for his people in
the 20th century. In 1997, over one hundred years after Kalākaua’s grand funeral, Israel “Iz”
Kamakawiwo’ole would become the first musician to lie in state, but this time in Hawaii’s
capitol building. Comparing images of their funerals side-by-side, the similarities are striking
(see Appendix A). But by Iz’s death, however, Hawaii was no longer a sovereign power; it
was part of the United States.
An Imagined Community
The history of ethnicity and cultural identity in Hawaii is riddled with suppression,
acculturation, appropriation, and renaissance of language, music, and performance.
Gerschwender et. al. conclude, “Ethnicity in Hawaii is approached as a social construct
created during expansion of the capitalist world-system” (p. 515). Hawaii’s population is
made up of a variety of cultures and races, an effect of generations of immigrant families
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coming from a variety of nations (Okamura, 1994) who share a common pidgin dialect with
the native Hawaiian population (Carroll and Carroll, 1976). Ethnic identity in Hawaii is
layered, with different identifications suiting different situations.
Today’s Hawaii can be roughly broken into three ranks of cultural identity, which
encompass different conceptions of ethnic identity. First, there’s local, the “umbrella term
most often used in the islands to indicate local residents of Native Hawaiian, Japanese,
Chinese, Filipino, and Portuguese descent, in any of the complicated hereditary combinations
that are extant in the islands” (Desmond, 1997, p. 92). Within the cultural or community
identity of local, ethnicities retain their own individual ethnic identities.
Second, there is haole, comprising Caucasians of Euro-American descent with the
exception of the Portuguese, who were initially brought over from Portugal to work in the
sugar fields. The status of the Portuguese as immigrants qualifies them as local: “The shared
plantation experience shaped the labeling, categorization, social evaluation, identity, and
subsequent history of Locals” (Gerschwender et. al., 1988, p. 516). The term haole means
“foreigner,” but has since been “glossed” to mean “white person” (Trask, 2000, p. 375). It is
worth noting, however, that haole can be local, although the term kama’aina, “child of the
land,” is more commonly applied. Kama’aina also applies to former residents of the islands
who have moved away,
Finally, there is Hawaiian. Although native Hawaiians are included under the local
umbrella, they retain an ethnic identity of their own: “Kanaka Maoli” (Van Dyke, 1998, p.
97). According to social scientist Joane Nagel (1994), “Ethnic identity…is the result of a
dialectical process involving internal and external opinions and processes, as well as the
individual's self-identification and outsiders' ethnic designations—i.e., what you think your
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ethnicity is, versus what they think your ethnicity is.” The cultural and ethnic identity of
native Hawaiians shifts contextually—sometimes local, sometimes native, but always
Hawaiian.
Native Hawaiians are a minority group in the islands, partly a result of increased
migration of Hawaiians to the continental United States in search of better economic
conditions and partly due to the sicknesses brought to Hawaii by early Western contact, from
which the population never fully recovered (Dudley, 1993). According to Haunani-Kay Trask,
“Entire Native communities have been dismembered and displaced. Predictable social and
cultural problems have resulted, including evictions and rising homelessness among
Hawaiians; increases in juvenile delinquency and youth suicides; increases in the prison
population; low life expectancy, educational attainment, and employment; and migration that
amounts to diaspora” (Trask, 2000, p. 375). People of native Hawaiian descent currently
make up only 9.2% of the islands’ populations, with white people at 30.2% and Asian persons
38.8% (United States Census, 2009). There are also statutory definitions that distinguish
“native Hawaiian” from “Hawaiian,” and questions of whether or not blood or genealogy are
more important determining factors in one’s “Hawaiianness” (Young, 2004, p. 86).
In the opening stanza of “E ‘ala ‘E,” Israel Kamakawiwo’ole sounds a call for “the
voices behind the face of the Hawaiian nation, the Hawaiian race” (Kamakawiwo’ole, 1995).
Hawaii is not a nation in terms of sovereignty; it is a state in the United States of America and
has been since 1959. Why, then, would an album released by a Hawaiian artist in 1995
contain a song with these lines? To explain the link between the Hawaii of Kalākaua and the
Hawaii of Kamakawiwo’ole, one must first understand the conception of Hawaii as “an
imagined political community — and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”
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(Anderson, 1991, p. 6).
The people of Hawaii, both those who live there and those who have left, make up a
Hawaiian nation that is an imagined political community in the most literal sense of Benedict
Anderson’s (1991) definitions in Imagined Communities. The nation consists of Hawaiians,
locals, and even haoles (whose racial counterparts conspired against the Hawaiian kingdom).
A national identity has developed over time, and although though more than one hundred
years have passed, this community retains hopes of national sovereignty.
First, a nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of
each lives the image of their communion” (p. 6). This imagining in Hawaii is directly linked
to cultural and ethnic identity. In Hawaii, there exists the concept of “Aloha Spirit,” often
denigrated by tourist campaigns to represent the island as a happy, peaceful getaway. Aloha is
known as a greeting and a farewell, but its meaning encompasses far more than saying hello
and goodbye. According to the Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), “aloha” also means: “love,
affection, compassion, mercy, sympathy, pity, kindness, sentiment, grace, charity” (Pukui &
Elbert, p. 21). According to Hawaii State law, “’Aloha Spirit’ is the “coordination of mind
and heart within each person. It brings each person to the self. Each person must think and
emote good feelings to others… It was the working philosophy of native Hawaiians and was
presented as a gift to the people of Hawaii” (“Aloha Spirit”, 1986). Aloha spirit exemplifies
the imagined communion of the Hawaiian nation.
Second, the nation is “imagined as limited because even the largest of them,
encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond
which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind” (p. 7). Unlike
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nations on larger continents, where borders are often a source of conflict, Hawaii’s
geographical position as an archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean necessarily limits
its geographic boundaries. In the music of Hawaii, this is largely reflected in the reference to
place, a representation of “the deep attachment Hawaiians have to place,” known as aloha
aina (Stillman, 1989, p. 17).
Third, the nation is imagined a sovereign: “Coming to maturity at a stage of human
history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably
confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each
faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under
God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state” (Anderson,
1983, p. 7). Hawaii’s sovereignty movement wants the United States government to return
self-determined rule to the Hawaiian people, but it’s not clear exactly whether that would be
determined through blood, genealogy, or residence. Craig Calhoun (1993) argues,
“Nationalism is anything but a thing of the past, thus, even the newest claims to nationalism
are often rooted in a rhetoric of pre-existing ethnic identity” (p. 214). While native Hawaiians
are classified as Native Americans by the United States government, they do not have the
same nation-within-nation authority of self-governance that Native Americans have (Van
Dyke, 1998).
And finally, a nation is imagined as a community, “because, regardless of the actual
inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep,
horizontal comradeship” (Anderson, 1983, p. 7). The cultural identity of locals exemplifies
this sense of community, but comradeship also manifests in political organizations. Founded
in 1987, the Ka Lahui Hawaii is one of the largest sovereignty groups in the islands (Trask,
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2000). The KLH has its own constitution, and, as Trask writes, “By building on Hawaiian
cultural values and locating its political structure throughout Native communities, Ka Lahui
empowers its citizens while also enabling their participation through a democratic process
illustrating how the governing body of the nation would operate once federally recognized”
(Trask, 2000, p. 380).
Anderson argues that the dawn of print capitalism enabled the birth of the nation
state’s imagined communities, but in the case of Hawaii, it was actually the missionaries who
first turned Hawaiian into a written language. Hawaii’s culture grew out of oral traditions, and
music has always played a powerful role in storytelling and imagining community. S.E.
Solberg (1983) writes, “While the social, political, and economic implications of all these
movements tend to capture the headlines, the cultural and artistic, musical, visual and verbal,
have been the battlegrounds where the deepest emotional commitments have been made” (p.
40). As politics and cultural reinvention coincided, the popular music of Hawaii largely
played the same role in re-awakening the Hawaiian sovereignty as print did in Anderson’s
Europe. Commercial venues categorize Hawaiian music under the broad genre “world music,”
despite its statehood. This in itself is telling. If Hawaii were not an imagined community, why
wouldn’t Hawaiian music fall into other genres? Why is the music of a US state considered
“world” music?
Effigies of the Collective Imagination
In Cities of the Dead, Joseph Roach builds on Anderson’s theory of the nation as an
imagined community with the notion of surrogation of cultural memory and the combination
of memory, performance, and substitution. He writes, “Into the cavities created by loss
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through death or other forms of departure, I hypothesize, survivors attempt to fit satisfactory
alternatives” (p. 2). Performance, then, is the process through which the survivors audition the
possible surrogates. “Performance, in other words, stands in for an elusive entity that it is not
but that it must vainly aspire both to embody and replace” (p. 3).
Roach contextualizes his argument using the example of circum-Atlantic memory,
grounded in the cities of New Orleans and London. “The key to understanding how
performances worked within a culture,” he argues, “recognizing that a fixed and unified
culture exists only as a convenient but dangerous fiction, is to illuminate the process of
surrogation as it operated between the participating cultures” (p. 5). The performance of a
culture’s past in the presence of another is the key to understanding cultural invention. In the
case of Hawaii, what we see is not circum-Atlantic performance, but circum-Pacific. The
colonization of Hawaii, the marginalization of the Hawaiian people through political
manipulation, and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy created a “revolutionary”
circumstance in which a culture both appropriated outside influences—e.g., mele himeni, or
Hawaiian songs written in the style of hymns—and fought to remember its own cultural
heritage.
For Roach, it is in mortuary ritual that the relationship of memory, performance, and
substitution become most apparent. Further, Roach goes on to argue the importance of effigy
and its relationship to the notion of surrogate. Performed effigies, in the sense of “effigy” as a
verb meaning, “to evoke an absence, to body something forth, especially from a distant past,”
allow communities to perpetuate themselves “through specially nominated mediums or
surrogates.” Among these surrogates, acting in effigy, are “actors, dancers, priests, street
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maskers, statesmen, celebrities, freaks, children, and especially, by virtue of an intense but
unsurprising paradox, corpses” (p. 36).
Although Roach focuses largely on actors as surrogates, I believe that musicians are as
much performers capable of acting in effigy as actors, especially in the case of a cultural
history like Hawaii’s. It is in these performed effigies, I argue, that we find a similarity
between King Kalākaua and contemporary artist Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Both were
performers: Kalākaua was a musician and a statesman; Iz was a musician and a celebrity.
Both were notorious for their decadence, but also known for their charity and their dedication
to the Hawaiian people and to the Hawaiian culture. Finally, both figures worked in a position
of cultural reinvention and rebroadcast, Kalākaua as a patron of the arts and Iz as a popular
musician—and for good reason. In the case of Kalākaua, while his political actions had huge
consequences for his successor and for the Hawaiian people, these have been forgotten, so to
speak, in Hawaiian cultural memory, at least where it comes to remembering him as a patron
of the arts before someone forced to sign a controversial constitution. Music and the arts
effectively represent the history of the Hawaiian culture in ways the printed word cannot.
The process of appropriation, acculturation, reinvention, and rebroadcast in Hawaiian
music between the time of Kalākaua’s reign and the time of Iz’s death creates an arc that ties
the two figures together. Iz engaged in what can be called, to use Roach’s theory, circumPacific performance. That is, Iz took something from the United States, imbued it with the
“Hawaiian style,” and rebroadcast it throughout the world. He was as beloved by the people
as a sort of musical monarch. Through performance—his voice, his lyrics, his ukulele, his
videos, his commercial success, his work with youth, his stature, and his funeral—he became
representative of the Hawaiian people both as a musical diplomat, and as a surrogate for the
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monarchy that ruled the once sovereign nation. The people of Hawaii even bestowed upon Iz
the title “Bruddah Iz,” a Pidgin English term of endearment and a variation of “brother.” This
title, as opposed to “King,” represents his oneness with the imagined community but still
captures his importance as a figurehead in Hawaiian culture.
The Last Monarchs
The history of Hawaii is full of gods and goddesses, and chiefs and monarchs (the ali’i),
and the myths and histories around the ali’i have shaped the cultural identity of Hawaii. When
the Missionaries arrived in 1820, they intended to educate and convert the Hawaiian people to
Christianity. These missionaries were the first to turn the Hawaiian language, an oral
tradition, into a written language, but also pressured Kamehameha to ban cultural
performance like the hula (Lili’uokalani, 1898).
Descendants of the Keaweaheulu line of Hawaiian chiefs, the last two monarchs of
Hawaii, King Kalākaua and Queen Lili’uokalani, were among the children of Hawaii’s royal
families to be educated by the missionaries. Through their education at the Royal School,
Kalākaua and Lili’uokalani learned to read and write both in English and Hawaiian, and
learned hymns and other religious music in the style of the missionaries. Both learned and
practiced music in the Missionary tradition while embracing and honoring the culture of their
ancient Hawaiian traditions. Stillman (1989) writes, “The fact that Kalākaua and Lili'uokalani
stand out among 19th century Hawaiian rulers in Hawaiian literature is due to their strong
identification with national and ethnic identity” (p. 13).
Lili’uokalani learned how to read and write music in her missionary school, and became
a prolific composer. In her memoir, she recalls learning to sight-read and sing music at
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school:
The untried music was handed to us; and we sang it by note, the rest of the pupils
following by ear until the whole assembly were acquainted with the new music.
After leaving school, my musical education was continued from time to time as
opportunity offered, but I scarcely remember the days when it would not have
been possible for me to write either the words or the music for any occasion on
which poetry or song was needed. To compose was as natural to me as to breathe;
and this gift of nature, never having been suffered to fall into disuse, remains a
source of the greatest consolation to this day (Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter V).
In fact, Lili’uokalani published a number of songs, among them the “Hawaiian National
Anthem”—which is of a similar style as “God Save the Queen”—and “Aloha Oe,” arguably
the most covered Hawaiian song in history, both within and outside of the islands. She also
took a number of common Hawaiian songs sung by people in the royal circle and transcribed
them to musical notation (Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter VIII).
The music of the missionaries influenced Hawaiian music, introducing polyphony to
what was otherwise music with a single melody and often only one singer. Mele oli and mele
hula, the traditional chant styles, were transformed by the missionary influence. The former
style was unaccompanied chant, where “phrases are similar but not identical in length, and
they sometimes conclude in a tonal prolongation with 'i'i (a trill-like fluctuation in pitch),”
and the compositions were ditonic or tritonic (Smith, 1959, p. 51).
Mele hula, on the other hand, is the antecedent of what has become one of the most
popular cultural emblems of Hawaii: hula dancing. Hulas were often accompanied by ancient
rhythm instruments made of gourds or coconuts—the ipu, pahu, or ka’eke’eke—and had a
wider melodic range, “usually five or six tones” (Smith, 1959, p. 51). Mele hula
communicated partly through song and partly through dance, which invoked the body in the
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performance of storytelling (Kaeppler, 1972, p. 38). Hula dancers underwent traditional
training at hula schools, called halau (Merrie Monarch Festival, n.d.).
While Kalākaua was not a prolific composer like his sister, he was also a musician and a
supporter and patron of the arts. Because of his love of the arts—and his love of alcohol—the
Hawaiian people dubbed him the “Merrie Monarch” (Schweizer, 1991, p. 103). When
Kalākaua was elected1 to the throne by Hawaii’s legislature after Kamehameha V’s death in
1872, Kalākaua quickly abolished the ban on hula put enacted in the early part of the century
at the urging of the missionaries (Lili’uokalani, 1898). The beginning of Kalākaua’s reign in
1874 can be marked as an early renaissance for Native Hawaiian music and arts.
“Knowledgeable practitioners enjoyed royal patronage and protection after decades of
missionary-inspired suppression,” writes Amy Stillman (1989). “Musicians and
choreographers surpassed mere revival, and a new genre emerged, known as the hula ku'i” (p.
20).
Hula ku’i combined performative storytelling through dance—hula— with Western
musical elements, including vamps between stanzas, played on Hawaiian instruments like
ukuleles and sung in the style of ancient chant traditions. It was a hybrid style, and one
present today in contemporary Hawaiian music. This style also introduced the use of the
phrase “ha ina ‘ia mai ana kapuana,” which loosely means, “Return to the refrain” or, "The
story is told,” and can be heard in Hawaiian lyrics today (Reichel, 1998). Of hula ku’i,
Stillman writes, “With Kalākaua's encouragement, hula ku'i was used as a vehicle for
reinforcing pride in Hawai'i and being Hawaiian and also for validating Kalākaua's right to
1
Hawaii by this time was a constitutional monarchy, and the constitution specified that if a
monarch failed to name a successor, it was up to the legislature to appoint a new king.
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rule” (p. 23). The King also worked as an international diplomat, and strove to maintain
amicable relations between Caucasian businessmen and the Hawaiian people, and to protect
the existence of the latter. In 1886, he established the Hooululahui, “an organization for
benevolent work amongst his people” (Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter XVIII).
King Kalākaua’s coronation jubilee in 1883 exemplifies Kalākaua’s love for his people,
his culture, and decadence. “All the people, high or low, rich or poor, from Hawaii to Kauai,
were to be made welcome at Honolulu; and elaborate preparations were made for their
reception,” wrote his sister (Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter XVI). Two jeweled crowns were
ordered from Europe, one for Kalākaua and one for his wife, Kapiolani. Lili’uokalani wore
gowns from Paris, which “were generally considered to have been the most elegant
productions of Parisian art ever seen in Hawaii on this or any other state occasion”
(Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter XVI). The coronation ceremony took place at Iolani Palace,
built one year earlier in the style of European palaces, followed by a weeklong celebration of
arts and culture. Three years later, Kalākaua celebrated his 50th birthday with the Silver
Jubilee, another weeklong festival celebrating hula and Hawaiian traditions (Merrie Monarch
Festival, n.d.).
It was during Kalākaua’s reign that the conspiracy to unite Hawaii with the United
States began to take shape. In 1887, a group of sugar barons, descendants of the same
Calvinist missionaries who educated the King and his sister, moved to force Kalākaua to sign
a new constitution. This new constitution included provisions that revoked franchise from
naturalized Asian immigrants, the same immigrants who the constitution’s authors brought
from Asia to work their sugar plantations (Proto, 2009). It also included provisions that
severely constrained suffrage for a number of native Hawaiians, relating to land ownership.
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Lili’uokalani writes in her memories, “Contrary entirely to the intent of the prior constitution
drawn by a Hawaiian monarch (under which for twenty-three years the nation had been
conducted to prosperity), this draft of 1887 took all power from the ruler, and meant that from
that day the ‘missionary party’ took the law into its own hands” (Lili'uokalani, 1898, Chapter
XXIX). By manipulating voting rights, the sugar barons hoped to weaken political support for
the sovereign monarchs and bolster support for annexation by the United States. They bore
arms as they brought the constitution for his signature, and Kalākaua had no choice but to
sign.
After signing the constitution, Kalākaua was little more than a puppet leader, but
remained a cultural leader to the Hawaiian people. His health gradually degraded and in 1889,
he departed for the mainland, leaving Lili’uokalani in charge. After his death in 1891, his
body returned to Hawaii and preparations for the grand royal funeral began. As Lili’uokalani
wrote, “The death and burial of a sovereign is not a trivial matter in Hawaii. The people come
from all parts of the islands to the funeral of the one whom they have known and loved as the
head of the nation” (Lili’uokalani, Chapter XXXV). But Kalākaua’s body was not the only
effigy in the ritual of royal funeral. The ritual itself was a surrogate, a mix of the ancient ritual
of honoring the ali’i with funerary ritual of the modern state.
The remains rested prior to the funeral in the traditional Hawaiian manner, and
Kalākaua’s body lay in state. But not every aspect of the ritual was traditionally Hawaiian.
Kalākaua had close ties with the Masons, who conducted their funerary rituals, and muskets, a
Western weapon, were fired. As Kalākaua himself was a surrogate for the ancient chiefs—
properly dressed, decadent in taste, attempting to act in the best interest of the people—the
funeral itself was a grand performance of Hawaii’s past in the presence of the sugar barons
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conspiring to eliminate Hawaiian sovereignty through the disenfranchisement of the Hawaiian
people and, later, annexation by the United States (Proto, 2009).
After Kalākaua’s death, Lili’uokalani ascended to the throne. In an attempt to restore
the power of the monarchy, Lili’uokalani and her advisers drafted a new constitution that
would replace the one her brother signed under force. Lili’uokalani was a powerful symbol of
cultural and nationalism to the native Hawaiian people, but her proposed constitution pushed
the sugar barons too far. The group successfully planned and executed a coup d’état with the
support of United States Minister Stevens, who dispatched US military forces that came
ashore on December 16, 1893 (Proto, 2009). Among these barons were Sanford Dole and
Lorrin Thurston, a high school dropout and mostly self-taught lawyer. On January 16, 1893,
marine forces landed at Honolulu and the Queen yielded to the provisional government
hoping the United States government would eventually bring justice to the Hawaiians by
restoring power to the kingdom. The missionary party successfully deposed Queen
Lili’uokalani, on January 17, 1893, when she was moved out of Iolani Palace. Despite legal
proceedings and appeals to the United States government, in the coming years, Queen
Lili’uokalani lost the battle for sovereignty (Proto, 2009).
The Queen ordered her people not to not engage in violence against the men who
overthrew the kingdom, a move which was meant to save her people but may have cost
Hawaii its sovereignty (Proto, 2009). Her subjects largely yielded, but there is an interesting
case of a small group of counterrevolutionaries, called the royalists, whose attempted
revolution on January 6, 1895 was glorified in poetry and music. Amy Stillman (1989)
analyzes the Buke Mele Lahui, a compilation of the poems and songs published in the
Hawaiian language newspapers as the counterrevolution progressed. Stillman argues that
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these weren’t merely poems, but were mele hu’i, one of the traditional styles of Hawaiian
chant (p. 3). The use of this particular style of chant politicized the music beyond simply its
lyrics—it symbolized effigy for the Hawaiian kingdom and for the men who tried to save it.
One particular song in this book is “Kupaa Oiaio Me Ka Lahu,” which opens with the
Hawaiian convention of identifying the subject and asking where “they” are. Except here the
subject is the Hawaiian nation: “Where are we, o nation / Believing firmly in Lili'uokalani…”
Stillman continues through the text:
In line 3, the phrase "Kahu Aupuni" is a variant on the traditional concept ofkahu
akua, a guardian of the gods; here the Queen is called the greatest of guardians of
the kingdom (Aupuni), alluding also to a divine right to rule. Line 7 maintains that
Hawai'i is well-known in America (Hawaiianized as "Maleka"). By insisting on
the majesty of the Hawaiian kingdom in line 8, Hawaiians can retain their dignity
despite being defeated by foreigners (p.10).
This poem is a crucial key to understanding the native Hawaiian mindset during the end of the
monarchy. First, this poem refers to it as the Hawaiian nation. Second, the poem refers to the
Queen as the guardian of that nation. Finally, the poem addresses the idea of dignity and
cultural identity in the wake of foreign rule, foretelling the cultural upheaval that was to
characterize the next eighty years or so. Stillman suggests that, while no musical notation is
included in the Buke Mele Lahui, the poems were likely sung to popular hula ku’i tunes, the
style developed during Kalākaua’s reign.
The counterrevolution actually resulted in the provisional government (which the
poets referred to as “Pi Gi” in the texts) demanding that Lili’uokalani abdicate the throne
(Stillman, 1989, p. 6). The Queen was placed under arrest for treason against the provisional
government on January 16, 1895 (Lili’uokalani, Chapter XLIII). Annexation proceedings
moved forward. Despite the support of native Hawaiians against the coup as well as the
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Queen’s attempts to fight for the Crown lands—those lands reserved by the monarchs of
Hawaii for the Hawaiian people—she stood no chance against the ribald abuse of
international law at the hands of white capitalist interests. The sugar barons were largely
successful because of how they capitalized politically on Hawaii’s strategic military location
in the Pacific and the pervasive racism of post-Civil War America (Proto, 2009).
Lili’uokalani died in 1911, but before doing so, amended her Deed of Trust to read,
“all the property of the trust estate, both principal and income, . . . shall be used by the
Trustees for the benefit of orphan and other destitute children in the Hawaiian Islands, the
preference to be given to Hawaiian children of pure or part aboriginal blood” (QLCC, n.d.).
Queen Lili’uokalani’s Children’s Center exists today to carry out the Queen’s mission, an
institutional effigy of her cultural identity.
Acculturation and Renaissance
Hawaii’s annexation and Lili’uokalani’s death marked the start of a period of
acculturation in Hawaii, where the population of native Hawaiians continued to decrease
dramatically in proportion to the number of Asian immigrants brought in to work in the sugar
fields and the growth of US military operations. Jon Van Dyke (1998) writes, “From 1898 to
1959, Hawaii was a territory of the United States, and during this period systematic efforts
were made to discourage the use of the Hawaiian language and suppress expressions of
Hawaiian culture” (p. 103). The Hawaiian language was outlawed in 1896, while Hawaii was
a pre-annexation Republic (Trask, 2000, p. 375). Hawaiians were essentially rendered
foreigners in their own land.
Lili’uokalani’s song, “Aloha Oe,” also became famous outside of the islands. “Aloha
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Oe” means “Farewell to Thee.” The beauty of the land inspired the song during a horseback
ride, but she transcribed the song while under house arrest for treason, and it found its way to
a publisher in Chicago (Lili’uokalani, Chapter XLVI). Her transcription of the song during
her house arrest now allowed it to take on a new life outside of Hawaii. The irony, of course,
is that the Queen ended up as Hawaii’s last monarch, forced from her throne and left to say
farewell to Hawaii’s independence and sovereignty. Hawaiian choral groups performed the
song for the early recordings, but over time, white lyricists began to write English words for
the song, and it took on a new life in performance outside of Hawaii.
It was in the early 1960s, however, with the premiere of Elvis Pressley’s Blue Hawaii in
1961, that “Aloha Oe” truly became known in the United States. Interestingly, Elvis is a
figure who Roach identifies as a surrogate, earning the nickname “The King” from fans.
“Elvis Presley inverted the doubling pattern of minstrelsy—black music pours from a white
face—and this surrogation has begotten others,” writes Roach (p. 69). Elvis’s Blue Hawaii
was a similar “pattern of minstrelsy,” where Hawaiian music—native—poured from a white
face, and the film itself represented a white ideal of life in Hawaii, which became a state two
years prior to the film’s release.
The suppression of Hawaiian culture ended in the 1970s during what is commonly
known as the Hawaiian Renaissance. Academics and young people in Hawaii began to study
and learn the language and traditions of the pre-colonial Hawaiian people, prompting a
renaissance of Hawaiian art and culture (Hood, 1983; Linnekin, 1983). Through the use of
culturally Hawaiian styles like slack-key guitar, ukulele, ancient percussion, and chant,
Hawaiian musicians since the Hawaiian Renaissance period have developed a whole genre of
contemporary music that at once evokes the memory of a native culture and the appropriation
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
of outside musical styles and influences. Through lyrics, instruments, and coves, ethic
Hawaiian traditions remain alive in contemporary Hawaiian music, perpetuating an
unmistakably Hawaiian national identity through music.
Alongside the Hawaiian Renaissance, the Hawaiian sovereignty movement gained
popularity. This movement is dedicated to taking back the land back for the Hawaiian people
and re-establishing the islands as a place for the Hawaiian nation that currently exists as an
imagined community, tied together through culture and ethnicity (Trask, 2000; Van Dyke,
1998; Anderson, 1991). Some of the sovereignty movement’s proponents cling to the hope of
undoing colonialism and taking the land back—both geographically and spiritually—from
colonial captors, returning Hawaii to the land it was before missionaries, plantations, and the
removal of their monarch (Meller and Lee, 1997). Others hope for the nation-within-a-nation
status the US has granted to Native Americans (Van Dyke, 1998). But more than one hundred
years of acculturation can’t be undone, meaning the Hawaii of the native Hawaiian people is
an unattainable utopia, a nation’s imagining of a time long past.
Politically, many contemporary Hawaiian songs (1970s and later) contain strong
themes relating to freedom and national identity, evoking memories of the colonial past and
dreams of a sovereign future (Lewis, 1984, 1991; Stillman, 1989). These songs carry with
them immense meaning for the Hawaiian people, yet are often the same songs performed at
luaus or commercially successful beyond the islands. Hawaii’s tourism industry incorporates
many of the traditions of pre-colonial Hawaiian music and dance, such as the hula, (Desmond,
1997; Kaeppler, 1972), but in many cases does so in a way that reinforces outsider stereotypes
of Hawaiian culture (Kaomea, 2000).
Jane Desmond (1997) explains that caricatures of Hawaii constructed for tourists, such
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
as the “hula girl,” rely on implications of “naturalness” or “primitive” as opposed to the kind
of binary black/white racialization pervasive on the mainland. Desmond writes, “The
importance of this presumed racialization in the visitors' imagination is that it helps to
manufacture and ‘authenticate’ at the bodily level a sense of ‘exotic’ difference, while
escaping from the tendentiousness of the black/white dichotomy that most frames racial
discourse and fuels discord on the mainland” (p. 88).
The Merrie Monarch Festival, established in 1964 as a tourist draw and tribute to
Kalākaua, underwent a major overhaul at the beginning of the Renaissance. The festival’s
original events included a “King Kalākaua beard look-alike contest, a barbershop quartet
contest, a relay race, a re-creation of King Kalākaua's coronation, and a Holoku Ball” (Merrie
Monarch Festival, n.d.). In 1968, Dottie Thompson took over the festival, and in 1971, added
the hula competition. From the festival’s tourist-oriented routes, it has become an annual
celebration of Hawaiian hula that enforces strict rules governing the traditions of each dance,
putting it in stark contrast to hula shows at tourist luaus. As Roach writes, “Displaced
transmission constitutes the adaptation of historic practices to changing conditions, in which
popular behaviors are resituated in new locales” (p. 29). The Merrie Monarch Festival takes
the historic practice of hula, taught in the ancient styles, and places it in a modern contest that
honors a cultural tradition in a contemporary format.
Opposition to tourism emerged as a political theme in contemporary Hawaiian music
during the Hawaiian Renaissance. “Waimanalo Blues,” performed by Country Comfort,
combines the sounds of traditional slack-key guitar with hymn-like harmony in a ballad that
laments the loss of the ancient lands. The lyrics of the refrain are the most poignant: “The
beaches they sell to build their hotels / My fathers and I once knew Birds all along sunlight at
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
dawn / Singing Waimanalo blues” (Country Comfort, “Waimanalo Blues”). The bands during
the renaissance also chose names that honored the land—Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau, Sunday
Manoa, Kalapana—in contrast to haole-friendly names “like Royal Hawaiian Serenaders or
the Waikiki Beach Boys—names that conjured up images of happy-go-lucky brown lackeys
of Hawaiian films and nightclubs” (Lewis, 1984, p. 46).
Despite some of the groups’ political inclinations and their honoring of aloha aina
through names, many groups continued to perform hapa-haole music (“half foreign”), a type
of mele hula song with “English lyrics but Hawaiian sounds.” Solberg (1983) explains:
Purists may deny they are Hawaiian at all, and frequently the haole half dominates
one performance while the Hawaiian dominates another. Despite the purists, the
hapa-haole songs have been around since the turn of the century, and they
continue to be written and performed…. Hapa-haole music reflects the interaction
of Hawaiian musical style and current mainland styles: a melding that, as in all
popular musics, frequently walks the thin line between the various and the
sentimental (p. 55).
The Makaha Sons were one such group who performed this style of songs, and released
several live albums performed at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu. The group featured a young
new artist, chosen for both his ukulele skills and his ability to sing falsetto, the missing voice
part in the group. This artist was Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, later to become Hawaii’s beloved
Bruddah Iz. Gorden et. al. write, “In Kamakawiwo'ole's hands, the ukulele achieved a heroic
status that continues to grow. He reminded the world of its simple charm” (Gorden et. al.,
n.d.)
Sovereignty Movement and the Rise of Iz
Hawaiian activism relied heavily on musical performances to gain the attention of
would-be supporters. In the early days of Iz’s career, Hawaiian activists were focused on the
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Navy’s use of Kaho’olawe, the smallest island in the chain, to test bombs. They held benefit
concerts featuring popular artists to draw attention to the cause. "If it wasn't for the
entertainers bringing thousands of people into one place so we could talk to them, it would
have been hard to educate," said protest organizer Walter Ritte. "No one would come just to
listen to someone speak. That wasn't the draw. The entertainers were the draw. And at the
same time more and more people started asking for Hawaiian music" (Creamer, n.d.).
From these anti-military Kaho’olawe protests, Iz’s activism shifted later in his life to
focus on the native Hawaiian community living in Hawaii. His voice and the uniquely
Hawaiian sound of his ukulele captured the imagination of his community. Like King
Kalākaua, Iz had a history of substance abuse—while Kalākaua’s vice was champagne, Iz
chose drugs. As a community activist, Iz became an anti-drug campaigner, visiting schools
and talking to children about the dangers of drug abuse (Creamer, n.d.). His cultural charity is
reminiscent of Kalākaua’s Hooululahui.
Iz continued to play with the Makaha Sons alongside his charity work, and closed
concerts with the phrase, “My name is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, and I am Hawaiian" (Gordon
et. al., n.d.). His pursuit of fame was less about wealth than telling the story of his people—
continuing the oral tradition of Hawaiian cultural identity. Jon de Mello of Mountain Apple
said of Iz, "He was a voice to the people, he talked to the people directly. In ancient Hawaii,
there were two classes of people, the ali’i and the maka’ainana, the working people, the
people of the land. That's who Israel represented” (Adamski, 1997). He may have represented
the working people, but to those working people Israel was a king, a modern day Kalākaua.
As this Hawaiian performer’s career progressed, the sovereignty movement gained
strength, and one hundred years after the overthrow of Lili’uokalani, the United States issued
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an official apology for the overthrow (Dudley, 1993). It was presented as a joint
Congressional resolution with the lengthy title: “To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the
January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and to offer an apology to Native
Hawaiians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii”
(Akaka, 1993). This apology recognizes as illegal, under international law, the overthrow and
the forced cession of “1,800,000 acres of crown, government and public lands of the Kingdom
of Hawaii, without the consent of or compensation to the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaii
or their sovereign government” (Akaka, 1993).
That same year, 1993, Iz released his first solo album, Facing Future, which included
a cover of a highly political song popularized during the Hawaiian Renaissance, “Hawaii
’78.” Iz’s version of “Hawaii ‘78” opens with a faint Hawaiian chant sung by an unfamiliar
voice in an ancient style. The song then moves to a chant sung by Iz, in which the same line is
repeated several times: “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono o Hawai’i,” meaning, “The life of
the land is perpetuated in righteousness” (Hawaii Revised Statutes, §5-9). The phrase is the
state’s motto, traced back to Kamehameha III upon return of the kingdom from the British. Iz
uses the motto of a state in the United States of America to represent Hawaiian national
identity in the music.
This use of chant at the opening of the song is a way of calling listeners to attention
and setting the stage for the beginning of the story. The song’s lyrics go on to lament the
modern state of the islands, wondering what would happen if “the king and queen” returned to
see what had become of Hawaii. A later line in the song about the King fighting to “conquer
these islands” presumably about Kamehameha I, who ruled from 1782 until 1819—one year
before the missionaries came to Hawaii from New England. The song’s solemn refrain urges,
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
“…cry for the gods, cry for the people / cry for the land that was taken away / and in it you’ll
find Hawaii” (Kamakawiwo’ole, Hawaii ’78). The song’s percussion is performed in an
ancient style as well, with pounding drums that keep a regular beat in a very non-Western
rhythmic pattern.
This album also included the song that would make Iz a commercial success beyond
the islands: the medley “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World.” The song
was recorded in 1988 at the studio of Milan Bertosa, when a client of Bertosa’s called at 3am
to pitch Iz’s idea. Iz got on the phone with Bertosa, and within 15 minutes, was at the studio
and ready to record. The song was recorded in a single take. Five years later, when Bertosa
was working with Iz on his solo album, he remembered the track and thought it should have a
place on the album (Montagne, 2010). Since the release of the album in 1995, Iz’s version of
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” has been used by a variety of American films and television
shows, including 50 First Dates and ER, and even today, thirteen years after Iz’s death,
remains on the Billboard charts (Billboard, 2010).
By virtue of the global popularity of his cover of “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” Iz
became a surrogate for Hawaiian statesmanship and royalty—a modern day Kalākaua. By
popularizing Hawaiian music, he also established a kind of legitimacy for Hawaiian music
within world culture that sets up a line of line of succession for artists. Ledward Ka’apana,
contemporary Hawaiian slack-key guitarist and ukulele player says in the Honolulu
Advertiser: "Hawaiian music is getting out there. Haoles love our music. Many want to learn
the music. It's great for our culture—reminiscent of the old days, when we did the songs from
within, coming from the heart" (Gordon et. a., n.d.). Iz’s versions of American standards were
the opposite of the co-opting of Lili’uokalani’s “Aloha Oe.” While non-Hawaiian covers of
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
“Aloha Oe” took everything Hawaiian out of the song, Iz’s stripped down voice-and-ukulele
version of these standards, particularly “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” made the songs
Hawaiian. While translations and derivatives of “Aloha Oe” lose the nuance of the Hawaiian
lyrics, Iz changes some of the lyrics to “Rainbow” without changing the song’s emotional
impact.
His solo music was still sung mostly in English, perhaps recognizing that English
was a more common language than Hawaiian among even native Hawaiians. But the music
was significantly more political than anything the Makaha Sons had done. In 1995, the song
“E Ala ‘E” appeared on the album of the same name. The title translates to “awaken” or
“arise,” and is named after a traditional Hawaiian sunrise chant. The song blends slow verses
in English with a hui, or chorus, made up of both Hawaiian and English lyrics. The tempo of
the song picks up suddenly as the Hawaiian lines begin and relaxes again at the word “ka
‘aina,” Traditional Hawaiian drums drive the song’s rhythm, with Iz’s ukulele pushing the
tempo in the chorus sections.
Each line in Hawaiian follows with the English translation, a way of using the ethnic
language but translating it for those unfamiliar with it as well. The first line means, “Gone are
the days of the alamihi ways,” a reference to “alamihi crab syndrome. Activist Kekailoa Perry
explains this mythical syndrome in a 2002 opinion piece for The Honolulu Advertiser:
We are taught in schools, neighborhoods and workplaces that the Native Hawaiian
people carry on like alamihi crabs trying to climb out of a bucket. Each time one
is able to get to the top, another crab reaches up and pulls it down. Over the years
people have accepted this fiction as truth (Perry, 2002).
The second line means, “The power of the people is the piko,” which means “navel,”
symbolizing the connectedness and birthright of the Hawaiian people. Performance-wise, the
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
music video for this song features Iz playing his ukulele in front of a backdrop of an erupting
volcano, as well as images of Hawaiian children. The song is a call for the Hawaiian people to
“defend our birthright to be free” (Kamakawiwo’ole, 2005), a plea for his people to fight for
cultural freedom. It is hugely political, and expresses the sentiments of an ever-strengthening
imagined community.
In 1997, Iz died of respiratory failure at the age of 38. Preparations were made for a
funeral on the scale of a king, a ritual that honored Iz as a Hawaiian, a performer, and a
statesman. Fifty people worked to construct a casket out of koa wood from each of the
Hawaiian Islands to hold the body weighing more than 700 pounds (Adamski, 1997). Like
Kalākaua’s funeral, people—an estimated 10,000 of all races and creeds—came from all over
the islands to pay their respects to the man who lay in state in the Capitol, beneath a 50-foot
Hawaiian flag. He was the first and only Hawaiian musician to lie in state in the Capitol, and
only the third person in the history of Hawaii as a US state (Adamski, 1997). Above his
casket hung a photograph of Iz, and kahili—“those traditional accompaniments of royalty”
(Lili’uokalani, 1898, Chapter XXXV)—surrounded the casket, just like Kalākaua’s funeral.
The ritual was an effigy not just for a performer, but also for a monarch.
Several days later, his body was cremated along with the Martin ukulele on which he
played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and his ashes were scattered from a Hawaiian
voyager canoe (Montagne, 2010). Kalākaua was laid to rest in the royal mausoleum, but the
nature of the Iz’s ash ceremony was culturally more Hawaiian, and the ritual itself an effigy
for pre-Western Hawaii. Friend Del Beazley tells NPR, "In the old days people would wail
when the mo'i or 'king' passed away—and cry. And that's really what it was. This whole island
came together just to say goodbye to this one Hawaiian" (Montagne, 2010). Tractor-trailer
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
trucks wailed on their horns as they drove along the coast. Iz’s label, Mountain Apple
Records, currently broadcasts on YouTube a video for “Wonderful World,” consisting of
videos of Hawaiian scenery with images of Iz over the course of his life—a digital effigy
(Mountain Apple Records, 2007). The end of the video shows moving images from the
cremation ceremony, with dozens of Iz fans on surfboards in the ocean, slapping their hands
against the water as the performer’s ashes are floated out to sea.
As Roach (1996) writes, “In a culture where memory has become saturated with
written communication distributed and recorded by print, canon formation serves the function
that ‘ancestor worship’ once did” (p. 77). The leaders of the sovereignty movement, like
Haunani-Kay Trask, have never achieved the king-like status of Iz because they lacked the
cultural connection that Iz leveraged through his musical canon. Bruddah Iz embodied the
Aloha spirit, and is an effigy for the Hawaiian monarchy and a king for the modern imagined
community longing for sovereignty. A two hundred pound bronze casting of Iz—a permanent
effigy—now sits in Wainae, an impoverished section of Oahu with a large population of
native Hawaiians. Friend Jacqueline Rosetti told thee Honolulu Advertiser, "The day he died,
he was screaming in Hawaiian, ‘E mau loa aku (I will live forever).' He knew, he knew he
would be remembered" (Gordon et. al., n.d.). The memory of Iz continues to perform as a
surrogate for the Hawaiian monarchy even after his death, and his music lives on as effigy of
both Iz and the Hawaiian nation, facing future.
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Appendix A: Funeral Images
Figure 1. Funeral Procession of King Kalākau (Lili’uokalani, 1898)
Figure 2. Line to Pay Respects to Iz (Adamski, 1997)
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HAWAIIAN EFFIGY AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE
Figure 3. Kalākaua’s Lying in State (Lili’uokalani, 1898)
Figure 3. Iz Lying in State (Lili’uokalani, 1898)
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