Institute for Studies
In Amcrican Music
Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College
lt
Irving
Berlin's
The phrase "theater of war" has
intrigued commentators through-
Musical
Theater of
War
chapter by that title in his bookThe
by
JeffieyMagee
New York
SItIITR
T
out the twentieth century. In
of the Ciry University of
a
Great War and Modem Memory,
historian Paul Fussell took a cue
from Ezra Pound and explored the
phrase through soldiers' accounts
of "being beside oneself in battle, of doing something that took
them far away from "real life"-in
short, of performing a role.l Theater itself, then, may be an apt forum in which to reveal and explore
human thought and behavior dur-
ing wartime, and few American
showmen stand out so clearly for
cultivating the theater of war than
kvingBerlin.
Inside
This Issue
Performing Hawaiian
by Kevin Fellezs......4
Interview with Tom
Cipullo by Doug
Cohen........... ...........6
Bernstein in Boston,
conference review by
Paul R. Laird..........8
Celebrating African
American Art Song,
conference reviews
by Naomi Andre and
Ann Sears.....--.....-..9
The subjectofAmericans at war
Irving Berlin in This Is the Army (1942)
Photo courtesy of Photofest
inspired Berlin across five decades.
He found in war-related themes a rich wellspring of feeling and observalion that pours out in individual songs
and in plots and scores for stage and screen. War and its impact mobilized Berlin's creative energy from his
l9l1 hit "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which describes a "bugle call like you never heard before, / so natural
that you want to go to war," to the postwar nostalgia that suffi.rses the 1954 flm l[rhite Christmas. Yet it was
not war per se that inspired Berlin, since most of his war-related songs aim to identify and articulate the
everyday thoughts, feelings, and actions ofordinary people. Far from the Providence-sanctionedjingoism
that has attached to the song "God Bless America" since 9/1 l, Berlin chiefly strove to reflect back to civilians
and soldiers alike images of themselves at once heroic and human.
Berlin's focus on the ordinary citizen, whether soldier or civilian, meshed well with the widespread
American notion of World War II as the "people's war" to be fought by and for the "common man," an idea
articulated in speeches by then Vice-President Henry Wallace and embodied in Ernie Pyle's journalism. No
wonder, then, that Berlin regarded his World War II revue This Is the Army as his most outstanding and
rewarding achievement. Like its predecessor, Berlin's World War I revue Yip, Yip, Yaphank! , This Is the
Army was developed at the Army's Camp Upton on Long Island. It opened on Broadway on 4 July 1942 to
popular and critical acclaim, later touring the U.S., Great Britain, and, thanks to General Eisenhower's recommendation, the war's European and Pacific theaters. In 1943, Warner Brothers produced a film version that
became the company's biggest grossing movie to date, second only to Gone with the Wind in that era.
Several features of the production made it unique: it was an army camp show that drew talent from a
national search, its touring company was designated an official detachment of the U. S. Army, its actors and
backstage staff were given an assortment of military ranks, and its platoon of black talent made it the only
racially integrated military unit before the army was offrcially desegregated. Moreover, This Is the Army, Inc., was
Playing Guital Perloming llawaiian
ofthe
Who is a real Hawaiian? The question has been raised by memben
paleoleo
mele
na
of
performers
Rush,
Hawaiian hip hop group, Sudden
a
(Hawaiian iap), who have implicitly registered cultural hybridity as
Hawaiian
the
combining
by
olauthentic Hawaiian-ness
"ornpon.rt
idiom' My own
and inglish tanguages within an urbanAfricanAmerican
interefi
in tlre ways Hawaiian-ness is articulated
tl'ough another hybrid
practices and distimtrsical form, fu ho'alu (slackkey guitar), and how its
knowledge from
musical
of
bution networks, including the transmission
membership'
cultural
Hawaiian
master to student, complicates notions of
that
Mythoughts are similart'o those ofRonaHalualani, who claims
obsu.re,
califomia
in
raised
and
bom
o* poritio L ethnic Hawaiians
officially
even deny, ouridentification as "real" Hawaiians.lIn additionto
ofHawaiian
recognition
for
state
blood quanhrm requirements
sanctioned
is consfiucted and
ancestry, she lists the various ways Hawaiian identity
articulated-native-born, indigenous,
Local-all of which provide little space
for those in the Hawaiian diaspora a
on the lower
where the thumb provides bass lines and rhythm chords
fills
iinprovise
or
melody
the
pick
fingers
other
the
and
pitched strings
three higher pitched strings' Others, however' argue
on the two or
the Hawaiian folk
slack key guitar style bonowid from antecedents in
develsubsequent
their
and
hulachants
mele
tne
tradition, Ispecially
most
perhaps
ku'i'
hula
hymn-influenced
Christian
the
opment into
(The
conlmon
'Oe'"
"Aloha
tune
popular
by
famously represented
because
,p""uluiion ihat Hawaiian musicians slackened guitar strings
by
countered
be
may
guitar
a
tune
properly
to
how
they didn't know
open
common
most
the
in
tonalities
major
of
noting the dominance
*ririt used by ki ho'alumusicians, which is reflective of Hawaiian
approach.)
musiJal se.rsibilities and indicates a systematic adaptive
of the
Mele is perhaps the most important cultural expression
legends
passed
on
Hawaiians. ItL the way ancient Hawaiians prayed and
and lore, linking their prehistory with their
present life. The chant, and its two main
divisions, mele oli (chants done a cappella)
alnd mele hula (chattts with dance and/or
music) confibute to the rhythmic basis of
ki ho'alu, which was originally played on
the lpn, a gourd, andfrrcpahu, a drum formed
from hollowedout coconut or breadfruit t'ee
generation or more removed from living in
theirhomeland Ourownclaims to Hawaiian
identity, lying outside these definitions,
appear specious. The situation of
diasporic Hawaiians is furttrer complicated
by a prevailing concept that Halualani
logs with sharkskin membranes for heads'
Traditional rhythms are based on two- or
four-beat pattems linked to specific dance
and Haunani-KaY Trask have dubbed
"Hawaiian in the heart."2 This idea, they
Typically for Hawaiian music, the
accompaniment does not parallel the
steps.
argue, misinterprets the original meaning
of Aloha (often translated simply as
"love") in order to inscribe Hawaiians
as a naturally benevolent and generous
people, a concept that allows anyone'
rnitip "Gabby" Pahinui
Photo courtesy of Honolulu Star-Bulletin
regardless ofethnic or cultural backgrorurd,
type of Hawaiian-ness. According to Halualani'theterm
-no,rct
Aloha wrs*.a to describe various relationships between Hawaiian
social classes on which their "harshly lived social hegemony [was]
a
sanctified through religion."3 In other words, Aloha articulated
tJctaim
song melody on guitar but repeats small'
related melodic fragments that are varied
and improvised on within strict conven-
a
political relationship between Hawaiian kings, nobility and commoners'
eachofwhominterpretedAloftasomewhatdifferentlyfollowingtheir
level' Aloha
rankings within the sociopolitical structure' On a simple
for Hawaiian
may bJseen as loyalty to the king for commoners while,
her subjects'
or
his
monarchs, it marked a sense of obligation towards
I have chosen to listen to the ways Hawaiian identity is mmplicated
through ki ho'alu not only because it is heard by contemporary
(despite
audieices as an authentically Hawaiian music practice
both
has
it
as
also
but
roots extending to non-Hawaiian cultures)
musical
Hawaiian
traditional
incorporated ind displaced older,
practLes. The transcultural threads of ki ho'alu are visible in the
naval
iroubled weavings of Hawaiian musical aesthetics, British
the
and
Hawai'i'
to
cattle
of
power, which alliwed the importation
'Iule*icun
ninethe
in
Hawai'i
guitar
to
vaqueros who brought the
cattle
teenth century when they came to teach Hawaiians better
husbandry techniques.
guitars
When the vaqueros retumed to Mexico, many left their
historians
Some
companions'
with their Haw aiianpaniolo (cowboy)
the two-guitar
speculate that Hawaiian paniolos sought to emulate
of ki ho' alu'
style
fingerpicking
sound of the vaqueros in ihe familiar
tions, creating a polyphonic texture'
In solo guitar contexts , ki ho'alu can achieve this same melodic
than
overlapping. Because slack key guitar is a picked' rather
a
bass'
plucked
a
strummed, ityle, with a melody accompanied by
stride
or
ragtime
a polyphonic sound not unlike
musician creates
pattems in
piano styles, with improvisation of melodic and rhythmic
as are
common'
is
toth the bass and treble registers' Syncopation
jazz
solo
early
triplets and dotted eighths with sixteenths' While
melodic
and
fAro ttyt.t used these effects to provide rhythmic
i"rrion, h ho'alu achieves a rolling, rhythmically calm sensation'
The
As ki ho'alu evolved it began to replace mele and hula'
Hawaiian
native
in
a
decrease
to
decline of mele can be attributed
missionaries'
religious practices due to enforced proscriptions by
its raditional, native associations contibuted
conto the commodification of Hawaiian culture for non-Hawaiian
and
social
to
the
immune
not
sumption.a However, ki ho'alu was
practices.
cultural
Hawaiian
affecting other
rnJoiror.ing of hula from
poliiical transformations
were
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' there
to discourage and
concerted Jffo.tr Uy-Aritish and United States elites
of the Hawaiian
use
the
denying
culture,
even eradicate Hawaiian
ki ho'alu'
lunguug., religious rituals and other cultural practices, including
Osorio
Kamakawiwo'ole
Jonathan
and
K.
Silva
S*t-"f* such as Noenoe
and
political
for
a
need
by
prompted
efforts,
these
have documented how
of
opposition
cultural
and
political
the
elided
capital gain, simultaneously
loss
cultural
Hawaiian
of
nanative
a
was
result
Native ifawaiians.s The
PeilOming llawaiiafl
(continued)
that obscured the ways Hawaiian cultural haditions managed to survive.
disappearance occurred as Hawaiian cultural
producers moved their art and folkways underground to avoid continued harassment by colonial authorities and the zealous proscriptions of
missionaries. Ki ho'alu survived through the careful preservation by
vaio\x ohana (families), not as "closely guarded family secrets,"6 as one
ki ho'alu's sxrentvitality as a commercial genre as well as its acceptance
as an artistic form outside ofHawai'i can be atfibuted, in no small part, to
non-Hawaiian musician George Winston, pianist guitarist and owner of
Dancing Cat Records, a label he formed expressly to record and preserve
slack key guitar history has claimed, but because as Hawaiian cultural
suppression became offrcial state policy, ki ho'alu musicians acted in
ho'alu master ClwlenPhilip "Gabby'' Pahinui occupy in relation to Hawaiian culture hightight the debates surrounding authenticity and a musical
idiom viewed as part ofa Hawaiian folk tradition.
Ki ho'alu's apparent
politically prudent ways. As noted Hawaiian musician Keola
Beamer asserts:
I'm old enough
Indeed, despite its transcultural roots, ki ho'alu is closely linked
to rememberwhen we all thought slack key
would
die. There were many reasons for that. One of thern was that our
lwpuna (elderc)had lost so much: their lan{ theirreligious system,
ttreir sense of place in the universe. The last thing they wanted to
lose was their music, so turings became very cultish and protected. The irony was that by way of holding the secrets too close, this
art form was actually dying, suffocating because the ffirmation
wasn't being commruricated. 7
Though its survival depended on secrecy during much of its
history some musicians, such as Beamer, claim that ki ho'alu's
continuation in more recent times has relied on its widespread
dissemination. From their perspective, ki ho'alu is no longer threatened by extemal cultural forces but, rather, is increasingly hindered
by its insularity. Within a contemporary political context, Beamer,
Kane and others have begun teaching ki ho'alu primarlly to nonHawaiian students throughout the world, with the belief that spreading
knowledge of ki ho'alu is fiindamental to ensuring its continued
survival and creative vitality. Moreover, as ki ho'alu is increasingly
leamed through recordings rather than oral hadition, Beamer argues
teaching by Hawaiian masters will enstne the retention ofa certain degree
of Hawaiian cultural integrity. As he notes on his website,
Because many ofthe beautiful old traditions in Hawai'i have been
changed by outside influences, this greatly increased respect for
the older slack key tzditions and ttre sharing of tunings is helping
to ensurc that traditional slack key
Ki ho'alu
ofbottr himself andother ki ho a/rz artists. Moreover, the
discrepant positions ki ho'alu gurtarists such as Winstrcn and modem fu
the creative wod<
guitarwill endtre and be shared.8
as a solo guitar hadition divorced from mele is a
relatively recent performance style and its role as an accompaniment
to vocals and/or dance has been underserved by the majority of tl
ho'alureordtngs, which feature solo guitarists. In fac! Elizabeth Tatar's
taxonomy of Hawaiian music in her essay "Toward a Description of
Precontact Music in Hawai'i,'' hsts oriy mele, himeni, monarchy songs,
folk songs, hapa haole and contemporary (a term she uses to describe
musicians who integrate Hawaiian themes and/or musical elements with
non-Hawaiian popular music, such as Sudden Rush's rap). Following
Tatar's categorization, ki ho'alu rxrcomfortably overlaps mele hula, fok
songs and contemporary, simultaneously evoking a pre-contact Hawaiian
musical aesthetic and ttre contradictory post-contact musical st€reotypes
of both laconic pleasure and excitable native impulses. Additionally, ff
ho'alu recordtngs circulate within the commercial networla that have
rendered Hawaiian culture in ways Trask has likened to prostitution.r0
I would hesitate to claim that all non-Hawaiian participation
and commercial interest in Hawaiian culture is
primarily appropriative
orexploitive giventhat as Halualani reminds us, many diasporic Hawaiians access Hawaiian culture through those very mediations. Indeed
to Hawaiian culture andportrayed as an expression
ofnative Hawai-
ian music aesthetics. Ironically, given tl ho'alu musicians'
indigenizing of the guitar and the corresponding disturbance of
clear demarcations among ethnic and cultural divisions, ki ho'alu
continues to be rendered as the sonic representation of "vivid,
warm tropical images that transcend the Islands to express universal
feelings."rr George H. Lewis, writing about Hawaiian music in the
1970s notes, "Many of the new songs also used musical forms that
were associated with native tradition
from the chants of early
- guitarists."r2
Hawaii to the song stylings of the slack-key
In what has become known as the Hawaiian Renaissance of the
1970s, young Hawaiian musicians not only began performing older styles
of Hawaiian music but also invigorated ttrem with a rumber of innovations, including the merging of baditional and modem instumentation.
They often wrg inthe Hawaiian language, effectivelymakingtheirmusic
less attactive to tourists and challenging the dominance
of hapa hoole
political
act a way to combat the attempts to eradicate Hawaiian culture by British
andAmerican missionaries and political elites, whose legacy remains in
songs in the commercial music arena. Singing in Hawaiian was a
the English-language dominance
ofthe educational and legal systems.
Yet, as ki ho'alu became known as an instrumental guitar
music, it could evade the politics of language use and entered
the public imagination as the "soft, inviting sounds" of Hawai'i,
allowing its performance and appreciation without knowledge of
the Hawaiian language or culture. There is nothing new about this
practice: a survey of popular music trends from the early twentieth
century to the contemporary moment quickly reveals a history of
blending ideas about Hawaiian culture, particularly its easy
accessibility by non-Hawaiians, with Hawaiian sounds such as the
steel lap guitar and the rolling rhythms of 'ukulele players. Clewly, ki
ho'alu is a musical idiom that has become firmly attached to a certain
type of Hawaiian-ness for audiences inside and outside ttre geographical
space of the Hawaiian Islands. On one hand, well-known guitarist Bob
Bromran has described his interest in the music of various Pacific Island
cultures, including ki ho'alu, as the result of "hangfing] around at the
fringes of colonialism, where you get non-Europeans playing European
instruments. . . . Whenever the colonizers arrived with guitars, the
colonized did very interesting things with them."r3 On the other hand,
Califomia-bom and raised Patrick Landeza credits his mother, Frances
Kawaipulou Kuakini O'Sullivan, for instilling a love of Hawaiian
music in him, which eventually led to studies with Hawaiian master
musicians such as Ray Kane, Sonny Chillingworth, and Saichi
Kawahara.ra Taken together, ki ho'alu musicians, Hawaiian and nonHawaiian, indicate that there may be different kinds of Hawaiian-ness
articulated in the performance and creation of a musical idiom marked
Continued on page
l2
PeflOming Hawaiiafi (continued)
"Hawaiian soul musid'by the subtitle of one documentary film on fri
ho'alu.ts We hear in ki ho'alu the various articulations of Hawaiian
cultural membership in the ways I have outlined above: the indigenization
ofa foreign instument ttrat marks Hawaiian music in an explicitly hybrid
way (against the so-called purity of kaditional mele); the use of kr
ho'alu as a traditional music in contast to the mainsteam popular music
stylings of iapa haole songs during the Hawaiian Renaissance of the
1970s; the rise of
kl ho'alumasters
such as Pahick Landeza who are
bom and raised outside of the Hawaiian Islands; the teaching of ki
ho'alubeyondthe confines of a master guitarist's oharnandrncrea*
ingly, to musicians like Bob Brozman who make no claims for Hawaiian
identity yet find in kl ho'alu aresonant musical idiom.
Brozman is not the only non-Hawaiian who enjoys what he co.
gently expresses as "hanging out at the fringes of colonialism." But for
Hawaiian musicians, their cultural legacy is not at the fringes but in the
very center of colonialist desire, exploitation, and displacement. And Gabby Pahinui'shistoric recordings ofslackkey guitarinthe late I 940s through
the 1970s, as well as contemporary guitarists such as Keola Beamer, have
helped H ho'alu make a remarkable retum to the public spherc. As kr
ho'alu musicians closely identified with "real" Hawaiian-ness such as
Beamer, Kane, and Kaapana actively pass on theirlmowldge of ki ho' alu,
oflegitimate ki ho'alz musicians widens, including diasporic
Hawaiians who do not fit easily within current categories for real
Hawaiian identity. This latest cohort of guitarists, sailing from the fringes of colonialism, will take ki ho'alu to unfamiliar places, sounding
out new definitions Hawaiian identity may yet embrace and embody.
Fellezs
the circle
-Kevin
University of California at Merced
Notes
Rona Tamiko Halualani, In the Name of Hawaiians: Native ldentities and
Cultural Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
2 See Halualari, In the Name of Hawaiians, and Haunani-Kay Trask, "'Lovely
Hula Hands': Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture," in
From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i (Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i Press, 1999 [1993]).
3 Halualani, 25.
a See Trask for a trenchant critique of Hawaiian cultural exploitation.
1
5 See Noenoe
K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American
Colonialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004) and Jonathan
Kamakawiwo'ole Osoio, Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation
lo 1887 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002).
6From Blue Book: A Short History of Slack Key Guitar (Ki ho'alu), avallable or the
Dancing Cat website www.dancingcat.com/skbookS-acknowledgments.php
7
This quote is taken from Beamer's comments about the song, "Lei 'Awapuhi," in
the liner notes to his recording, Moe'Uhane Kika: Tales of the Dream Guitar
(Dancing Cat, 1995).
Keola Beamer, "Sending Aloha from Maui, Hawai'i." www.kbeamer.com/
sk_history.html
'Elizabeth Tatar, "Toward a Description of Precontact Music in Hawai'i."
Ethnomusicologlt, 2513 (September 1981), 481-92.
ro
See Trask, From a Native Daughter
rr Liner notes to Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters: Instrumental Collection
(Dancing Cat, 1995).
!2
George H. Lewis, "Storm Blowing from Paradise: Social Protest and Oppositional Ideology in Popular Hawaiian Music," in Popular Music 10ll (1991), 63.
8
Emphasis added.
rr
Bob Brozman, interview, Beat 4 (Aprll 2001), n.p. Available online at:
www.bobbrozman.com/inter _beat.html
ra Patrick Landeza, interview with the author, 14 November 1996.
r5 Ki Ho'alu, Thats Slack Key Guitar: Hawaiian Soul Music, dir. Susan Friedman, VHS, Studio on the Mountain, 1995.