Culture & Art

Art of the Chanter

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Keali`i Reichel brings evening of Hawaiian chants to Molokai.

By Melissa Kelsey

While Hawaiian cultural practices are a part of daily life for many on Molokai, residents got a taste of Hawaii’s best last Thursday. Voices of chanters reverberated throughout the halau at Kulana `Oiwi, carrying the Hawaiian mele of the ancestors, as internationally known kumu hula Keali`i Reichel and his Halau Ke'alaokamaile delivered an educational performance of chants.

“We are the vessels of these mele for our kupuna to communicate to the next generation,” Reichel explained.

The goal of the performance was to bring a taste of Hawaiian chanting styles to the audience.

“If we inspire a few of you to become practitioners through the proper avenue of the halau, our job has been completed,” Reichel said to the audience.

In ancient times the Hawaiians chanted informally on a daily basis, but Reichel’s audience learned that certain forms of chants required specific training. The art of chanting became specialized after the Hawaiian language was banned from everyday use in the nineteenth century.

The most common form of chant is olioli, a verbrato style sometimes used to tell stories. Another chant form, called oli kepa, involves great breath control and garbling the words, as Reichel explained. Oli kepa was used for prayer communicated privately with gods. The words were mumbled to protect the oli from listeners known as “mele stealers” who sometimes took others’ oli and made them their own. This type of chant was learned in ancient times by chanting with a stone on the tongue.

Reichel’s cousin and a member of his halau, Miss Aloha Hula 2009 Cherissa Henoheanapuaikawaokele Kane, performed a lovemaking chant style called ho`aeae, a form done softly for the ears of one’s lover.  

Halau Ke'alaokamaile members performed rarely heard haku kole, which are chants of ridicule that portray how kupuna dealt with irritation. Reichel said haku kole were intended to rip another person to shreds, and were sometimes performed at public events like luau and pa`ina to intensify their psychological effect. Some haku kole were chants of protest, including the protest of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. For the last chant of the night, a chanter performed a haku kole by a young and beautiful woman chiding an older woman for seeing her lover.

The event was sponsored by the Maui Arts and Culture Center.

Birthplace of Hula

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

A Contest of Watermen

Monday, May 4th, 2009

Paka`a Part IX of a continuing series
By Catherine Aki

In our last episode, Paka`a’s enemies die, killed at sea. But a more detailed account indicates that they suffer from neglect, cold and exposure when Kuapaka, Paka`s son, refuses them food and protection from the storm. As a result they roll themselves into the ocean one after the other.

When they are dead, the boy guides the canoe and while everyone sleeps, heads back to the Big Island. Although the ali`i’s entourage is glad to be home, the ali`i himself, Keawenuiaumi, is disappointed because he has failed to find his good friend Paka`a.

Kuapaka`a predicts that the ali`i and his men will forget about him in all the excitement of their return home. Sure enough, when they reach Hawaii, the ali`i assumes that the keiki is in the care of his entourage, while the ali`i’s men assume that the chief himself should be responsible for the boy. Instead, the boy is left to fend for himself spending day after day on the beach, next the chief’s canoe eating the trip’s leftover food.

When a group men are about to embark on a fishing trip, Kuapaka`a asks to accompany them to serve as a bailer in their canoe. When they return from fishing, the boy sees another canoe nearby and challenges the fishermen to a race for their catch. He is so bold that he tells the owners of the borrowed canoe to jump into his opponents’ boat if they are scared of loosing. Like his father had years earlier, he convinces the fishermen to put all their catch into his canoe. The race begins and Kuapaka`a is losing. But after opening his wind gourd and chanting, a large wave rises from the sea. With great effort and fierce paddling, Kuapaka`a catches the wave which pushes him to shore for the win.

At the sight of the wave, Kuapaka`a’s opponents back-paddle for fear of crashing or flipping their canoe. They are angered both by the boy’s recklessness and for being beaten. So they demand a rematch.

This time, the only thing the boy has to wager is the ali`i’s canoe. But, the fishermen don’t believe the boy is entitled to offer it. The boy explains that no one else takes care of the canoe and offers it again. But now the men insist that the wager be their bones. The boy reminds them of their families, wives, children and friends who would miss them dearly if they were gone. Clearly the wager is lopsided he explains. However, the men insist and set a date for the contest on the first month of summer.

The event quickly spreads via word-of-mouth creating an amazing amount of hype. Soon everyone including Keawenuiaumi knows about the upcoming race. They make bets and wager a variety of goods and valuables like pigs, dogs, mamaki cloth, layered kapa, feathers and whatever else was treasured in those days. Most expected the boy would loose because he had to paddle a heavy canoe measuring 6 fathoms long by himself.

The imu is dug. The wood put inside. The fires are lit. Whoever lost the race would be thrown into the imu and baked. But the boy is clever. Because the fishermen are anxious for their revenge and eager to start, they agree to his terms on how the race will end. Once the canoe is beached, they must surf four waves before their opponent lands. But in their hurry, the fishermen neglect to define what kind of waves.

The fishmen, determining the starting point, keep going further and further out to sea until the houses on the beach are hidden by the ocean. The fishemen were poor paddlers churning the sea into a froth with each stroke. They also leave a wake behind them which Kuapaka’a catches and rides. So as they tire themselves out paddling, the boy keeps up right behind them. As they head to shore, the crowd cannot see the boy’s canoe as he is so close behind the fishermen, they block him from view. Those who had wagered on the men begin to cheer.

Because the boy had taunted the men along the way, telling them to paddle harder, they are now exhausted and ready to give up. With the shoreline in sight, Kuapaka`a finally begins to paddle, moving his canoe ahead. The crowd roars in dismay, realization they are going to loose all their prize possessions and riches.

After reaching the beach first, Kuapaka`a grabs a surfboard and catches four shore-breakers riding the white water instead of the regular waves further out at sea. The fisherman quickly realize their mistake in not making the rules more clear, but it is too late.

The fishermen are filled with fear of dying; their families lament and sorrow fills the air. A messenger is sent to Keawenuiaumi who amazingly still does not realize that Kuapaka`a is the racer. When Keawenuiumi finally gets the details, he sends for the boy. He is distressed about how much he has forgotten about the boy.

The ali`i asks the boy to spare the fishermen’s lives. First the boy refuses, but as the chief begs the keiki puts the decision back on the chief. The fishermen whose lives are now at stake, had been friends of the two enemies who had replaced all of Paka`a’s fishermen years earlier.

Keawenuiumi was afraid to be without any fishermen but the decision was now his -would the chief rather have his fishermen, or the return of his good friend Paka`a. The boy explains that in order for Paka`a to return, his fishermen must die. Who will Keawenuiaumi choose.

Next issue concludes the story of Paka`a.

Footprint on the Heart

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

By Valerie Monson

Henry Nalaielua, who wrote about his accomplished life in the memoir “No Footprints in the Sand,” died early April 17, 2009, leaving the people of Kalaupapa to bid aloha to yet another great kupuna who left behind permanent footprints on the hearts of all who knew him.

“After hearing that Henry had died that morning, I noticed at sunset that there was no rain, just heavy clouds and deep crimson skies,” said Dr. Emmett Aluli, a longtime friend and colleague of Nalaielua. “There was just all this crimson. It was like Henry was passing without commotion, without fanfare. He was being welcomed home by the ancestors.”

Nalaielua was 84 years old. He was born Nov. 3, 1925, in the plantation village of Ninole on the Big Island. When he was just 10 years old, his mother was forced to take him to Honolulu on a ship and leave him at Kalihi Hospital because he had been diagnosed with leprosy. Henry was the third child the Nalaielua ‘ohana had to give up because of the disease.

Many years later, Nalaielua would still remember every detail of that childhood moment when the ship slipped away from the dock in the middle of the night.

“My father was standing at the pier, crying,” he recalled in an interview with this reporter in the early 1990s. “I’d never seen my father cry before. As the boat went away, as I could see him getting farther away, he was crying, crying, crying, crying. He knew he had lost one more child.”

In 1941, when Nalaielua was 15, he was told he was being sent to Kalaupapa. It was a move he welcomed, so could be free of the barbed wire that ran along the top of the fence that surrounded Kalihi. He immediately relished the wide-open spaces of Kalaupapa that reminded him of home.

“There were all these things I was used to –  ‘opae, ‘o‘opu, ginger, watercress, mountain apple,” he said. “All the things I grew up with.”

There was no cure for leprosy at that time so Henry was told he had only a few years to live. Because of that, he saw no good reason for educating himself. Books were not a part of his life until a friend who was a strong Catholic gave him a book about Father Damien de Veuster. Henry was surprised to learn that he had the same disease that Damien had contracted generations earlier.

But that book taught him something even more important: that he had a love of reading. From then on, seldom was Nalaielua’s bedside table without a book, even when he wasn’t able to read them. As he was preparing for cataract surgery about 16 years ago, there were three books waiting for him at home for when his eyes had healed: “The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass,” “Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier” and a collection of South Pacific stories by James Michener. Another time, his table held a book on Hawaiian medicine that had been issued in both English and Hawaiian. He read each version.

There was also sadness for him at Kalaupapa. Soon after he arrived, Nalaielua was told that his two sisters, who he knew had left home before him, had also been shipped to Kalaupapa. Both had died before he arrived. He spent years searching for their graves, a search that proved to be fruitless. It was one of the reasons he became a strong supporter of a Monument at Kalaupapa that would list the names of those who had been sent there because of leprosy. He not only wanted his name permanently engraved on the Monument, but also the names of his sisters.

Wayne Levin, the well-known photographer, began documenting Kalaupapa and her people in pictures in 1984. Nalaielua, then the president of the Kalaupapa Historical Society, was one of his first friends there.

“Henry just understood the importance of the history of Kalaupapa,” said Levin. “He would drive me around, show me places and he was always so patient while I took all these pictures. He was very supportive of my work.”

Their friendship grew to the point that Levin would stay in Nalaielua’s spare bedroom during his trips to Kalaupapa. When Levin married, Nalaielua sang at his wedding.

“I just feel really fortunate to have had him for a friend,” said Levin. Less than two weeks ago, the two had lunch and went shopping for books at Barnes and Noble.

During his lifetime, Nalaielua had many jobs. At Kalaupapa, he was a police officer, carpenter and tour driver for Damien Tours. When he was able to leave Kalaupapa after testing negative for the disease in 1949 (drugs to cure leprosy were introduced to Kalaupapa in 1946), he worked for Hawaiian Electric and played music after hours.  He later moved home to Kalaupapa, missing everything he held dear.

Although he eventually became an author when his autobiography was published in the fall of 2006, Nalaielua might best be remembered as a musician and artist. He produced so many paintings during his lifetime that he had a one-man show in Honolulu in 2003.

“He was a poet, a composer, a genealogist, a storyteller, an artist,” said Aluli, “but what stands out for me about Henry is the scholarly and philosophical person that he was.”

For years, Nalaielua served on the Board of Directors of Na Pu‘uwai Native Hawaiian Health Systems where he was the guiding force for Aluli and Billy Akutagawa, another good friend, and others. He also served on the Board of Health for the State of Hawaii.

Burial was at Kalaupapa where his family and friends gathered together to celebrate a man whose life was a great work of art.