Wiki Wacky Woo

There's a certain type of academic, a publish-or-perish jock, who probably should have been an accountant, only they got wired wrong. They have a dainty, risk-averse approach to what they study. And the last thing they want to risk is political incorrectness.

This leads to a kind of intellectual Twister game [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(game)] where professors and grad students are tripping over themselves and each other to make reality conform to slick, primary-colored tenets. "The game that ties you up in knots."

All I have to hear is the word "post-colonial" and I see red. I could rant on this, but instead I want to divulge something:

I have just fulfilled a 30-year ambition by choreographing a hula to Lola O'Brien, the Irish Hawaiian.

This song is as silly as it sounds. Four of us ladies intend to garner free beers with it over the St. Patrick's Day holiday weekend, by performing it in our local Irish pub. We have sparkly green top hats, green silk-flower leis, and iParty grass skirts (the raffia kind from the Philippines--I have some standards).

In other words, we're members of a consumerist society's cargo cult. Did I mention we're going to Savers to trawl for Irish cable-knit sweaters, to complete the outfit?

At this point, I am ready for both the politically correct and the ultra earnest of kanaka maoli (ethnic Hawaiians) to unleash their invective. Cool, bring it on. I have a right. My kumu hula, who had the hula kapu, proudly claimed to have invented the cellophane skirt. She also taught me a great hula to Brenda Lee's version of Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree.

See, hula isn't what you necessarily think it is. I believe this, and probably so does even the daintiest, pickiest, most parochial hula master of the current bumper crop.

Some may think that hula is a retrospective to sepia-tone days of the Hawaiian monarchy, some may experience it as a cultural revival.

What I think it is, is what my kumu (teacher) taught me: Acting. Portrayal of text. Declamation. A speech act.

Hula is like singing in American Sign Language. At least, the style I learned, from someone who still spoke Hawaiian and knew how to choreograph to the words, is.

Hula is also a product of a mixed culture. To call it "post-colonial" really frames the discussion in a value judgment.

It's a cultural fact that someone (probably mainland haole?) composed Lola, and I know I'm not the first person to choreo it. There's a collection at Wesleyan that includes the dance notes to and vinyl recording of Lola as danced decades ago by a celebrated hula dancer, Vivienne Huapala Mader.

I used to hear the tune on the radio in Honolulu in the 1970s. It was old back then. By the time I got to where I could choreo it, it was out of print. Thanks to the Internet, it's now available as an mp3, as recorded by Manny K. Fernandez, who looks from the album pic as if he must've originally sung it long ago.

Later this month, I'll be giving a lecture/demo on hula to a Wheaton College ethnomusicology class called The Politics of Movement. I'll be joined by a leader of the Hawaiian community in Boston. We'll be both illustrating and reacting to the assigned readings from academic journals.

I warned the prof. about my orientation to hula, and she is on board. My Hawiian friend and I enjoyed a pleasant cocktail hour at the Harvard Faculty Club planning the show. We're going to demonstrate a wide range of hula genres, including hapa haole (half foreign, to English language tunes). This, even though the readings seemed to denigrate hapa-haole hula or even discount it as not hula.

The point I want to make: Hula is a performing art. It's not necessarily all a fine art. Some of it's a folk art. And for more than just one kind of folk.

A performing artist (or choreographer) necessarily feels the pressure to please her or his intended audience. This pressure is part of what shapes the art, no different from how the structural rules of sonnet writing shape a poem.

If human culture is the subject of intellectual and academic inquiry, then Wiki Wacky Woo deserves to be recognized, explored, and appreciated, as much as the high-culture genres of hula.

But above all in-your-head inquiry, hula needs to be experienced. See you at O'Rourke's!