James Revell Carr’s Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels is a noteworthy contribution to the growing discipline of historical ethnomusicology, a thoroughly researched monograph that considers Hawaiian music on its own terms—at home on the islands, abroad at ports of call, and in transit over the nineteenth-century seaways. Hoping to redress the pervasive colonization and commodification, both literal and figurative, of Hawaiians and “Hawaiianess,” Carr attempts to relocate the nexuses of power by demonstrating the many ways in which the islanders have negotiated their own cultural destinies in the face of domineering political and economic powers. In stark contrast to most geographically situated “field” studies of music-making, he examines how Hawaiians exported and exploited their hula, mele chant, and other indigenous expressions across the waters of the globe and, likewise, how these expressions were presented to travelers to Hawaii (i.e., sailors, missionaries, immigrants, tourists), positing this intercultural flow as a precursor to today’s technology-driven global capitalism amplified by much higher-speed transmissions and transactions across the internet. This model encourages us to consider how Hawaiian identities (as well as the identities of those they encountered) assumed increasingly syncretic and cosmopolitan aspects as a result of these exchanges. Based on archival research of manuscript logs, journals, and memoirs, the book tracks changes in nineteenth-century Hawaiian music-making based on specific representative characters and events, giving readers a rich sense of the people, places, and music behind the history.
In chapter 1 Carr examines early encounters between Hawaiians and haoles (foreigners), first with Captain Cook’s sailors, chiefly represented by the journals of natural scientist David Samwell. Carr indicates that writings from the period tend to view Hawaiians as noble savages, denizens of an idealized paradise, the women as passive prostitutes, but he is at pains to stress the natives’ role as agents, performers, and counter-explorers who staged their identities in specific ways for specific purposes. In the middle section of the chapter he describes the survival strategies of two young Hawaiian women who were abducted by ship to the west coast of North America. The last section looks at Omai and The Death of Captain Cook, Euro-American docudramas popular in England and the U. S., noting how, in their first presentations to Western audiences, the Hawaiians became associated with various magical characters germane to the theatrical tradition. Hawaiians countered this deliberate exoticization, or othering, Carr argues, through the mana (charisma) of their performances, using the performative dimensions of these intercultural exchanges to enhance their social mobility. The chapter also points to some of the limitations of historical ethnomusicology, as when lack of documentation and audio examples forces Carr to speculate about certain issues. Here and elsewhere in the book, he is careful to differentiate between what he knows and what he doesn’t, and, to his credit, consistently develops meaningful interpretations in spite of the given constraints.
Chapter 2 will interest many general readers for the same reason that Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick does: it contains much telling detail about life at sea, gleaned in part from Carr’s experiences growing up around the Mystic (Connecticut) Seaport Museum. He relates how different types of shipboard chanteys (work songs) facilitated certain tasks and how forecastle songs provided entertainment for the sailors. He interprets the lyrics of a number of these songs, noting various problems with translation, and points to numerous places where the influence of Kanakas (Hawaiian sailors) is evident, suggesting that these influences have been overlooked by sea chantey scholars, who typically emphasize the songs’ British and African-American characteristics. Carr continues to use his central tropes of theatricality and performativity to model how Kanakas and other sailors manifest their identities in the close proximity of oceangoing vessels over long voyages.
“Hukihuki,” the title of the third chapter, is a Hawaiian term denoting a struggle for influence over a person between two outsiders, in this specific case the contestation between Christian missionaries and the temptations of port life to influence sailors’ moral and spiritual decisions, as played out in the musical theaters and drinking establishments of Honolulu and the ports of New England. Carr questions just who was being scandalized and/or exploited in these exchanges: the hula dancers and singers, their patrons, and/or their critics? He argues that Kanakas in Portland, Maine, used North American conceptions of “Hawaiianess” as cultural capital, exploiting it for their own profit.
The fourth chapter is a case study of Honolulu’s Royal Hawaiian Theater, the advent and expansion of local multi-ethnic minstrel shows, and the role of proprietor Charles Derby in appealing to a diverse (ethnically and economically) audience and advocating for indigenously informed entertainment. Carr suggests that, through mimesis—i.e., the ability to “wear” and wield one’s alterity as both a shield and a sword—Hawaiian actors were able to defend themselves against diminutive stereotypes and then riposte the critique, thrusting their humanity upon the public sphere.
The book’s final chapter looks at ways maritime music influenced the subsequent development of indigenous popular music forms, at first under the aegis of King David Kal?kaua and later through the hapa haole (half foreign) songs of composers like Joseph Kapeau A‘ea. The lyrics of A‘ea’s song “Honolulu Hula Hula Heigh” radically invert the haole sailor’s habitual gaze at the social-sexual attributes of the various “girls” he encounters at “exotic” ports of call, describing instead how a Kanaka rates the haole “girls” he met in various North American ports, yet another example of the subaltern agency Carr wishes to expose. The book jumps to the present with a short discussion of Jawaiian music, a hybrid of Jamaican reggae and native Hawaiian music, the latest in a long line of Hawaiian syncretic musics. Carr’s closing remarks remind us that although it is easy, in these times of hyper-accelerated communication, to “sail” across digital waterways in order to learn of the earth’s people, genuine understanding of and empathy for those we “meet” must be based on deeper knowledge and contextualization. And this is exactly what he has provided in his book.
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[Review length: 995 words • Review posted on September 29, 2015]