Hapa-haole Songs

Greetings!

I am on a ukulele kick this month, so how could I leave out the contributions of hapa-haole songwriting? Hapa-haole is a Hawaiian term meaning mixed blood, usually Hawaiian heritage mixed with something else (usually Asian or mainlander). And it is an appropriate term for this type of music, which was most prevalent during the first half of the 20th century.

Hapa-haole music has predominantly English lyrics with a few Hawaiian words/names thrown in to make the songs seem more exotic. Hawaiian influence is heard in the melodies, with big interval jumps, but the mainlanders did not stray much from the normal song structure and lyrical clichés of their times.

In my opinion the best music was written before the 1950s, and it is uncanny how you hear the mainland influences of the time, based on when the music was written. For example, early hapa-haole songs have a ragtime feel, while later music progresses through jazz, blues and eventually big band themes.

And there were some prolific composers that wrote a lot of this music, including R. Alex Anderson, Sonny Cunha and Johnny Noble.

But my favorite songwriter from this era is Harry Owens, a vaudeville band leader and former musical director of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra. He is most famous for Bing Crosby’s Academy award-winning song “Sweet Leilani”. He wrote hundreds of other hapa-haole songs, many of which are still popular within the ukulele community. Check out “Princess Poopooly” on Youtube sometime. Here is a sample of the lyrics:

The Princess Poopooly has plenty papaya and she loves to give it away. Now all of the neighbors they say: “Oh me-a, oh my-a, you really should try a little piece of the Princess Poopooly’s papaya.”

Now Princess Poopooly’s not truly unruly to pass out papaya each day. For all of the neighbors the say, “She may give the fruit, but she holds on to the root, and so she has the root and the fruit to boot.”

You get the picture, I am sure…

Anyway, things have changed quite a bit since the middle of the last century, and Hawaiian-influenced music is no exception.

Popular Hawaiian since the 1960s has seen influences from many cultures, and blends reggae, rock and folk feels into the genre. The term hapa-haole has fallen by the wayside, and all of this music is now lumped into the category of “contemporary Hawaiian music.”

Mahalo!

The Ukulele Part 2: On the Mainland

Hello!

My last blog entry ended with the introduction of the ukulele to the United States mainland, and I thought I would pick up the story where I left off.

After the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, there was a flood of Hawaiian music with vaudeville performers. This meant that the ukulele (and the lap steel guitar) was in greater demand because things were the same then are they are today: when famous musicians are playing an instrument, the demand carries over to the public too. So, sales giants Sears and Montgomery Ward started selling ukuleles via mail order.

And people really liked that the instrument was easy to learn, and in just a few hours they could start making basic music. There was even a popular method book, the “5-Minute Ukulele Course” which sold for 5-cents.

Martin Guitars of Nazareth PA saw this demand and did not want to miss out on the trend. They came out with an inexpensive (under 10 dollars) uke which brought them a lot of business. Martin had enough new business that they had to expand their factory 3 times between 1917 and 1926 to meet demand. By 1926 they were making 17,000 ukuleles a year, which is quite remarkable considering that 10 years before they were selling just a few hundred instruments (guitars and mandolins) per year.

The craze continued on through the 1920s and 1930s, and Martin, Regal and Harmony made a lot of money selling ukuleles. Most transcriptions of popular music included ukulele tablature.

World War II did little to dampen enthusiasm for the ukulele. Maccaferri cranked out about 9 million cheap plastic ukuleles between the war and the late 1960s. Perhaps the high mark (or low mark) of the uke was the 1968 hit “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, as performed by Tiny Tim.

After this time, demand for the ukulele crapped out, and there was about 20 years where ukulele music moved to the back burner.

The start of the re-emergence of ukulele popularity can probably be best attributed to the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (IZ), a Hawaiian musician that recorded touching versions of “What a Wonderful World” and “Over the Rainbow.” I have heard his renditions in quite a few movies and TV commercials over the years.

Since the late 1990s I have seen increasing numbers of ukuleles in music stores, and there are now displays in Sam Ash Music and Guitar Center locations across the country. A new generation of musicians are learning the instrument, and I think that is terrific in this age of Guitar Hero fake musicians.

Mahalo!

The Ukulele

Aloha!

I have been learning to play the ukulele, and have been curious how the instrument came about. After hearing the story from a tour guide in Hawaii last week, I decided to research it a bit more and let you know what I found out.

First off, you all know that ukuleles look like little 4-string guitars, and are associated with Hawaiian music and Tiny TIm. But we need to go to Portugal for the beginning of this story.

The cavaquinho is a small 4-string guitar that is popular in Portugal. The exact origins are not known, but it was probably introduced by the ancient Greeks, or possibly the Spaniards. Anyway, Portuguese emigrants travelled with these instruments (they are easy to pack, after all), and one of the places they stopped was Hawaii in the late 1800s.

In the summer of 1879 the British ship Ravenscrag stopped in Honolulu and the Hawaiians saw the cavaquinho for the first time. The people were tickled by the little guitar and thought the musician’s fingers were jumping around on the strings like fleas. And that is where the name came from: in Hawaiian, “uku” means flea, and “lele” means to jump. Believe it or don’t. A more highbrow explanation for the name comes from Queen Lili'uokalani who said that ukulele means “the gift that came here”, from the Hawaiian words uku (gift or reward) and lele (to come).

I am going with the flea explanation.

Three Portuguese cabinet makers from the Ravenscrag starting build the little guitars for Hawaiians, and that started the ball rolling. Hawaiian players adapted the cavaquinho and changed the tuning from fairly normal intervals to the distinctive tuning of G-C-E-A, with the G and octave higher than normal.

In the late 1800s, King David Kalakaua cemented the popularity of the instrument in Hawaiian music by promoting its use by having ukulele music performed at royal events. A true patron of the arts.

The ukulele came to the knowledge of Americans due to the 1915 San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition. The expo had a Hawaiian Pavilion where George Awai and his Royal Hawaiian Quartet performed songs that were very popular with the visitors. From there the instrument took off and its popularity surged and waned ever since.

I am hooked, and will be writing a bit more about the types of ukuleles, ukulele music and some instrument reviews over the next month or so. Stay tuned!

Mahalo!