XXI.— THE MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF 



THE HAWAIIANS 



A bird is easier captured than the notes of a song. The mele and 

 oli of Hawaii's olden time have been preserved for us ; but the music 

 to which they were chanted, a less perdurable essence, has mostly 

 exhaled. In the sudden transition from the tabu system to the new 

 order of things that came in with the death of Kamehameha in 1819, 

 the old fashion of song soon found itself antiquated and outdistanced. 

 Its survival, so far as it did survive, was rather as a memorial and 

 remembrance of the past than as a register of the living emotions of 

 the present. 



The new music, with its />«, A'O, U — answering to our do, re, mi " — 

 was soon in everybody's mouth. From the first it was evidently 

 destined to enact a role different from that of the old cantillation ; 

 none the less the musical ideas that came in with it, the air of freedom 

 from tabu and priestcraft it breathed, and the diatonic scale, the 

 highway along which it marched to conquest, soon produced a notice- 

 able reaction in all the musical efforts of the people. This new seed, 

 when it had become a vigorous plant, began to push aside the old 

 indigenous stock, to cover it with new growths, and, incredible as 

 it may seem, to inoculate it with its own pollen, thus producing a 

 cross which to-day is accepted in certain quarters as the genuine 

 article of Hawaiian song. Even now, the people of northwestern 

 America are listening with demonstrative interest to songs which 

 they suppose to be those of the old hula, but which in reality have no 

 more connection with that institution than our negTo minstrelsy has 

 to do with the dark continent. 



The one regrettable fact, from a historical point of view, is that 

 a record was not made of indigenous Hawaiian song before this 

 process of substitution and adulteration had begun. It is no easy 

 matter now to obtain the data for definite knowledge of the subject. 



A^Hiile the central purpose of this chapter will be a study of the 

 music native to old Hawaii, and especially of that produced in the 

 halau, Hawaiian music of later times and of the present day can not 

 be entirely neglected ; nor will it be without its value for the indirect 

 light it will shed on ancient conditions and on racial characteristics. 

 The reaction that has taken place in Hawaii within historic times in 



" The early American missionaries to Hawaii named the musical notes of the scale 

 pa, ko, U, ha, no, la, mi. 



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