Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels

by James Revell Carr

Overview

Hawaiian Music in Motion explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation facilitated the circulation of popular music in the nineteenth century. James Revell Carr draws on journals and ships' logs to trace the circulation of Hawaiian song and dance worldwide as Hawaiians served aboard American and European ships. He also examines important issues like American minstrelsy in Hawaii and the ways Hawaiians achieved their own ends by capitalizing on Americans' conflicting expectations and fraught discourse around hula and other musical practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252038600
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	11/03/2014
Series:	Music in American Life
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

James Revell Carr is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Setting Sail 1

1 "Lascivious Gestures" and "Festive Sports": Early Interactions, 1778-1802 17

2 "A Wild Sort of Note": Hawaiian Music at Sea 55

3 Hukihuki: Mariners, Missionaries, and the Struggle for Hawaiian Bodies and Souls 96

4 "Hale Diabolo": The Royal Hawaiian Theatre and the Rise of Popular Music in Honolulu 126

5 "Honolulu Hula Hula Heigh": The Legacy of Maritime Music in Hawai'i 159

Notes 189

Bibliography 195

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

Co-winner of the Alan Merriam Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, 2015.

Society for Ethnomusicology

Co-winner of the Alan Merriam Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, 2015.

"This work is fascinating as it offers a more complicated history of the region than the one offered in current historical studies by focusing on the ways in which a segment of the global workforce forged their own understandings of the wider world and negotiated their position in the cosmopolitan sea-going and theatrical worlds of the nineteenth century. This is a story that very much needs to be told."
—Gillian M. Rodger, author of Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century


"This book asks readers to consider the significance of music in maritime cultural exchanges, and it offers new perspectives for considering the long-standing influence of Hawaiians and Hawaiian music internationally. . . . These are stories in need of telling and a past that merits a deeper listening."—The Journal of Pacific History


"Carr's work demonstrates that historians have much to gain by studying the nineteenth century mariner's and musicians, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian alike, as well as their globally resonant cultural impact that rippled in their wake."—American Historical Review

"Hawaiian Music in Motion is an important contribution to our understanding of the effects of outside influences on Hawaiian music and dance."—Journal of the Society for American Music
 

"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 ports of call, and in transit over the nineteenth-century seaways."—Journal of Folklore Research

"James Revell Carr contributes to the diversity of perspectives for understanding Hawaiian music and expressive culture. His study positions the Hawaiian experience as one of mutual interaction with the Anglophone world and constitutes a welcome historical resource for specialists in American music, ethnomusicology, dance ethnology, Hawaiian studies, American studies, culture studies, performance studies, and ethnic studies."—American Music

"Carr's work demonstrates that historians have much to gain by studying the nineteenth century mariner's and musicians, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian alike, as well as their globally resonant cultural impact that rippled in their wake."—American Historical Review

"Hawaiian Music in Motion is an important contribution to our understanding of the effects of outside influences on Hawaiian music and dance."—Journal of the Society for American Music

"Hawaiian Music in Motion is an archival tour de force, an invaluable addition to a growing body of literature. . . that examines Pacific intercultural encounter through the lens of performance."—Ethnomusicology

"The scope of this [book] is without precedent in existing scholarship on nineteenth-century musical cultures. . . . His research has uncovered a rich array of new documentary evidence from primary sources, and the narrative engages in a close examination of the interpretive opportunities and limits of this evidence."—Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, University of Michigan

From the Publisher