A short compilation of video ciips of hula dancers
This video is a brief compilation of clips recorded during a beachside luau in Lahaina, Maui. (That isn't either of our granddaughters crying...)
When Congregationalist missionaries arrived in Hawaii from New England in the early 19th century, they tried to suppress the hula. Hula was a sensuous dance accompanied by poetry and chants that orally expressed Hawaiian history and myths. These New England proselytizing Puritans arrived after the native polytheistic/pantheistic religion had already collapsed, leaving a spiritual void that favored the spread of Christianity. . According to James Haley's "Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii," the indigenous culture had combined rigid feudalism (established through violence and reinforced by frequent rituaiized human sacrifice), a kapu system that physically distanced the ruling ali'i from commoners (by requiring the swift execution of those who violated the prevailing hierarchy), and a powerful role for unrestrained carnal pursuits which granted women and men equal license for unhibited sexual adventures. Hula dancers were typically nude or nearly so, and the joyous celebration of libido through hula scandalized the dour Calvinists from Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The collapse of indigenous religion had followed the decision by ruling elites to terminate the brutal kapu system; the resulting removal of the threat of sacrifice and execution weakened the mythologies that justified and explained the class distnnctions and social power.. A succession of post-contact Hawaiian kings alternated between official conformity to Calvinist mores and theology (tied to medical care, the spread of literacy, and improved treatment of the underclass) and the periodic reinstatement of hula as an assertion of independence and cultural pride and as a way to avert the erasure of native cultural identity by Western colonial influence. This struggle over the role of hula eventually reached a stalemate in which a sanitized (and semi-clothed) version of hula is sustained as a stimulus for tourism and a romantic nod to indigeneous history. Modern hula is tolerated and encouraged by both state and religious institutions,
Lahaina, Maui: 11 December, 2021
A short compilation of video ciips of hula dancers
This video is a brief compilation of clips recorded during a beachside luau in Lahaina, Maui. (That isn't either of our granddaughters crying...)
When Congregationalist missionaries arrived in Hawaii from New England in the early 19th century, they tried to suppress the hula. Hula was a sensuous dance accompanied by poetry and chants that orally expressed Hawaiian history and myths. These New England proselytizing Puritans arrived after the native polytheistic/pantheistic religion had already collapsed, leaving a spiritual void that favored the spread of Christianity. . According to James Haley's "Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii," the indigenous culture had combined rigid feudalism (established through violence and reinforced by frequent rituaiized human sacrifice), a kapu system that physically distanced the ruling ali'i from commoners (by requiring the swift execution of those who violated the prevailing hierarchy), and a powerful role for unrestrained carnal pursuits which granted women and men equal license for unhibited sexual adventures. Hula dancers were typically nude or nearly so, and the joyous celebration of libido through hula scandalized the dour Calvinists from Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The collapse of indigenous religion had followed the decision by ruling elites to terminate the brutal kapu system; the resulting removal of the threat of sacrifice and execution weakened the mythologies that justified and explained the class distnnctions and social power.. A succession of post-contact Hawaiian kings alternated between official conformity to Calvinist mores and theology (tied to medical care, the spread of literacy, and improved treatment of the underclass) and the periodic reinstatement of hula as an assertion of independence and cultural pride and as a way to avert the erasure of native cultural identity by Western colonial influence. This struggle over the role of hula eventually reached a stalemate in which a sanitized (and semi-clothed) version of hula is sustained as a stimulus for tourism and a romantic nod to indigeneous history. Modern hula is tolerated and encouraged by both state and religious institutions,
Lahaina, Maui: 11 December, 2021