Surfing about Music. Timothy J. Cooley

      FIGURE 9. “How to Ride a Surfboard,” by Harold Coffin. Published in Johnny Noble’s Book of Famous Hawaiian Melodies (New York: Miller Music, 1935), 8.

      The third songbook considered here was compiled by Charles E. King. Eminent Hawaiian ethnomusicologist and performer Amy Kuʻuleialoha Stillman refers to Charles E. King’s songbooks as “bibles” of Hawaiian music that “could be found in many a piano bench across the islands.”⁵⁰ One-quarter Hawaiian, King was fluent in the Hawaiian language and was close to the royal family. Queen Emma was his godmother, and Queen Liliʻuokalani was one of his music teachers.⁵¹ Though a contemporary of Sonny Cunha’s, he represented a more conservative approach to Hawaiian music—one that reflected the aesthetics of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the monarchy was still in place, rather than the first half of the twentieth century, when the mainland consolidated its influence over the islands. While critical of hapa haole songs, King included some in his later compilations,⁵² including one of his most popular compositions, “The Pidgin English Hula” (first copyright 1934). Thus King’s attitudes toward Hawaiian music provide a counterpoint to those of Cunha and Noble, though there are some structural similarities to the way he presented his song collections.

      The first edition of King’s Book of Hawaiian Melodies was published in 1916.⁵³ Though I am using the 1948 and final edition of this collection of 101 songs and mele, it has much in common with the original edition and can be read as a history of popular Hawaiian songs from the first half of the twentieth century. I find only two songs that mention surfing. The first is “Kaimana Hila” (Diamond Head), by King (copyright 1916), where in the last verse the singer proclaims:

      We all went to the Seaside Hotel

      And looked with wonder at all the riders of the surf

      Gliding swiftly.

      The second, “Honolulu Maids,” is also attributed to King and again has an original copyright date of 1916. This song is “after an old style of hula,” though the protagonist is depicted as a visitor to Honolulu, and indeed the style and content could easily be heard as hapa haole.⁵⁴ It contains six short verses in which the protagonist is beguiled by the maids of Honolulu and, in the last three verses, learns how to surf and has an exchange with one maid in particular:

      With those charming beautiful maids of Honolulula,

      I learned to ride the surf like a kamaaina la.

      I said to one beautiful maid of Honolulula,

      “May, oh may I ride on life’s ocean with you la?”

      Oh that charming beautiful maid of Honolulula,

      Gazed at me and said, “Aole hike la.”

      I take the proposition to “ride on life’s ocean with you” to be a marriage proposal, and I find rather nice the reference to surfing used as a metaphor for sharing life together. I also imagine the beautiful Honolulu maid smiling warmly as she gazed at her suitor and replied in Hawaiian, a language he did not understand: “Aole hike la” (No, never can do, la). Poor haole. He never knew what hit him. That Honolulu maid probably gets a proposal every weekend. Leaving our haole’s heartbreak aside, I note that in this song, it was the Honolulu maids who taught the tourist how to surf, not their male counterparts, the famous Waikīkī Beachboys.

      Like Noble’s book, King’s overtly promotes tourism to Hawaiʻi in song and in photographic inserts that celebrate Hawaii’s attractions. These include a two-page spread featuring a map of the Hawaiian islands, labeled “The Paradise of the Pacific, Territory of Hawaii, USA,” that shows shipping routes to Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Panama Canal, South America, the Antipodes, and “the Orient”—all radiating out from prominently marked Honolulu and Waikīkī Beach. On two corners of the spread are photographs of swimmers at “Waikiki in January” and “Surf-riders at Waikiki.” Even more interesting for our purposes is the photograph on page 101 featuring, in the center, Duke Kahanamoku, flanked by two bits of text (fig. 10). On the left side:

      You may travel the world over but you can find no sport so exhilarating and intensely exciting as surfing. The Hawaiians are children of the sea and they love to play with the waves as they sweep towards the shore by riding majestically on them with surf board or canoe. Waikiki beach affords the sojourner in Hawaii the best opportunity for enjoying this harmless pastime of the natives.

      And on the right:

      Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s favorite son and the champion swimmer of the world, is here depicted with his winning smile and reliable surfboard. He is ready for a plunge into the waters of Waikiki.⁵⁵

      With surfing’s greatest ambassador in the center, two now familiar tropes of Hawaiian surfing are rehearsed: Hawaiians are amphibious “children of the sea”; and Waikīkī is the best place in the world to learn to surf.