Surfing about Music. Timothy J. Cooley
and competitive surfers have managed second careers as musicians. It may be, as some surfer-musicians have suggested, an extension of their efforts at expression. Whereas for many of us just catching and riding a wave is an accomplishment (perhaps similar to getting through a piano étude without too many mistakes), the truly skilled surfer is able to move beyond the mechanics of the sport and use the ocean as a canvas for expression. It may also be that, since at least the mid–twentieth century, there has been a myth that surfing is a musical sport—a myth that first led me to this project. This chapter shows that musicking can be an effective way for professional surfers to expand their personal brand. Clearly the surfing body is a desirable commodity in the entertainment industry, and has been since the original Beachboys—the Waikīkī Beachboys, from Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi—appeared in the first half of the twentieth century.
Chapter 6, “The Soul Surfer Sings,” returns to a persistent ideal introduced in chapter 3: the surfer who attaches great meaning to surfing before and beyond any professional opportunities it may offer. The category soul surfer does not exclude professional surfers or musicians, though I do attempt to balance the emphasis given to professional surfers and professional musicians in the previous chapter. Chapters 5 and 6 may appear to construct a dichotomy between the pro surfer and the soul surfer, but as with so many things core to surfing, the boundaries are fluid: all the action is in the liminal zone. Chapter 6 includes ethnographies of surfing musicians primarily from California and in Hawaiʻi. In these locations we find similar ideas about music and surfing, but some distinctions as well. Some Hawaiian surfers focus in their music on Hawaiian issues of significance to them personally. Some California soul surfers also sing about Hawaiʻi and reference ideas from Hawaiʻi. But I propose that the role Hawaiʻi plays in this musicking should be interpreted differently. Taken as a whole, the voices I present in this chapter find surfing profoundly meaningful, even necessary for the maintenance of their souls, and they express some of this through music.
The final chapter, chapter 7, “Playing Together and Solitary Play: Why Surfers Need Music,” draws some conclusions about surfing and music-making as interlinked human practices. Looking again at individuals and groups of surfers who play music together, I draw out two recurring themes: homologies (surfing and musicking can be viewed as the same phenomena or, at the very least, as analogous) and community sharing (musicking allows surfers to form community in ways that surfing alone does not). Key to both of these themes is the belief among some surfers that both musicking and surfing create similar affective feelings or experiences, and that music provides a venue for exploring those feelings and experiences. I conclude with a well-worn and well-worth-rehearsing ethnomusicological finding: musicking is vital in creating community.
CHAPTER 1
Trouble in Paradise
The History and Reinvention of Surfing
Na Kane i hee nalu Oahu
He puni Maui no Piilani
Ua hee a papa kea i papa enaena
Ua lilo lanakila ke poo o ka papa
Ua nahaha Kauiki
Kane surfed at Oʻahu,
And all around Maui, Island of Piʻilani,
He surfed through the white foam, the raging waves,
The top of his surfboard in triumph rose on the crest
As waves crashed against Kaʻuiki.1
These are the opening lines of the third part of an extensive nineteenth-century mele (Hawaiian chant) catalogued in Honolulu’s Bishop Museum as “He inoa no Naihe” (Name Chant for Naihe), which also bears the evocative titles “Deification of Canoe for Naihe” and “A Surfing Song” (audio example 1). Naihe was a chief associated with the Hawaiian royalty, and an accomplished surfer. He was born toward the end of the eighteenth century and died in 1831. Thus this is a late-eighteenth- or, more likely, early-nineteenth-century mele. The mele was later adopted for King Kalākaua,2 the last reigning Hawaiian king, who died in 1891. He was nicknamed “the Merrie Monarch” because of his appreciation of and support for some of Hawaii’s traditional arts, including surfing, mele, and hula, the latter popularly known as a Hawaiian dance style but better understood as visual poetry. The following fragment from the same mele celebrates King Kalākaua’s own surfing prowess (audio example 1):
Kaili Kalakaua i ka nalu,
Pau ka nalu lilo ia ia,
Ka hemolele a ke akamai,
Hee a ka lani i ka nalu.
Kalākaua rode the waves,
He rode on every wave deftly and skillfully.
The chief rode on the waves,
On the swirling waves.3
Much of what we know about pre-revival surfing comes to us from Hawaiian legends and mele—the original surfing music. Since at least the surviving mele tend to focus on Hawaiian nobility, they skew our picture of surfing history a bit. However, Hawaiian legends and early accounts by Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians leave no doubt that just about everyone surfed—royal and commoner; men, women, and children.4 Yet the fact that nobility routinely surfed is a powerful reminder of the establishment role of surfing in pre-contact Hawaiian society.
By pre-revival surfing I mean surfing by Hawaiians up to the end of the nineteenth century. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, many commentators claimed that surfing was on the verge of extinction. Recent research has shown that this was not the case at all but rather a myth propagated by non-Hawaiians, first out of ignorance and later in a deliberate effort to encourage tourists to visit Hawaiʻi: by suggesting that Hawaiians had abandoned surfing, it cleared the way for tourists to colonize the sport.5 Even though surfing was never abandoned by Hawaiians and never died out in Hawaiʻi, it was “revived” in the sense that it was given new life in the first half of the twentieth century by tourists and white settlers in Hawaiʻi, and also by its spread to other coastal areas around the world. With this revival came great changes, changes so great that I believe surfing was also reinvented in the twentieth century. I use the term New Surfing to refer to what surfing became in the twentieth century as it was redefined and resignified by new surfers—in Hawaiʻi, more overtly in California, and then quickly around the world. The act of riding waves while standing on boards remains fundamentally unchanged; that is not what I mean by New Surfing. Nor do I intend to suggest that New Surfing is in any way better than pre-revival surfing. My interest here is in surfing as a cultural practice with accompanying rituals, habits, conceptions about who surfs and why, and of course musical ideas and practices.
Just as ancient mele tell us much about pre-revival surfing, changing music associated with surfing in the first half of the twentieth century informs us about the reinvention of surfing. Using musicking about surfing as my guide, in this chapter I retell the history of surfing, beginning with pre-contact surfing in Hawaiʻi, followed by the reinvention of surfing during the first half of the twentieth century. Where possible, the story is told through music associated with surfing, beginning with Hawaiian mele, then Hawaiian popular music during the first half of the twentieth century, up to a genre called Surf Music, which is the focus of the next chapter. There are some pages in the middle of this chapter where I don’t write about music but instead present a history of the rumored demise of surfing, followed by its reinvention as it was globalized. The balance of the chapter and of the book, however, does address musicking among surfers.
HAWAIIAN SURFING: THE SPORT OF KINGS AND QUEENS (AND EVERYBODY ELSE)
Ka nalu nui, a kū ka nalu mai Kona,
Ka malo a ka māhiehie.
Ka ‘onaulu loa, a lele kaʻu malo.
O kakaʻi malo hoaka,
O ka malo kai, malo o ke aliʻi.
E