Surfing about Music. Timothy J. Cooley
ka papa ʻo Halepō
A pae ʻo Halepō i ka nalu.
Hōʻeʻe i ka nalu mai Kahiki,
He nalu Wākea, nalu hoʻohuʻa,
Haki ʻōpuʻu ka nalu, haki kuapā.
The big wave, the billow rolling from Kona,
Makes a loincloth fit for a champion among chiefs.
Far-reaching roller, my loincloth speeds with the waves.
Waves in parade, foam-crested waves of the loin-covering sea,
Make the malo of the man, the high chief.
Stand, gird fast the loincloth!
Let the sun ride on ahead guiding the board named Halepō
Until Halepō glides on the swell.
Let Halepō mount the surf rolling in from Kahiki,
Waves worthy of Wākea’s people,
Waves that build, break, dash against our shore.
(“He inoa no Naihe” [A Name Chant for Naihe])6
Seafaring people around the world have found pleasure from the boost of speed provided by an ocean swell as they returned from the open seas to shore.7 Heading into the water for the sole purpose of enjoying wave riding, most commonly practiced by children, was historically widespread throughout Polynesia. Ben Finney and James D. Houston, in their book Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport, note that in most islands of East Polynesia, all ages, male and female, also took pleasure in wave riding, usually riding prone on short wooden boards. In Tahiti and Hawaiʻi, surfers took it a step further. There they developed longer boards, six feet or more in length, and rode them while standing.8 Stand-up surfing was most highly developed in Hawaiʻi, where it was thoroughly integrated into society. Surfing was rich with rituals associated with everything from the making of surfboards to the act of surfing itself, and with taboos about who could surf where, when, and with whom. Legends and mele tell of elaborate surfing contests with associated activities from gambling to courtship. And of course there were chants about surfing and surfers.9 Even if surfing did not necessarily originate there, Hawaiʻi remains the mythical font of surfing, and it is certainly the place from which stand-up surfing spread around the world during the twentieth century.
And surfing mele show us that Hawaiians knew that surfing came to them from elsewhere—that they had some sense of global surfing before anyone was using the term globalization. The extract of the mele at the beginning of this section refers to Kahiki as the origin of a particular surfing swell (audio example 1). Kahiki could mean Tahiti specifically, though in this context it probably refers to any distant place beyond Hawaiʻi.10 The Hawaiian Islands were most likely first settled by Marquesans around 300 C.E. but were then conquered and resettled by Tahitians around 1100 C.E.11 Whether or not the particular swell celebrated in this and other mele literally originated in the waters around Tahiti is not the point. The mele can be interpreted as paying homage to an earlier homeland for these seafarers from whence Hawaiian people and cultural practices came—cultural practices including surfing.
The description in Naihe’s name chant, excerpted above, of waves as “worthy of Wākea’s people” is also a key to Hawaiian myths of surfing. Wākea and his wife, Papa, are the legendary ancestors of all Hawaiian genealogies, especially the chiefly clans.12 Beyond the fragment reproduced above, the mele goes on to mention other notable ancestors and notable surfing spots, such as Kahaluʻu, on the Big Island, Hawaiʻi, a surfing beach looked over by Kuʻemanu, a large surfing heiau (temple) built by Hawaiians long ago. Such temples were used by nobility to pray for good surfing swells, and they typically also provided a favorable vantage point from which to watch surfing contests.13 Thus in this mele, as well as in others, surfing is clearly associated with Hawaiian nobility and rituals that reaffirmed the power of the royalty, as well as with the geography of the Hawaiian Islands and beyond. Surfing was clearly integral to Hawaiians’ self- and social conceptions, and to their sense of place both geographically and socially.
Today New Surfing is strikingly male dominated, despite the increasing numbers of female surfers during the first decade of the twenty-first century.14 This is doubly striking and troubling when we realize that ancient Hawaiian mele concur with other sources to show conclusively that women, too, surfed (and were sometimes praised for surfing better than men). These few lines from the surfing mele for Queen Emma, the queen consort of King Kamehameha IV during the latter half of the nineteenth century, reveal several interesting images of Hawaiian surfing at that time (audio example 2):
He nalu ka holua no Waiakanonoula,
He nalu ka lio me ke kaa i uka o ka aina,
He nalu ke olaʻi naueue ka honua
He nalu ke anuenue me ka punohu i ka moana,
He nalu ka awa kau a ka manu iluna o ka laau
He nalu ka popolo me ka laulele,
E kaha ana ke kane me ka wahine,
E hee ana ka luahine me ka elemakule,
Pae aku, pae i ka nalu o Mauliola.
The hōlua sledding is the surfing of Waiakanonoula
The horse and buggy are surfing upon the land
The earthquake is surfing that shakes the earth
The rainbow is surfing and so is the low-lying rainbow on the ocean,
The awa planted by the birds on a tree is a “surf,”
The popolo and the laulele weeds are “surfs,”
Upon which men and women glide,
The old women and old men surf,
And land on the surf of Mauliola.15
I selected this fragment from the long mele in honor of Queen Emma because it starts with a mention of a ho-lua, a wooden sled used for sliding down the sides of volcanoes, reaching speeds upward of fifty miles per hour.16 The passage continues with other metaphors of surfing on land that provide insight into the modernizing Hawaiʻi of the mid–nineteenth century; horses had been introduced to the islands only in the first years of that century. The mele then extends the metaphors of surfing to create an atmospheric image of Hawaiʻi—earthquakes, rainbows, foliage, and fowl—before returning to the liquid waves we usually associate with surfing. There we are reminded that women did surf, even old women who “land on the surf of Mauliola”—literally, “the breath of life” or “life and healing.” Queen Emma’s mele shows us that, among many other things, at least some nineteenth-century Hawaiians understood the health benefits of surfing, and they considered it integral to many aspects of their ancient and modernizing lives—perhaps even a metaphor for life and movement itself.17
Queen Emma’s mele illustrates another key quality of surfing mele: the naming of places, especially prime surfing locations. Mele effectively create poetic maps of the Hawaiian Islands. Queen Emma’s surf mele begins on the island of Hawaiʻi, mentioning in line 6 “beautiful Waipio, whose surf is ridden by visiting chiefs. . . .” Waipio is on the northern shore of Hawaiʻi Island and contains an ancient surfing spot.18 In the passage reproduced above, sledding on Waiakanonoula, not far from Waipio, is compared with surfing. Later in the mele, places like Kapohakau (now the name of a mountain summit on Kauaʻi, but possibly the name of a surf beach in the past), Wahinekapu (a bluff near Kīlauea, Hawaiʻi, the taboo residence of a god), Puaenaena (probably Puaʻena, an ancient surfing area on Oʻahu),19 and many other significant locations are named. As noted above, Naihe’s name chant mentions the surfing spot Kahaluʻu, which is overlooked by a surfing temple, and his chant includes other named locations. Finney and Houston note that old Hawaiian stories and mele mention more named spots for surfing