Message #31868

[Bianca]

During the 19th century




American Protestant missionaries, who arrived in 1820, denounced the hula as a heathen dance. The newly Christianized aliʻi (royalty and nobility) were urged to ban the hula — which they did. However, many of them continued to privately patronize the hula.

The Hawaiian performing arts had a resurgence during the reign of King David Kalākaua (1874–1891), who encouraged the traditional arts. Hula practitioners merged Hawaiian poetry, chanted vocal performance, dance movements and costumes to create the new form, the hula kuʻi (kuʻi means "to combine old and new"). The pahu appears not to have been used in hula kuʻi, evidently because its sacredness was respected by practitioners; the ipu gourd (Lagenaria sicenaria) was the indigenous instrument most closely associated with hula kuʻi.

Ritual and prayer surrounded all aspects of hula training and practice, even as late as the early 20th century. Teachers and students were dedicated to the goddess of the hula, Laka.

Women wearing 'mumus' imposed on them by the missionaries