Hawaii
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Listen to "The Hula Lesson" program:
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Outer Voices was incredibly fortunate to be able to launch our production work with Hawaiian elder and hula teacher, Roselle Keli'ihonipua Bailey. We recorded her in a training session with her halau, (or group of students) who come from a wide spectrum of ethnic diversity.
photo by Carlos Tejada
Audio and Visual Archives of a Hula Halau
After our production work documenting and interviewing Roselle Bailey and her students in Kaua'i. The halau asked us to return to help create archives of their work.
Robin Wise carefully recorded their weekend-long session, created cds of those sessions for their use.
We also donated a set of audio equipment for the halau. Over the course of that weekend Robin trained two of the halau members on the equipment to enable them to continue to create their own archives. We have already used of some recordings they created on their own.
For more information about Roselle Bailey and the work
of her halau, please visit their website: http://www.kaimi.org.
The Hula Lesson
In “The Hula Lesson” we find out that hula is more than girls dancing with coconut bras and grass skirts, with strains of Don Ho in the background. In fact, hula is a complete expression of a traditional culture, which uses dancing and singing for teaching social lessons, and for recounting history. Studying hula means studying art, dance, literature and music, as well as philosophy, science and politics.
“The Hula Lesson” is a sound rich piece, with very little narration. It weaves together chants, music, and the teaching sessions of Roselle Bailey working with her ethnically diverse students in interpreting the text of a progression of songs and dances that they are learning for a hula performance in Washington, D.C.
We listen to them as they work through the various levels of meaning of the text, and we listen in on their practice sessions. Throughout the piece we have an opportunity to hear Roselle and her students express their thoughts about what it means to perpetuate a traditional culture in a multi-cultural world.
They also talk frankly about their lives and their feelings about how they try to carry out the basic lessons of humanity that they have learned by studying hula.
While we may not expect that listeners will decide to study hula after
hearing this program, we do hope to offer an opportunity for listeners to hear how one group of women have chosen to take on the intensive study of a culture in order to develop a way of life that creates relationship - to themselves, to other people and to the rest of the planet.
The role of “The Hula Lesson” in the Outer Voices series is to provide an opportunity to examine what is perhaps the core issue of effective peacemaking.
The foundation for peace, as we learn in “The Hula Lesson”, lies in understanding who we are in relationship to other people. When we know our own social and cultural identity, then we can understand who we are in relation to others. Roselle feels this is the necessary first step for creating a peaceful world.
“The Hula Lesson” is our foundation piece.
To obtain copies of the cd or copies of the transcript of “The Hula Lesson”,
please contact us at info@outervoices.org.
If you are interested in airing this piece, please go to http://www.prx.org, and search
for “The Hula Lesson”, and it will appear. It can be licensed from
there.
The Hula Lesson was produced by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens; Audio Engineer was
Robin Wise; Field Sound Producers were E.D. Lavis and Robin Wise; Scripted by
Catherine Stifter and Claire Schoen.
Studio 360 condensed Hula Lesson into a four minute short, a sort of Hula 101 – you can hear it here.
Roselle Bailey was selected as one of Kaua'i's Living Treasures in tribute to her involvement with the resurrection of Kaua'i's premier Hula temple, Keahualaka, the island's museums, historical societies, and chamber of commerce for over two decades.
Major underwriting for The Hula Lesson from The Ford Foundation.
Gratitude to Kimo Campbell whose generous donations on behalf
of Hawai’i’s Thousand Friends has made our work in Hawai’i
possible. Please visit their website to learn more about their hard work and
achievements in preserving Hawai'i's fragile natural environment: http://www.hawaiis1000friends.org.
Thanks also to Hawai’i Forest and Trail for sponsorship of this program: http://www.hawaii-forest.com.
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The Nation of Hawaii
SHARING BREATH
photo by Meph Wyeth
From these interviews we created “Nation
of Hawai’i”, an eight minute radio piece on the topic of Hawaii’an
culture and the sovereignty movement,” to the multi-part public radio
collaboration, Whose Democracy Is It? (found on http://www.npr.org). Aired November
3-9, 2003, our piece in this week of public radio programming was the only
one devoted to women’s approaches to democracy, and one of only two
profiling native peoples.
Nation of Hawai’I was produced by Susan Davis; written and narrated
by
Stephanie Guyer-Stevens, Audio Engineer was Robin Wise; Field Sound Producer
was E.D. Lavis, assisted by Maureen Datta.
Click here to hear the program
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