Latest / Mega Rock On Demand / Tiki Talk with Ben Willis: Real Hula vs Pop Hula
Transcript
- 0:13SPEAKER_00: It's Friday afternoon, and it's time once again to light the torches for Tiki Talk.
- 0:18SPEAKER_00: On MegaRock, it's Ben Willis with you, and in light of last week being the 63rd Mary Monarch Hula Festival in Hawaii, I thought I'd take a little bit of a moment to uh talk about hula and tiki and American 20th century in particular visions of what all that entailed and how that is so very different from the reality of traditional hula in Hawaii.
- 0:44SPEAKER_00: First off, hula is not a universal Polynesian thing.
- 0:48SPEAKER_00: There are other dances, other similar practices, but hula itself is purely a Hawaiian cultural expression.
- 0:55SPEAKER_00: It is a very nuanced dance used to dramatize or portray the words of, chants, and songs in order to better transmit and relay their oral history.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: Because what better way to cement information in the younger generation than to connect words, music, and dance together?
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: Today there are several styles and historical types of hula, from the ancient styles to the more modern styles, which may be accompanied by modern Western instruments, with the older ones would be mostly accompanied by just chanting or singing and some percussion instruments as well.
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: The Merry Monarch Festival, 63rd, by the way, has over the years become the premier hula festival in the world in honor of Hawaii's last king, David Kalakaua, who during his reign revived a lot of the hula traditions which had been actually outlawed previously due to Western influences.
- 1:50SPEAKER_00: And in the 20th century, with the spread and the fascination of the larger world with a lot of Hawaiian music and culture and imagery, unfortunately the image of the hula dancer kind of got distilled and mushed down into a caricature.
- 2:02SPEAKER_00: To the point where, if you think about a hula dancer, you're probably thinking of someone wearing a coconut bra in a grass skirt or the little bobble figure on your dashboard, which I have to admit I do have one of those.
- 2:14SPEAKER_00: But suffice to say, Real authentic hula is fascinating, nuanced, and is incredibly fun to watch.
- 2:21SPEAKER_00: And I highly encourage you to pull up the archived livestream from this year's Mary Monarch Festival.
- 2:25SPEAKER_00: It's up there, available to watch anytime.
- 2:27SPEAKER_00: But what are we going to drink as we watch our hula?
- 2:31SPEAKER_00: How about a grass skirt cocktail?
- 2:33SPEAKER_00: This is one of the rare tropical or faux tropical drinks that doesn't use rum, in fact, it uses gin as its base.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: We're going to start off with one ounce of pineapple juice in a shaker, one ounce of orange-flavored triple sec, one half ounce of grenadine, and I would suggest you use either homemade or some high-shelf grenadine for this, and one and one half ounces of a good London dry gin.
- 2:57SPEAKER_00: I would prefer something like a Bombay Red Cap.
- 3:00SPEAKER_00: Shake everything well tilled in your shaker, strain it in a cocktail or an old-fashioned glass over fresh ice, garnish with a skewered cherry, and there you go, it's your grass skirt cocktail, perfect to watch hula by.
- 3:13SPEAKER_00: So until we meet on another island out there, somewhere, this is Ben Willis saying aloha.
- 3:17SPEAKER_00: And why let the hula girls get all of the attention?
- 3:20SPEAKER_00: Here's Warren Z Vaughn from 1981, giving some love to the Hula Hula boys.
- 3:26SPEAKER_00: It's Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.
- 3:33SPEAKER_00: I saw her leave Hulua with the one who parked the car.