Hawaiian chanters gather to share knowledge, skills

Only a little more than 100 years ago, all Hawaiians spoke fluent Hawaiian, and from the way they spoke, it was possible to tell what island a person came from and what part of that island they came from. There was also a time when chant was a part of everyday life in Hawaii. Today, as more people — Hawaiian and haole (non-Hawaiian) alike — have the fluency necessary to communicate in Hawaiian, traditions associated with chant are coming back.

Keali‘i Reichel, a widely known Hawaiian musician and kumu hula who incorporates chant into his teaching, performance and recording, and other trained practitioners will share their knowledge of chant this weekend with “Art of the Chanter” Saturday and Sunday at the University of Manoa’s Kennedy Theatre.

“‘Art of the Chanter’ is basically a platform for individual chant practitioners to showcase their skills, their thought processes (and) their creativity,” Reichel said while visiting the Honolulu Star-Advertiser newsroom earlier this month.

“Art of the Chanter” began on Maui in the early 1980s when Reichel, Pua Kanaka‘ole Kanahele and other practitioners brought their students together to help create a better understanding of chant in the community at large. Reichel and his Halau Ke‘alaokamaile continued the program in the years that followed, periodically bringing chanters from across the state to Maui where they would share their knowledge of traditional vocal techniques in formal performances.

The last “Art of the Chanter” gathering was in 2007. This is the first time it is being presented on Oahu.

“We choose chanters from different islands, from different backgrounds; some are kumu (teachers), some aren’t. We bring them to the stage, and we also have an emcee — two emcees in this case — where they explain everything to the audience,” Reichel said, explaining the nuts and bolts of the program. “Who they are, what they’ve been doing, how they’ve been trained, what chant they’re doing, what the chant is about (and) what style they’re doing it in. It’s kind of an educational-slash-entertaining kind of thing to again bring the chanter to the forefront.”

Appearing on Oahu along with Reichel are Kanahele; noted falsetto singer Kaumakaiwa Kanaka‘ole, who helped organize the production; Taupouri Tangaro; Keawe and Tracie Lopes; Snowbird Bento; Hiwa Vaughn-Darvall; Kapalai‘ula Desilva; Keli‘i Ruth; Kekai Robinson; Kale Ka‘alekahi; and the Mossman ‘Ohana.

Why come to Oahu after all these years?

“It was Kaumakaiwa (Kanaka‘ole) who kind of pushed me to do this,” Reichel said. “She said she would help me to do this and help me revive it, and that we should take it to every island. That’s a lot (of work), and she said, ‘Let’s start on Oahu.’

“It’s been successful (on Maui), it’s served its purpose for the community at large and for the hula community every time we’ve done it, so we hope it does the same here.”

Reichel continued: “Some of the chants that we’re doing for this one haven’t been heard in probably a century. Some of these chants live in the (Hawaiian language) newspapers, and we’ve culled them and we don’t know if it’s ever been performed. We think not, probably, because it was a form of expression that was sent into the newspaper.

“Some chanters are bringing voice to it and so reconnecting the thought process from back then to till now, ’cause chant and hula is a transmitted process.”

THE IMPORTANCE of chant in a society that had no writing or written archives cannot be overstated. While Hawaiians were enthusiastic about reading and writing, they did not have a written language until the missionaries created one in the 1820s.

Chanters were the living repositories of chants that told the story of the creation of the universe and chants that documented individual genealogies, chants directed to the gods and chants that honored the genitals of prominent alii.

Formally trained court chanters like the legendary Kuluwaimaka, who was believed to be 100 when he died in 1937, could recite chants of more than 1,500 lines from memory. Everyday Hawaiians chanted as best they could.

“The point was to communicate,” Reichel said. “Chant really is that, a stylized form of communication. If you wanted wind, you chanted. If you wanted waves, you chanted. You chanted or you prayed before you ate.”

There were chants for surfing, for giving someone a lei, for criticizing or insulting someone, and for expressing affection for a loved one. For the second half of the 20th century, chant seemed to survive primarily to provide the lyrics necessary for hula or as part of formal public events. Things have been improving as Hawaiian returns as a spoken language.

“Chant is becoming more prevalent in our lives, and that’s good to see,” Reichel said. “I think part of that is the resolidification of the language and bringing back protocols like asking permission to enter a classroom. Those things have become normal to a lot of the younger generation, and by the time they get into their 20s, they already have a whole body of chants that they can utilize for just about any occasion, whether it be formal or informal.

“Chant is taught in schools for different events and even more so now, when schools go out on excursions and they do plantings in the forest or when they visit the museum. It’s become that much more common, and that’s good because that way we can express ourselves in the same way that our ancestors did.”

CHILDREN IN an environment where Hawaiian is spoken and chanting is part of daily life can pick up chant to the point where they recite difficult chants, “but they’re just imitating,” Reichel stated. “There’s more to chanting than learning words or a particular vocal technique.

“The chant that I’ve learned from my teacher encompasses her life, her emotion, all the experiences and all that thought process of keeping that chant intact — and her teacher did the same and her teacher did the same. So it’s not just the power of the word, it’s the power of its transmission that comes through that we hope to bring to life again.”

The fallacy in trying to learn how to chant by watching someone’s video on YouTube can seen with a short detour into the problems that native speakers of English can have trying to make out what someone is singing in English. Consider “Purple Haze”: Is Jimi Hendrix singing “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky” or “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy”? Either one is possible but only one is correct.

Making a mistake with the words of a chant was no laughing matter. Hawaiians believed that getting something wrong — using an incorrect word or mispronouncing a word — could cause the death of the chanter or the person they were chanting to or about.

“‘There’s life in the word and there’s death in the word,’” Reichel said, translating the traditional Hawaiian warning. “Can anybody learn chant? Yes, but you have to have a teacher. The key here is transmission. Otherwise it blends the line between creating and ‘I’m just gonna chant.’ You see it in the digital world and all the ‘interesting’ attempts by nontrained people who don’t have access and are just making it up. It can be scary, and sometimes it can be offensive because they’re just throwing words out there or they’re taking a chant that they’ve heard on YouTube and they take that chant out of context. That’s where the danger lies.”

“Can anybody learn to chant?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes,” he answered.

“Can you learn chant on your own? No! And it’s always better to have someone to guide you no matter what stage or level you are.

“As a haku mele, a composer, I always send it out to my colleagues. I wouldn’t presume to know everything. It’s the same thing with formal chanting.”