My research this year has brought up a man named Donald Billam-Walker a few times. He and Clarice Taylor researched 1,300 Honolulu street names, writing about them in 1956.
Billam-Walker married Leilehua Lindsey, the daughter of Henry Berger, who led the Royal Hawaiian Band for 43 years.
Berger first came to Hawaii in 1872, making this year the 150th anniversary of that auspicious occasion.
When Donald and Leilehua had a son, James Henry Berger Billam-Walker in 1942, they asked friends of the bandleader to share stories about him so James would know his important grandfather. Donald Billam- Walker published them in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1944.
I knew Henry Berger led the Royal Hawaiian Band for over four decades and composed the music to “Hawaii Pono‘i,” but I didn’t know it was Berger who first performed Queen Lili‘uokalani’s “Aloha ‘Oe” on the mainland and made it famous there. Or that he organized and preserved a great deal of Hawaiian music so that we can enjoy it today. Let’s look at his amazing life.
Army bandsman
Heinrich August Wilhelm Berger was born on Aug. 4, 1844, in Berlin. As a teenager, he showed promise as a musician and served a four-year apprenticeship with a music master.
Berger entered the Prussian army as a bandsman at age 18 in 1862, playing first the bass, then the tuba. His unit participated in wars with Denmark, Austria and France (1864-71). During battles the bandsmen acted as medical corpsmen.
Following his military service, Berger was selected by the famous Viennese waltz composer, Johann Strauss II, to play in his orchestra for the first public presentation of “The Blue Danube” in 1867. The tune is still popular to this day.
“The influence of Strauss on Berger is shown in many of Berger’s compositions and arrangements. In turn, Strauss, through Berger, has had a great influence in Hawaiian music,” Billam-Walker said.
Beginnings of the band
In 1870 the Austrian frigate Donau (Danube) put into Honolulu for several months of repairs. While waiting, the ship’s band presented free afternoon concerts for the Honolulu public.
When the Donau left, Honolulans missed the concerts, and King Kamehameha V decided to create a band of his own. He hired 12 musicians and two lackluster bandleaders, one after the other, but the results were disappointing. They couldn’t match the Austrian band.
The king then asked the German government to lend one of its army bandmasters to Hawaii for the purpose of getting the Hawaiian Military Band, as it was then called, on its feet.
The German government sent Berger, who arrived in Honolulu in 1872. He began practicing with 14 men, and within a few months put on their first concert on Kamehameha Day, June 11. A second concert was offered on the Fourth of July, and a third in Emma Square on July 6.
Arrested by guards
This third concert was memorable in more ways than one, Billam-Walker recorded. Just as the concert started, Berger was arrested by the king’s guards.
King Kamehameha V had asked Berger to give piano lessons to a young girl, who was his ward. Berger protested, but the king offered him an extra $20 a month in pay.
The Emma Square concert was a gala event in Honolulu, and islanders turned out in force to hear it. However, it conflicted with the time set for the girl’s piano lessons. Berger sent his apologies to the student and led his band off to the square.
The concert had scarcely started when palace guards marched on the scene.
“You are under arrest,” said the leader, and before the wondering eyes of the populace, Berger was led away a prisoner.
“Do you know who I am?’ demanded Kamehameha when the culprit was brought before him.
“I believe so,” said Berger. “You are the king.”
“Well, what do you mean by neglecting this girl’s piano lesson?” asked the monarch.
Berger explained he was giving a public concert and that primarily he was a public servant rather than a private piano teacher.
Kamehameha relented and sent Berger back to Emma Square, where the crowd and the band were waiting patiently. The audience enjoyed the concert and, apparently, the drama of the arrest as well.
Henry, not Henri
In 1879 he renounced his allegiance to Germany and became a Hawaiian subject. At the same time, he changed the spelling of his first name from Heinrich to Henry.
Many spelled his name as Henri, but neither he nor members of his family ever spelled his name that way.
“Although he never protested publicly about others spelling his name as Henri,” Billam-Walker said, “within the confines of his home he would laugh about what he called efforts ‘to make a Frenchman out of me.’
“Berger showed such early prowess in music (playing difficult piano duets at the age of 8) that when he was 14 it was suggested by friends that he enter the music field for his lifetime work.”
World famous
The Royal Hawaiian Military Band became world famous within a decade with Berger’s leadership, Billam- Walker believed.
In 1883 the band made the first of several mainland trips. The first was to take part in a competition in San Francisco with bands from across the U.S.
Berger presented Lili‘uokalani’s “Aloha ‘Oe” to the American public for the first time, launching it to immediate popularity on the mainland. The Royal Hawaiian Band received encore after encore in applause and won first place.
‘Hawaii Pono‘i’
I was surprised to learn that the original name of our state anthem was not “Hawaii Pono‘i.” It was the “Hymn of Kamehameha I.”
King Kalakaua wrote the words in 1874, and Henry Berger set it to music, based somewhat on the Prussian hymn “Heil Dir im Siegerkranz.”
Its present name presumably comes from the first two words of the hymn. They translate as “Hawaii’s own true sons.” The “Hymn of Kamehameha I” began to be known as “Hawaii Pono‘i” around 1882.
The people of Hawaii took kindly to Berger almost from the moment of his arrival in 1872.
“He had one great goal,” Billam-Walker said, “which was to provide Hawaii with the best in music. With this in mind, he made a point of seeing to it that each of his programs included one or more great classical compositions.
“In his later years he often chuckled over the fact he had made many of the world’s great musical numbers so popular that Hawaiians would be found whistling classical pieces, or selections from grand operas, as they pounded their poi and carried out their other daily tasks.
“Berger became a favorite with everybody, and he was indefatigable in giving them good music. He played at the palace, in the parks, on warships, at funerals, at functions, and private homes.
“The band was sent with the compliments of the king or queen during the monarchy, later with the compliments of the republic, then the governor, and still later with the compliments of the mayor, as each regime in turn took over the administration of the band.”
When Queen Lili‘uokalani was deposed and a republic declared, the band refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new regime.
Legacy
Berger presented more than 30,000 concerts during his 43 years as leader of the Royal Hawaiian Band. Music greeted nearly every passenger ship that docked in Honolulu. Sunday performances at Kapiolani Park were also a tradition.
Berger composed 75 original Hawaiian pieces and arranged more than 200 Hawaiian songs during this same period.
Perhaps Berger’s greatest contribution was in recording and thus preserving native tunes. Hearing some scrap of melody new to his ear at a luau or a Sunday school meeting, Berger would jot it down and then work it up as a full-fledged number.
As the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial following Berger’s death in 1929 at the age of 85, “If he did not actually invent Hawaiian music as we know it today, it was his genius that organized and preserved it.”
“In Hawaii, Berger found a race without musical training but with great natural facility and with an already well-developed body of music.
“He instantly recognized the beauty of the music he found,” the Chronicle concluded. He realized the danger of crushing it under the European music he was to import, so he set himself the task of collecting and preserving it.
“This was not so easy as it sounds for Berger already had a full-time job. He had to invent a native vocabulary of musical terms, teach his bandsmen to read music and finally play upon European band instruments.”
Queen Lili‘uokalani praised Berger more succinctly, calling him the “Father of Hawaiian Music.”
———
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “Companies We Keep” books. Send your comments or suggestions to Sigall@Yahoo.com.
