“Honolulu Hula Hula Heigh”

This chapter illustrates how the relationship between sailors and Hawaiians helped to foster the new sound of Native Hawaiian culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hawaii's last king, David Kalākaua, was influenced by sailors' songs and minstrelsy, and his maritime adventures contributed to his policy of promoting indigenous Hawaiian music. The chapter also examines the works of the early hapa haole songwriter Joseph K. A'ea, a close friend of Queen Lili'uokalani and member of the Royal Hawaiian Band, who based at least one of his earliest popular songs on the lyrical, rhythmic, and melodic characteristics of the nineteenth-century sea chantey.