The seasoned surfer knows to wait—wait and watch. Read the pattern of waves and wait for the optimal time to enter the water and to paddle out through the dangerous impact zone to the spot where you anticipate catching a wave. Once outside, wait for a good set (a group of waves; ocean swells usually arrive in sets of three to five waves). Rarely is the first wave of a set the best. Less experienced surfers will scramble for the first wave, clearing the lineup (a group of surfers in position to catch a wave) for those who wait. When other surfers are out, one might need to wait one’s turn in the complexly negotiated lineup. If you don’t find your place in this set of waves, wait for the next. There’s always another wave for those who wait (fig. 4).
FIGURE 3. “Drop-It-All Sessions” ad campaign by surfing brand Protest that appeared in Huck 3, no. 15 (2009).
FIGURE 4. Surfers in Lake Superior waiting for the right wave. Photograph by Shawn Malone (LakeSuperiorPhoto.com).
A third quality in surfing is submission. The ocean is the surfer’s mistress/master and teacher. The wise surfer asks for permission to surf and never makes demands. Legendary Hawaiian surfer Paul Strauch says that he always pauses by the ocean before entering the water as he seeks permission to surf. Even when the waves are very good, if he does not sense that permission is granted, he turns around and leaves.22 Generally, however, when the waves are good, the surfer submits to the call of the ocean and, once in the water, submits again to its unbounded power. As mentioned above, a surfer must put himself or herself in harm’s way in order to catch and ride the wave. One must submit to the wave’s power, then work with—play with—that power to achieve the optimal ride or flow. The same is true when one falls while surfing—when one wipes out—especially in large waves that can twist and turn a surfer, holding her or him down for long periods. Every experienced surfer knows that there is no sense in fighting the ocean. When it is ready, the ocean will release you, and you will float or swim to the surface for air. The best survival technique is to relax, wait, and submit.
Perhaps for these reasons, surfing leads some to become contemplative—waiting for signs, listening to nature, thinking about and submitting to mysterious forces. In return, many surfers seem to find healing and even redemptive qualities in surfing, both physical and psychological. This is a common (though hardly universal) theme in surfing literature.23 The contemplative quality of surfing also leads many to talk about surfing in spiritual terms. The first decade of the twenty-first century saw an impressive output of books on surfing and spirituality.24 Comments and even feature articles about surfing and spirituality also regularly crop up in surfing magazines, such as the article in Surfer, titled “Is God a Goofyfoot,” in which Brad Melekian asks a Catholic priest, a Christian pastor, a Jewish rabbi, and a Buddhist monk if surfing itself might be a religion.25 (His conclusion is that it is not, but that it can be a powerful spiritual and meditative practice.)
In my experience as a surfer, and in talking with other surfers, I’ve concluded that those who keep at it for some years tend to find the practice of riding waves to be a deeply but inexplicably satisfying experience. Personally, surfing adjusts my attitude, removes anxiety, and provides a level perspective on dry-land problems and pleasures. A Christian myself, I have a practice of surfing after church Sunday mornings, a tradition I only half-jokingly call the sacred ritual of the post-Communion surf. Sometimes this sacred ritual is more spiritually satisfying than Mass itself.
The contemplative possibilities of surfing may also lead some surfers, though not all, to seek musical expression. Other surfers are more focused on the adrenaline boost surfing can provide, and this inspires their musicking (something that Dick Dale claims, as I will show in chapter 2). There are many reasons and ways that surfing might encourage musicking among some, but in most cases, surfing and musicking are enacted in different spaces/places/locations. On dry land—even on damp, wave-swept beaches—there is only memory of the adrenaline rush, the search for oneness, the healing power, the spiritual redemption, and so forth that motivates the surfer. There on the beach surfers try to recapture some of the feeling of being in the water, surfing. They swap stories about their best rides, tell lies, exchange knowledge, reenact their moves, and, as we shall see, make music. Therefore, the place of musicking is a place of removal, away from the place of surfing itself. Connections between surfing and musicking must always be tenuous, changing, fluid.
SURFING AND MUSIC: APPROACHES TAKEN IN THIS BOOK
A key ethnomusicological tenet is that musicality is an integral part of group imagination and invention. Though the affinity group surfers is fluid and as fickle as the surf during a rapidly changing tide, its individual members do share the core experience of riding waves. Water may be the universal solvent, but it also binds us all. In my look at the musical practices of surfers in locations around the world, I keep returning to this shared experience that binds surfers. And where I may theorize the global, I also keep it real by grounding my interpretation in the real-life stories of individual members of this community. This book presents a series of case studies that explore different ways that surfers—and sometimes nonsurfers—associate the cultural practices of surfing and musicking. Along the way, I also hope to expand ethnomusicological thinking about the many ways musical practices may be integral to human socializing, and perhaps to being human in the first place.
The first three chapters are historical and move chronologically, with some overlap. I start with the earliest known music associated with surfing—Hawaiian chant—and continue through Hawaiian popular music during the first half of the twentieth century. I then move to the named genre Surf Music. Third, I analyze the music used in surf movies to see what they can tell us about surfing and musicking from the mid–twentieth century to the present.
Chapter 1, “Trouble in Paradise: The History and Reinvention of Surfing,” considers the origins of surfing and music about surfing in Hawaiʻi. The passage of time does not enable me to speak directly with pre-revival-era surfers, so I rely on Hawaiian legends and myths, early written accounts of surfing (most by Europeans and North Americans, but some by Hawaiians), and, most significantly for my work, Hawaiian mele (chants). A number of mele about surfing from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are the earliest examples of surfing music. Through these voices from the past, we see that surfing was ubiquitous in pre-revival Hawaiian society, practiced by women and men, girls and boys, and though we know more about royal surfers since it is their surfing mele that survive, we also know that common folk surfed, too. Thus it is not surprising that there were chants and dances, rituals, and even temples associated with surfing in Hawaiʻi.
Popular Hawaiian songs from the first half of the twentieth century reveal a changing role for surfing, especially as tourists began to visit Hawaiʻi and to learn to surf themselves. Surfing spread from Hawaiʻi to the rest of the coastal world, and at least during the first half of the twentieth century, emerging surfing affinity groups tended to look to Hawaiʻi for appropriate cultural practices, such as music and dance, to express community. Hula (dance or visual poetry) and hapa haole (half-foreign) songs from Hawaiʻi were and still are practiced by surfers on California’s beaches, for example. Yet surfing also changed as more and more people traveled to Hawaiʻi, and as surfing was exported from the islands. The first stop for globalizing surfing was California, and I show how the interaction between Hawaiʻi and California led to the reinvention of surfing in the twentieth century. No longer the ubiquitous cultural practice of pre-revival Hawaiʻi, what I call New Surfing became hypermasculine, and would be increasingly driven by commercial interests.
Chapter 2, “ ‘Surf Music’ and the California Surfing Boom: New Surfing Gets a New Sound,” picks up the story in California. Most conversations that pair the words surf and music are focused on two related genres of music that came to be called Surf Music: instrumental rock
