akamai,
Hee a ka lani i ka nalu.
Kalākaua rode the waves,
He rode on every wave deftly and skillfully.
The chief rode on the waves,
On the swirling waves.3
Much of what we know about pre-revival surfing comes to us from Hawaiian legends and mele—the original surfing music. Since at least the surviving mele tend to focus on Hawaiian nobility, they skew our picture of surfing history a bit. However, Hawaiian legends and early accounts by Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians leave no doubt that just about everyone surfed—royal and commoner; men, women, and children.4 Yet the fact that nobility routinely surfed is a powerful reminder of the establishment role of surfing in pre-contact Hawaiian society.
By pre-revival surfing I mean surfing by Hawaiians up to the end of the nineteenth century. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, many commentators claimed that surfing was on the verge of extinction. Recent research has shown that this was not the case at all but rather a myth propagated by non-Hawaiians, first out of ignorance and later in a deliberate effort to encourage tourists to visit Hawaiʻi: by suggesting that Hawaiians had abandoned surfing, it cleared the way for tourists to colonize the sport.5 Even though surfing was never abandoned by Hawaiians and never died out in Hawaiʻi, it was “revived” in the sense that it was given new life in the first half of the twentieth century by tourists and white settlers in Hawaiʻi, and also by its spread to other coastal areas around the world. With this revival came great changes, changes so great that I believe surfing was also reinvented in the twentieth century. I use the term New Surfing to refer to what surfing became in the twentieth century as it was redefined and resignified by new surfers—in Hawaiʻi, more overtly in California, and then quickly around the world. The act of riding waves while standing on boards remains fundamentally unchanged; that is not what I mean by New Surfing. Nor do I intend to suggest that New Surfing is in any way better than pre-revival surfing. My interest here is in surfing as a cultural practice with accompanying rituals, habits, conceptions about who surfs and why, and of course musical ideas and practices.
Just as ancient mele tell us much about pre-revival surfing, changing music associated with surfing in the first half of the twentieth century informs us about the reinvention of surfing. Using musicking about surfing as my guide, in this chapter I retell the history of surfing, beginning with pre-contact surfing in Hawaiʻi, followed by the reinvention of surfing during the first half of the twentieth century. Where possible, the story is told through music associated with surfing, beginning with Hawaiian mele, then Hawaiian popular music during the first half of the twentieth century, up to a genre called Surf Music, which is the focus of the next chapter. There are some pages in the middle of this chapter where I don’t write about music but instead present a history of the rumored demise of surfing, followed by its reinvention as it was globalized. The balance of the chapter and of the book, however, does address musicking among surfers.
HAWAIIAN SURFING: THE SPORT OF KINGS AND QUEENS (AND EVERYBODY ELSE)
Ka nalu nui, a kū ka nalu mai Kona,
Ka malo a ka māhiehie.
Ka ‘onaulu loa, a lele kaʻu malo.
O kakaʻi malo hoaka,
O ka malo kai, malo o ke aliʻi.
E kū, e hume a paʻa i ka malo.
E kaʻikaʻi ka lā i ka papa ʻo Halepō
A pae ʻo Halepō i ka nalu.
Hōʻeʻe i ka nalu mai Kahiki,
He nalu Wākea, nalu hoʻohuʻa,
Haki ʻōpuʻu ka nalu, haki kuapā.
The big wave, the billow rolling from Kona,
Makes a loincloth fit for a champion among chiefs.
Far-reaching roller, my loincloth speeds with the waves.
Waves in parade, foam-crested waves of the loin-covering sea,
Make the malo of the man, the high chief.
Stand, gird fast the loincloth!
Let the sun ride on ahead guiding the board named Halepō
Until Halepō glides on the swell.
Let Halepō mount the surf rolling in from Kahiki,
Waves worthy of Wākea’s people,
Waves that build, break, dash against our shore.
(“He inoa no Naihe” [A Name Chant for Naihe])6
Seafaring people around the world have found pleasure from the boost of speed provided by an ocean swell as they returned from the open seas to shore.7 Heading into the water for the sole purpose of enjoying wave riding, most commonly practiced by children, was historically widespread throughout Polynesia. Ben Finney and James D. Houston, in their book Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport, note that in most islands of East Polynesia, all ages, male and female, also took pleasure in wave riding, usually riding prone on short wooden boards. In Tahiti and Hawaiʻi, surfers took it a step further. There they developed longer boards, six feet or more in length, and rode them while standing.8 Stand-up surfing was most highly developed in Hawaiʻi, where it was thoroughly integrated into society. Surfing was rich with rituals associated with everything from the making of surfboards to the act of surfing itself, and with taboos about who could surf where, when, and with whom. Legends and mele tell of elaborate surfing contests with associated activities from gambling to courtship. And of course there were chants about surfing and surfers.9 Even if surfing did not necessarily originate there, Hawaiʻi remains the mythical font of surfing, and it is certainly the place from which stand-up surfing spread around the world during the twentieth century.
And surfing mele show us that Hawaiians knew that surfing came to them from elsewhere—that they had some sense of global surfing before anyone was using the term globalization. The extract of the mele at the beginning of this section refers to Kahiki as the origin of a particular surfing swell (audio example 1). Kahiki could mean Tahiti specifically, though in this context it probably refers to any distant place beyond Hawaiʻi.10 The Hawaiian Islands were most likely first settled by Marquesans around 300 C.E. but were then conquered and resettled by Tahitians around 1100 C.E.11 Whether or not the particular swell celebrated in this and other mele literally originated in the waters around Tahiti is not the point. The mele can be interpreted as paying homage to an earlier homeland for these seafarers from whence Hawaiian people and cultural practices came—cultural practices including surfing.
The description in Naihe’s name chant, excerpted above, of waves as “worthy of Wākea’s people” is also a key to Hawaiian myths of surfing. Wākea and his wife, Papa, are the legendary ancestors of all Hawaiian genealogies, especially the chiefly clans.12 Beyond the fragment reproduced above, the mele goes on to mention other notable ancestors and notable surfing spots, such as Kahaluʻu, on the Big Island, Hawaiʻi, a surfing beach looked over by Kuʻemanu, a large surfing heiau (temple) built by Hawaiians long ago. Such temples were used by nobility to pray for good surfing swells,
