This feature, or mannerism, as it might be called, specially marks Hawaiian music of the bombastic bravura sort in modern times, imparting to it in its strife for emphasis a sensual barbaric quality. It can be described further only as a gurgling throatiness, suggestive at times of ventriloquism, as if the singer were gloating over some wild physical sensation, glutting his appetite of savagery, the meaning of which is almost as foreign to us and as primitive as are the mewing of a cat, the gurgling of an infant, and the snarl of a mother-tiger. At the very opposite pole of development from this throat-talk of the Hawaiian must we reckon the highly-specialized tones of the French speech, in which we find the nasal cavities are called upon to do their full share in modifying the voice-sounds.
The vocal execution of Hawaiian music, like the recitation of much of their poetry, showed a surprising mastery of a certain kind of technique, the peculiarity of which was a sustained and continuous outpouring of the breath to the end of a certain period, when the lungs again drank their fill. This seems to have been an inheritance from the old religious style of prayer-recitation, which required the priest to repeat the whole incantation to its finish with the outpour of one lungful of breath. Satisfactory utterance of those old prayer-songs of the Aryans, the mantras, was conditioned likewise on its being a one-breath performance. A logical analogy may be seen between all this and that unwritten law, or superstition, which made it imperative for the heroes and demigods, kupua, of Hawaii’s mythologic age to discontinue any unfinished work on the coming of daylight. [305]
Footnote 305:[ (return) ] The author can see no reason for supposing that this prolonged utterance had anything to do with that Hindoo practice belonging to the yoga, the exercise of which consists in regulating the breath.
When one listens for the first time to the musical utterance of a Hawaiian poem, it may seem only a monotonous onflow of sounds faintly punctuated by the primary rhythm that belongs to accent, but lacking those milestones of secondary rhythm which set a period to such broader divisions as distinguish rhetorical and musical phrasing. Further attention will correct this impression and show that the Hawaiians paid strict attention not only to the lesser rhythm which deals with the time and accent of the syllable, but also to that more comprehensive form which puts a limit to the verse.
With the Hawaiians musical phrasing was arranged to fit the verse of the mele, not to express a musical idea. The cadencing of a musical phrase in Hawaiian song was marked by a peculiarity all its own. It consisted of a prolonged trilling or fluctuating movement called i’i, in which the voice went up and down in a weaving manner, touching the main note that formed the framework of the melody, then springing away from it for some short interval—a half of a step, or even some shorter interval—like an electrified pith-ball, only to return and then spring away again and again until the impulse ceased. This was more extensively employed in the oil proper, the verses of which were longer drawn out, than in the mele such as formed the stock pieces of the hula. These latter were generally divided into shorter verses.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
The musical instruments of the Hawaiians included many classes, and their study can not fail to furnish substantial data for any attempt to estimate the musical performances, attainments, and genius of the people.
Of drums, or drumlike instruments of percussion, the Hawaiians had four:
1. The pahu, or pahu-hula (pl. x), was a section of hollowed log. Breadfruit and coconut were the woods generally used for this purpose. The tough skin of the shark was the choice for the drumhead, which was held in place and kept tense by tightening cords of coconut fiber, that passed down the side of the cylinder.