History of Hula

Game Used Hula Bowl Memorabilia.

Price: $199*
(College Jersey)

The Hula Bowl is a College Football Post Season All-Star Game played in Hawaii. The game pits the North All-Stars against the South All-Stars. The team names are Hawaiian - KAI (ocean) for the North Team and AINA (land) for the South Team.

Merchant: College Jersey

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Hawaii - History, Culture & Outdoors (Chapter)

Price: $2*
(Lonely Planet Travel Guides)

This chapter contains History, Culture, Food & Drink and Environment chapters from Lonely Planet's Hawaii guidebook, available to Pick & Mix.

Merchant: Lonely Planet Travel Guides

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History of hula

Legendary origins

There are various legends surrounding the origins of hula.

According to one Hawaiian legend Laka, goddess of the hula, gave birth to the dance on the island of Molokai, at a sacred place in Kaʻana. After Laka died, her remains were hidden beneath the hill Puʻu Nana.

Another story tells of Hiʻiaka, who danced to appease her fiery sister, the volcano goddess Pele. This story locates the source of the hula on Kauaʻi, in the north shore valley of Hāʻena.

Before European contact

Explorers and traders in the 18th century

During the 19th century

American Protestant missionaries, who arrived in 1820, denounced the hula as a heathen dance. The newly Christianized ali`i (royalty and nobility) were urged to ban the hula -- which they did. However, many of them continued to privately patronize the hula.

The Hawaiian performing arts had a resurgence during the reign of King David Kalakaua (1874-1891), who encouraged the traditional arts. Hula practitioners merged Hawaiian poetry, chanted vocal performance, dance movements and costumes to create the new form, the hula kuʻi (kuʻi means "to combine old and new"). The pahu appears not to have been used in hula kuʻi, evidently because its sacredness was respected by practitioners; the ipu gourd (Lagenaria sicenaria) was the indigenous instrument most closely associated with hula kuʻi.

Ritual and prayer surrounded all aspects of hula training and practice, even as late as the early twentieth century. Teachers and students were dedicated to the goddess of the hula, Laka.

20th century hula

Hula changed drastically in the early twentieth century as it was featured in tourist spectacles, such as the Kodak hula show, and in Hollywood films. However, a more traditional hula was maintained in small circles by older practitioners. There has been a renewed interest in hula, both traditional and modern, since the 1970s and the Hawaiian Renaissance.

Contemporary hula