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The Echo of Our Song - Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,184
Discovery Miles 21 840
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The Echo of Our Song - Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians (Hardcover)
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Haina ia mai ana ka puana. This familiar refrain, sometimes
translated ""Let the echo of our song be heard,"" appears among the
closing lines in many nineteenth-century chants and poems. From
earliest times, the chanting of poetry served the Hawaiians as a
form of ritual celebration of the things they cherished-the beauty
of their islands, the abundance of wild creatures that inhabited
their sea and air, the majesty of their rulers, and the prowess of
their gods. Commoners as well as highborn chiefs and poet-priests
shared in the creation of the chants. These haku mele, or
""composers,"" the commoners especially, wove living threads from
their own histoic circumstances and everyday experiences into the
ongoing oral tradition, as handed down from expert to pupil, or
from elder to descendant, generation after generation. This
anthology embraces a wide variety of compositions: it ranges from
song-poems of the Pele and Hiiaka cycle and the pre-Christian Shark
Hula for Ka-lani-opuu to postmissionary chants and gospel hymns.
These later selections date from the reign of Ka-mehameha III
(1825-1854) to that of Queen Liliu-o-ka-lani (1891-1893) and
comprise the major portion of the book. They include, along with
heroic chants celebrating nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchs, a
number of works composed by commoners for commoners, such as Bill
the Ice Skater, Mr. Thurston's Water-Drinking Brigade, and The Song
of the Chanter Kaehu. Kaehu was a distinguished leper-poet who
ended his days at the settlement-hospital on Molokai.
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