Hawai'i, Bob Marley, Jawaiian Music, Cultural ignorance

Before I even left the island, I listened to a lot of Bob Marley.  Hawai'i has a love of reggae music and has an evolution of what we call Jawaiian music.  How it evolved exactly I couldn't tell you.  For me, it is a lot in the laid back riddims and partially because of Hawaiian history.  While I am in no way shape or form of Hawaiian blood, I grew up knowing Hawaiian history, most of us did. For me and many others, Hawaii is more than just blood, it is a culture; we live it and breathe it.  I am not Hawaiian, I am local and a transplant.  I will be local until the day I die no matter where I live.  You cannot remove it from me.

I grew up taking hula classes, as did many of my friends.  Kumu Hulas will teach you the meanings of the songs you are dancing and you will learn both hula kahiko (traditional) and hula auana (contemporary) along with the different implements used for dancing.  You will also learn a bit of history, of the Gods and Goddesses of Hawai'i, a part of the land and you honor the earth and all living things.  It becomes a part of you and in some strange way it does not conflict with any Christian teachings you may or may not have.

In school, you are taught about King Kamehameha, who united all the islands in a great battle.  Prior to then all the islands were not united and were warring.  He brought everyone together in unity.  Then you learn about moving forward, the Kingdom, Captain Cooke, missionaries and eventually the imprisonment and overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i and Queen Lili'uokalani  by the US.  While I think about what could of, should of, may have happened and while I am happy to be American, the overthrow does not sit well with me at all.

You also have the option in school to take Hawaiian language classes, which I did.  I am embarrassed to say that I've lost whatever I did learn.  Just as I've lost the Japanese that I learned in school.  Oh I've kept the proper inflections and intonations and can read anything you put in front of me as long as they are written using the English alphabet, but as to their meaning?  Nope, gone.  If you don't use it, you lose it.

Which circles back around to Bob Marley, much of his music for me touches a chord deep down inside somewhere that has to do with our history.  So I delved into his history and Jamaica's history.  Why he wrote what he did.  It brought me to read about his religion, Rastafarian and Haile Selassie I for whom they believed to be the return of the Messiah.  It also lead me to read about Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.  At the time, living in Hawai'i, I had no real point of reference for these historical figures because there is no real racism, not to the degree that it is here.  These books were like a floating historical novel a history that has long since passed.

The thing that I've learned here on the mainland is that many MANY people are ignorant to the history of Hawai'i and in general ignorant about other cultures, sometimes even their own.  Why is this?

How is it that people do not even realize that American culture is a big giant stew made up of so many cultural heritages.  I haven't quite figured that one out yet.  Are people just walking around in their own little bubbles of ignorance and don't bother to look up?

Hawai'i recognizes that local culture is a giant pot of stew made up of all our heritages.  We embrace it, and love it.  It is part of what makes us local, we've embraced it so much we don't even think about it any longer.  At least I don't.  I came here looking for manapua and couldn't find any so I had to make it.  Finding a recipe was another matter.  In Hawai'i it is manapua, the REAL name for it is bau and is Chinese in origin.  It took me a whole week to figure this out.  Arrrggggh.  I walked around the house for an entire hour saying "bau bau bau bau bau" trying to figure out how you get from "bau" to "manapua".  You tell me if you figure it out or know.  And yes I make fabulous manapua now. :P

I have to go now. :)  Peace and blessings.

Blogging - Wow.

Cliche, BUT I never thought I'd be here, putting my thoughts on the web for all to see, like a public diary.  Oh well, onwards.

Ah yes as for my moniker, born and raised in Hawai'i along with so many generations that have come before me.  And now, I'm a transplant.  The only one in my family that is.  Oh wow lau lau can you say culture shock? :P  I've been here for over a decade and sometimes I STILL cannot believe the stuff that people do here.  AND there is no Aloha Shoyu where I live.  The last time I came home I mailed like 6 gallons and the people at the post office looked at me like I was crazy until they saw the address on the box and said OOoooHHH and I said YeeaahhhHHh so gimme a break.  Okay okay I'm done monku'ing about dat kine stuff.

People here are a trip when you live in an ocean of mainland people.  I've been thinking about it more and more lately.  I don't think it's just because I miss home.  I watch the news and watch how people treat each other here.  You're going to have to be patient if you start reading this because the first few posts are going to be me sharing and really just MONKU MONKU MONKU'ing.  I'm just being honest.  At the end though I guess I'm looking for a productive, open and honest forum on how to move things forward from where we are.

I guess you kind of take it for granted when the minorities make up the majority.  You never think about it.  Localz Rule and we didn't have any plans on letting the mainland impede upon our culture.  We all grew up knowing something about everybody else, that's just the way it is.

What I'm trying to say is that the rose colored glasses have COME OFF.  I don't look at people the same way any more and it breaks my heart.  When I left home when meeting new people I always just saw a person.  You know, there are nice people, icky people, etc.  You don't really see in color.  Almost everybody at home is brown, hapa or so many different things you can't tell anyway.  We're all just LOCAL, does it matter?  I don't see people that way on the mainland so much any more.  I've had so many experiences here on the mainland that my perception has changed.  So much that I've started doing a lot more reading about history and its societal effects on the mainland

I've lived in a lot of places and I'm a friendly person.  Making friends is not a problem for me.  The west coast was cool, not a lot of local people but folks were cool.  A lot of different people from everywhere, very laid back.  Then I moved to the midwest.  I wish someone would have told me before I went.  Here is one example - I lived about an hour outside of town.  On the weekends I used to go to town to go to the club, on the way back one night I stopped at one of the smaller towns to get something to drink.  You know, it was right off the highway, well lit, didn't appear to be a danger to a woman alone.  I go inside and there is an old white lady and 3 old white men standing at the cash register.  I get the drink from the cooler, walk to the cash register, pay and they are all just standing there staring at me so I smile.  The old lady throws the change at me.  Yes, I said throw.  I just stood there and looked at her while the men chuckled.  I didn't know what to do, I was in shock.  So I picked up the loose change and left, wondering what happened the rest of the way home.  I went to work on the following Monday and told my friends what happened.  They said, "oh we should have told you but we thought you'd be okay".  Okay?  They explained to me that this town used to be a major Klan town and bad things happened there in the past.  So I went online that night to go look it up.  The "they thought I'd be okay part" was because I'm not black.  So they told me don't ever stop there if you can help it.  WHAT?!?  I know.  That's right, Yonsei.  It was my first experience with racism.  Ugly, and in your face.  It is palpable, not just the act of throwing loose change, but the way that people look at you. 

You know that saying "the other side of the tracks"?  It is FOR REAL.  Can you believe it?  I drove into town one weekend, just driving.  It was a poor part of town and really, everybody on one side of the tracks was white and everybody on the other side was black.  I saw white people looking at black people like they were DIRT and calling people names when they were ALL BROKE.  What the HECK?  How are you  going to call people racist names and think that you are better than someone else when you don't have anything yourself?  I just went home and cried.  It was like something out of a bad movie.  But it did get me thinking.

Okay, that's enough for today.