Biography Hawaiʻi; Maiki Aiu Lake; Interview with Puakea Nogelmeier 12/17/01 #4

For some of the folks, yeah, for the folks that trained there, oh, okay, yeah, we can try that. Like a little caption. You imagine their picture. Yeah, we'll just give you a minute. Ali, Samovkin, you know, yelled at Karen. I bet she did. No, see, anti-alas of all of them is the only one that I know well, and, you know, like, you know, I got a glimpse of where you should hand, you know. I don't know. We went to visit her at her place on a ferocious stuff. We went to visit her when she was the caretaker for the palace, when we had a, there's a wonderful story there, but that's out for this date, that's one of the other things. You know, I think we get into, and we're probably on the cake now, just your own personal responses to what was it like to see her around. Yeah, what kind of a person she was. I was sitting there.

Oh, okay. It's coming. Oh, good, good, good, because I need warning, because otherwise I'll tell you, I was dirt, and she was, you know, the light, you know, that's it. You know, I need to ask you, I don't even want to ask you, Dad, I think we've talked about that wider tradition to change. That's one of us. Okay, yeah, let's not. No, let's not. Okay. Yeah, let's not vlog the horse. Okay. Okay. Let's go to, before we go to the, like, the last questions about the last questions that just concern your direct experience event, and like, let's go to, can we do Craig soundbites? Oh, to talk about some of my keys teachers, and again, I'd have to say, of all of my keys teachers, most of them are unfamiliar to me, other than as icons, you know, they came down as legends, rather than as characters, other than, I mean, I know, they're fields,

sort of, you know, locally in Montgomery, with her background, and the other people that she had taught, but Hula wasn't her only interest, but that was where Maiki tied to her. Poehau, I believe, other than, I think he was a warden or something as well, but Hula was his main interest. He had a real drive to teach, and that was his serious, serious business, you know, so I only understand sort of the, the tenor of him, rather than many of the details. What have you heard about him? Well, he was, and much of what I heard actually was through Coe's training with him, you know, that it was by acceptance, it was in a closed place, I mean, you couldn't sit and watch their performances, you went in for formal training. If you weren't training, you really had no business. The seriousness of the man, you know, that he was dedicated to the Hula, that was, and

that's important in that time, I mean, you think in the 40s and 50s, there's so many other activities, distractions, shallow connections, that this became a very, for some people, this was a driving force. So, like, Antialas is one of the characters that I do know that was one of her teachers, and met her, late in her life, but I guess we were able to play back in forth for about 10 years, from the first time that I met her, and what a character. But Hula was just a piece of her insight in her life and her interest, music, language, she was really in a lot of fields, so I think Mikey also tied to her in lots of fields, playing with her for music, got her to do lyrics, got her to interpret sometimes, you know, her language ability was there, so they had a good collaborative relationship. I don't know exactly what she learned from Vicki E. E. Rodriguez, but I know that she

was a really honored lineage that was meant to be carrying down a body of knowledge, and she had the responsibility for a big body of knowledge, so that she shared it with Mikey is one of her lucky pieces, always heard of Mr. Ilala Orle, and I can't remember his first name, but I thought it was Joseph. But, yeah, Ilala Orle though, I always remember that, and his traditional body of dances that Mikey not only learned from him, but then called him in to illuminate, and if the teacher from whom she learned was available, she would often use that resource to have them come in and either teach or talk about the dance, and that was a smart and a traditional kind of a system for both inspiring the students, giving greater depth to the body of knowledge, and putting a different face in the classroom, just as a good pedagogy.

That's Kavanaugh, her other teacher, I never met, I've worked with her materials for ages. I mean probably since the time I met up with Hawaiian things, you met up with Kavanaugh, because she had an impact on so many different parts of Hawaiian culture. She becomes probably the best known of all the icons, and has material in the language side, in the Hula side, and most of the cultural practices side. She created many of the resources that, for people who are in the Hula, if you don't have come in as dictionary, you can't participate, you know, so she became a doorway for Mikey into the Hula, but she became her resources that she created, became a doorway for all the generations afterwards, so I can't think of the other teachers that play a role in Mikey's development. Do you have any other one we have here that you haven't covered as Bina Mossman? Bina.

Bina Mossman, and I don't really know what Mikey got from Bina Mossman, you know, music, you know, Bina Mossman with music, but I'm sure that she also trained for Hula, but Mossman was connected with Lallani Village, and I'm not sure where Bina fits in there, but Lallani Village was an important thing, and Mikey, if she didn't play a role there, would have been affected just by it being there, since it's in the 40s, late 30s and early 40s that they set up Lallani, Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, and they try and present tradition, the traditional practice, both for a market and for a perpetuation aspect. So when we talked earlier about where were the points of entry for a Hawaiian to learn anything about Hawaiian dance or about Hawaiian tradition, Lallani Village actually became a doorway for quite a few people to access with people who were considered to be masters of those fields.

They had Kuluwe Maka as sort of the grandfather of the place I understand who was the chanter for Kaua and was a storehouse, a poetic legacy, and that was presented in many, you know, most of it was presented at Lallani Village. That's where much of his material was recorded. They recorded him for the Bishop Museum, Mr. Kelsey, and Kenneth Emory, both in recordings of the body of poetic lore that he carried, poetic legacy. Is that Man Kuluwe Maka, is that his name? Yes. Is he the one I read about that comes from the other islands to Kaua, Kaua's court and starts teaching? He comes from the island of Hawaii, I think, where first he was involved actually as a young man with Queen Emma, and performed for her or somehow that's where he first comes I think into the public eye, and then is brought in as the court chanter under Kaua's reign, and learns all of the, there's a huge body of chant that goes to honor, you know, that

is inherited by the new sovereign or created for him. And Kuluwe Maka had that all memorized when he was found and brought to Lallani Village, he was already in his late 80s, I believe, and yet still had all of that chant at his fingertips. So he became a major resource there, Mikey's connection to the Mossmans would have been a rich one for some of the, and if not learning directly that body of information being exposed to them, it existed, that was real, it would be a real validation for her to know those teachers and to have been around them. Can you just go a little bit more about that village? Lallani? Yeah. You know, I don't know all the workings of it, I know that what it was was a functioning cultural village, a little bit like what in our time or a couple of decades ago, Ulumau tried to create, but I think that this was maybe a little larger scale.

Tourists could come and witness, you know, different aspects of Hawaiian culture, a little bit like Polynesian Cultural Center, only focused just on Hawaiian things. And they had true masters of different arts that were there, Kuluwe Maka being the best example of it, but they tried to present traditional hula, they tried to do traditional kapa making, different hula, the weaving of laohala, different practices, being displayed and presented. So it was really a prototype for much of the later tour industry efforts, but what got recorded there, especially through Kuluwe Maka, invaluable. And if it had not happened, if they had not just the whole mix of Lallani village and the people that it drew to it, and then the recording of some of that, if that had not occurred, a whole huge body of, I think, Hawaiian knowledge would have been swept away. Or at least left in the hands of just the individuals that might have kept it up.

Do you know anything about the circumstances surrounding anti-Mikey's hula-laoh of a ... Actually, I was already a dancer when Mikey set up hula-laohoe in Waikiki, and it was a massive undertaking, and considered very daring. It was to market tradition, not tourist hula, but real tradition to the Waikiki audience and to the tour industry. It was expensive to be in Waikiki, it was a large personnel to keep a staff that could address that large of a public audience. It was done on a scale and a level that was meant to be very professional, very real. She was really trying to do it away, Lallani Hawaiian village, in a very modern setting, brought in very good people.

I know they had professional lighting, they had camera people, and I'm sure that the people who were directly involved with that, Karen, her own children, some of her core dancers, Analu, was, I think, her main male dancer there at the time. They would be able to tell what the goals were, what some of the pitfalls, what some of the hardest parts of it were. I only knew it from the outside, we're dancing in Waikiki at the time, as considered a very daring and grand scale effort. Hula-laoh were always a shoestring kind of affair, I mean, they were never luxurious, they were never well supplied, implements, decorations, you made everything. Nothing was, could be purchased in most Halao structures, were either carports or a separate building in a backyard. There weren't separate institutional foundations for these things, so that was a grand dream and a grand effort, and it was my Hula-laoh brother.

We were involved in directly. Keith Godotter, my Hula-laoh brother, was the one who made the huge sign of core that said, Halao, Hawaii, with the Pahudrums, his lights, and quite an upscale step. What do you think, Mikey? How do you think Mikey contributed to the popularity of Hula today? I'm trying to think of a single point of entry there, because with the woman's career spans, you know, 40 years, and most of her impact probably is that she made it a public affair in many ways. She brought Hula performance into the level of art, and into the level of, she normalized it again in some ways. She normalized public performance of Hula in a way. I mean, there were other Halao, there were other studios, there were other—that were

doing that, but I think that she made it very much a community affair. Her development of the public, her class and the sudden existence of a whole new number of Halao, helps to generate that there were extensive public performances in the 70s. We couldn't have a festival without a whole Hula, a sequence of Hula performances, and we'd often be called unto dance, but we'd get there three or four hours early, watch two or three Halao before us, watch one or two after us. There'd be whole sequences. All of the big Hula competitions that we know today, the Mary Monarch, Kameha-meha-dee and the Kahi, and all the ones that have been around for less time, were all initiated after that. They all begin about that time, it's the mid-70s. So the publicness of Hula is really, if not initiated by her, certainly fostered to a great extent.

What was she like as a person? There's two sides to it. She's actually, she was very, very contained, very quiet in a lot of ways. You mentioned, or somebody mentioned, an interesting thing in the 50 years of photos that Momi has, it's hard to photograph her. She didn't always take the front. She didn't always stand out. She didn't always, she wasn't necessarily a big stage grabber, and yet if she was there, you always knew she was there. She had a very, very strong presence, but you have to remember, this is, you know, I'm talking of a Mikey that was in my life, 25, almost 30 years ago, and I think I mentioned I was dirt and she was light, you know what I mean? So I was a nobody. I was a dancer of one of her dancers, you know, I was honored and delighted to even ever be in the same room with her mostly, or if to talk to her was always, I'd be elated

for a week, just to have had a chance to talk to her, because in my very small circle, she was one of the luminaries, and she really was, at the time, the luminary, because my only sphere of Hawaiianness, you know, of participation in any of the Hawaiian activities, all came under her umbrella, whether it was language dance, any of it. She was always the guiding light, because she was my teacher's teacher. So my, I thought it's a little bit of a biased observation, is that any time that she was around, she was the most important person in the room. And maybe that's not always true, because there are a couple of settings where her own teachers, her elders, would be there, and you would know that they were demigods, demigoduses, but I often didn't even know their names. I just knew that she was being deferential to them, but I only had one focus. I only had one place to give my honor, that was the mighty, that was, I was running in

a small circle. What impressed you the most about her? Other than the legend that she was by the time I met her, because she was my honored teacher's honored teacher, it was the, probably from the first time I met her, I thought she was psychic. But part of that's the legend that goes with her, but it always seemed like she already knew what I was thinking, and, or if I'd come, if I had an idea, there were a couple of times that I was able to sit and talk to her about things, and she knew what I came for before I got there. Now it's so seemed, I always, that's the level that I functioned with her on, is I assume she knew, and she knew what was happening in our allow, without having been there, she, she was renowned for being insightful, so maybe that's one of the most memorable aspects of her.

I was thinking about Mikey today, if I was driving to the studio, and I was wondering, oh, let me ask you this, do you think that someone like Mikey is chosen to do what they do? Because it seems like she was this, you know, that her teachers knew that she was, what the investment? Yeah, and that, like, she was the one, or she was one, yeah, I don't know if she was the one, but, you know, whether she was a chosen one, definitely I'd say she was a chosen one, and I have, and I'd be hard pressed to pinpoint the source, but I have, in the back of my people that have told me that her own teachers were very frustrated with her, that she was often, whether Kalohe, she wasn't on target, she was, not following the rule, she was in positions where if she had been someone else, she would have been kicked out, you know,

invited out, but they were terribly patient with her, they were very guiding of her, so I don't know that she was the chosen one, you know, it's a little easy to create that after the fact, but I think she was one of, you have teachers who were very intensely involved in an art form and a tradition, and they wanted to be handed on, and they saw her in a handful of others of their time as very viable vessels for that, and so I think that they invested a great deal in her, and once that began, that process began, I mean, I was at least able to witness the end of that where people were still investing in her to an extensive level, sharing knowledge with her, being resources for her, because they could see that she was doing a very, very good job of handing that on. She wasn't their only investment, I think, there's others.

And each one of them, they're almost hand-picked, it's sort of a, I don't know, I hate yellow eyes, though, you know, it's serendipitous how the appropriate student comes into the teacher, but I think both of them recognize. Sometimes the teacher recognizes first that this one's got to be invested in. Did you ever see her dance? Yes. What's it like? The only a couple of times I ever saw her dance, and it was never formally, it was always informally, and so on the one hand, it was never the high polish of someone like Momi who was a stage dancer, she was a solo dancer. Like you didn't want to steal the stage, it was always like she was just moved to get up and go into it, and so it was more from inside than trying to please something outside. So it was always a delight, and again, she was like, she was dancing three inches off

the floor for all I knew, so I was always real, real pleased, if she was, because if she was moved to dance, that meant the setting was so remarkable, and it made the whole event memorable. Well, is there anything else you'd like to tell us? My underwear size is up 30. I can't think of anything else, I can't think of anything else. I can't think of anything else that you don't already know. But, you know, there's going to be a bit, I'll walk out of here and think, how could I not have said that, you know, about Maggie, or about the hula, or about the language, da-da-da, I haven't noticed this, a few more hours of random data bits, I'm sure they could apply, but, you know, edit this down to about three minutes and pick out the pieces you like, but if there's more, we can always sit down and do more.

Doxo, you guys must be tired too, huh? I don't know that I'd have much to say, except that it was, you know, when I say that I was dirt and she was light, the light went out. Did you go to dinner? Yes. Could you tell us about that evening? I'm sorry. No, no, no, because to me, the Maiki's funeral, to me, was a religious service, it was an affair of state, it was, I had, it was for me, you know, I was raised as a child in the mainland, and the only funeral I'd ever seen was a very, I suppose, Methodist, straightforward, it was real model and affair. My first funeral I ever attended here was Iolani Luahine, so talk about a contrast, but Iolani's was actually relatively low key in comparison to Maiki's, which was, like, an affair of state, hundreds and hundreds of people, and an absolute outpouring of love, because where I think

a really wide population had admired Iolani and honored her, I don't think she had the personal tie with his broader populations, Maiki, even if she only met you once, there was a personal, well, she's very charismatic, and she made it, so you were somebody really important, somebody that she had a personal tie to, every person in that church, and there had to be a thousand, maybe more, I've never seen Kauaihau, packed like that, and they danced, and they sang, and they, and they moved in way, it's Hau, because she had generated so many Hau Lau. These people were there as individuals, they were there as subgroups, they were there as a single group, so that the whole group responded in this, it was a, it was a ritual display of affection, and it was a remarkable, it was the first time I'd ever seen anything

like it. I have witnessed things a little bit similar since then, but in some ways for me that was the role model that helped generate the ones that followed, I had just never had anything so grand, be connected with that, I mean, but it was her passing, that it was affecting so many people, and like I say, you know, she was like, I was dirt, the light went out, it was very jarring, to have suddenly, it was like the lineage was Pogomoku, it was cut off, so, but it was the most remarkable, remarkable funeral, and so appropriate, so I don't know what else I would say about that. That's great for us, because so many of the people we're talking to, you don't even ask the question. Yeah, this cannot. I'm sure. Yeah. It was, it was the most intense, and you know, I don't know, you don't, I don't know if you want, you know, that, the level of it, because while Mikey had a personal relationship

with such a broad population, she only had to meet you once and twice, and you felt that you were Mikey's friend, you know, that she loves you, but that actually happens in real levels, and some people had been in her life for 50 years, and her death was absolutely an overwhelming loss, and so the level within the church was, it was intense, it was just absolutely thick with emotion, because for some people really, the light did go out for them, you know, just in my funny little sphere it did, but for some people I think, you know, she had been such a massive part of their life, she was larger than life, she felt a giant role in people's lives, so the loss of her was really, really incredible. I would think you'd have a very hard time getting some of her own protégés, her dancers, those who were close to her, they even talk about that there was a funeral. Yeah, yeah, she's really gone, yes, I'd have to say, you know. Yeah, almost become unconscious, where we realize afterwards that's the question we always

have in our ass, because, unfortunately, I was marginally enough, you know, that I can't address that, you know, there are other ones you couldn't ask me about, so, anyway, there was nothing at all then, so I thought this was for everyone, let's agree on it.