I’m not a hula person, but my daughter is and this year is the first year she’s dancing in the annual Merrie Monarch hula festival. If you live in Hawai‘i, you know that’s a big deal here. It’s a hula competition held every spring in Hilo, and it’s one that people come to from around the world.
My daughter, who’s 8, is dancing with her hālau on the Hō‘ike (Exhibition) night, and this is the first time I’m experiencing firsthand what all goes into preparing for the Merrie Monarch.
We’ve been working on her costume, which started with each parent and child going into the forest and cutting down a hau tree. Wow! Pretty intense, but so interesting!
(This blog talks a lot about sustainability, and if you don’t live here that might sound unsustainable to you. Please note that hau trees grow like weeds. I don’t think you could wipe out the hau even if you tried.)
I have since learned how to strip the bark, clean it, and separate the layers, so we can braid it into cordage that we’re using in her costume.
Similarly, we have gathered lau hala – the leaves of the hala tree – and trimmed and cleaned them. When I mentioned that I got a box-type stripper – it lets you strip hala leaves to an even width so you can weave them or use them to make hula implements, for instance, as below – Richard said it makes him think of his grandmother’s house where there were always rolls (kūka‘a) of prepped lau hala.
It was always the same in this house where I live, too, which was my grandmother’s home and her mother’s before her, and where there used to be hula and weaving and more.
Somehow that managed to skip a couple generations, but I love that once again, this house is sometimes filled with hula and ‘oli (chanting), and that rolls of lau hala and skeins of handmade hau cordage and handmade hula implements, like this ‘ulī‘ulī we made, again fill our home.
Mahalo for a tiny glimpse at the behind the scenes preparations, Leslie. I look forward to Merrie Monarch every year. When I was preparing to move to Hawai’i in ’94, I packed and cleaned my house to the sounds and sights of that year’s MM. My son had taped the whole thing – commercials and all – so I could watch it as preparation for moving here…It certainly helped make the drudgery of selecting, discarding and packing stuff so much more pleasant.