Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 29, Number 7, 1 July 2012 — Salā to step into a new UH post dedicated to Hawaiian music [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Salā to step into a new UH post dedicated to Hawaiian music

By Kekoa Enomoto

The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa has named award-winning recording artist Aaron Salā to an unprecedented ethnomusicology position that will focus on not only the perfonnance of but also the world view associated with Native Hawaiian music. "Whereas programs in the 'doing of' Hawaiian music already exist, this is the first time an academic program is dedicated to the 'thinking about' Hawaiian music," said Salā, 35, who will become assistant professorof HawaiianmusicAug. 1 inUH-Mānoa's Music Department. The job title "is the first of its kind, dare I say, in the world - that is, a full-time, tenure-tracked position dedicated to Hawaiian music," said the 1994 Kamehameha Schools graduate, who is pursuing an ethnomusicology doctorate at UH-Mānoa, his ahna mater. "Most exciting to me about this position is that nowhere else in the world is there a program dedicated to the study of Hawaiian music as an academic field of research," he said. "UHM is poised to begin the process of developing such programming, and I am absolutely proud to be a part of that. "The kuleana is daunting, absolutely," he added.

Salā said his new job will entail developing curriculum and courses, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Hawaiian music and ethnomusicology, and "fostering, cultivating and facilitating of partnerships and collaborations" with international and isle organizations. The latter include the Hawai'inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at UH-Mānoa "to develop prograimning that will enhanee student interest both in a general Hawaiian epistemology (study of Hawaiian knowledge) as well as in Hawaiian music studies in particular," said Salā, a fonner Windward Community College music instructor. He envisions "talking with people from the Hawaiian music coimnunity - po'e hula (people of hula), slack-key artists, haku mele (composers), recording artists and mea oli (oli chanters), to name just a very few - in order to ascertain how an aeademic program in Hawaiian music might enhanee what we already do in the community. ... I am also very excited to put together Hawaiian music-related workshops, symposiums and conferences with seasoned professionals in the coimnunity, bringing them to the academy and taking our students out into the field. "At this point, the sky's the limit. This is an opportunity to really showcase how an active indigenous community and the Western academic institution ean work together."

His collaboration-related outreach will extend throughout the UH system - such as to the Institute for Hawaiian Music on Maui and the Hawai'i Music Institute at Windward Coimnunity College - and to global institutions: Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, an indigenous university in Aotearoa; American Samoa Coimnunity College; and the Oeeania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, he said. The goal will be "to develop programming whieh brings Hawaiian music together with the music of greater Polynesia and the greater Pacific region." Salā received the 2006 Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for most promising artist for his first album, Ka 'UpuAIoha -Alone With My Thoughts, has served as music arranger for the Kamehameha Schools Song Contest, and directs the Hawai'i Youth Opera Chorus' Cantilena middle-school ensemble. He is also a director through 2016 of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority, whose officials eall him the board's "expert on Hawaiian culture practices" while acknowledging his Hawaiian-language fluency and UH experience teaching Hawaiian mythology, genealogy and music. His own ethnomusicological world view was sparked by a Hawaiian kūpuna and by his Samoan roots. "My father is pure Samoan, and I did spend some time during my fonnative years living in Samoa," he said. "Sitting in church every Sunday in Samoa and listening to the choir sing is one of my most cherished childhood memories." And he wrote his ethnomusicology master's "thesis on the piano as it is perfonned in Hawaiian music - a subject that is near and dear to my heart because my grandmother played it," he said about the late Cecilia Ka'ihilani Victor Cabral. ■

Kekoa Enomoto is a retired copy editor and staff writer with The Maui News andformer Honolulu StarBulletin.

Most exciting to me about this position is that nowhere else in the world is there a program dedicated to the study of Hawaiian music as an academic field of research."

— Aaron Sala award-winning recording artist

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Among other things, Aaron Salā, 35, envisions bringing in seasoned professionals for Hawaiian music-related workshops, symposiums and conferences. - Courtesy photo