Auntie Noe wants you to keep hula, Hawaiian crisp
Getting a mite kapulu — sloppy — with your hula or Hawaiian? Don't let Noelani Mahoe catch you. You'll get a stern ahana koko lele come-uppance from the veteran entertainer.
Mahoe, 69, of the musical group, Leo Nahenahe, remembers her father's disparaging remarks about her own pronunciation growing up.
"Your Hawaiian sounds ... 'funny!' " the native speaker would say of Mahoe's modern "classroom-taught" Hawaiian, added to "Hula Hawaiian," that familiarity with the 'olelo makuahine, mother tongue, picked up in halau.
Now it's the message the professional hula dancer, musician and teacher is only too quick to pass on to performers who are falling down in their hula style — careless, slovenly and slipshod in dance, pronunciation or interpretation. Don't be surprised to see an unhappy Mahoe issue a stern: "Auwe noho'i e!' BUSTED! keia" if she is in your audience.
Mahoe's pedigree in language, music and hula has been described as impeccable, calling on expertise gathered at the feet of her father and in formal study under masters such as Samuel Elbert (co-author of the popular Hawaiian language dictionary) and kumu hula Tom Hiona and Lokalia Montgomery.
Mary Kawena Pukui (the other co-author of the Hawaiian dictionary)was her language "sounding board." Literally. "I'd just call her" if unsure of a meaning, kaona, or movement, said Mahoe. "And always comfortable with her interpretation — 'cause she said so!' — and (therefore) firm in my foundation."
She sees these masters from the past as both a resource and responsibility.
"I get very upset," she says, when classroom-educated manaleo, native speakers, correct the kupuna. "They (na kupuna) grew up with the language. How dare! How dare! We grew up NEVER correcting" the elders, she said.
Her own linguistic gift came easily. "I've always had an ear for the phrasing. That came naturally — (and) the music. When I hear (mis)pronunciation on the radio" or on stage, she said, grimacing, "it grates on my ears." Things like singers ignoring the subtle vocal difference between 'oe (as in Aloha 'Oe), and 'oi (as in "Maui no ka 'oi).
Or the cardinal sin: adding an 'okina pause in the third word of the common ending phrase of Hawaiian songs — "Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana" — rendering an innocuous "mai" to "ma'i," with connotations of bodily functions.
Mahoe's strict ear for the language is accompanied by an unnerving eye for hula. What really fires her up is the dancer on stage who is not "up on her dance."
"Oh, I dance anyway," dancers have explained to her.
"They're making up the motions," she said, drawing her lips taut. "The dance has no meaning" — like the dancer who does motions for "flower" — pua — in the song "I Kona," for the last word in "Kona kai 'opua," telling of the puffy cloud-silhouetted horizon for which Kona is known.
"I tell them, 'Please, if you don't know the song, don't do it! Don't be so kapulu! At least have an inkling of the language."
And what does the veteran performer suggest if you make an honest mistake on stage? "Just continue," perhaps with a smile, she said. "No one's perfect." Besides, the mistake will likely never get noticed.
That is, unless Auntie Noe is in the audience.
