After watching Elvis in Blue Hawaii tonight I’ve been driving myself nuts trying to find the lyrics to Going to a Hookie lau (sp?). The song isn’t in that movie but the go to one. i’ve tried several searches but my spelling is probabably way off. IIRC some country singer like Hank Williams recorded it once. This is driving me nuts!
From www.huapala.org:
Hukilau
by Jack Owens
*Oh we’re going to a hukilau
A huki huki huki huki hukilau
Everybody loves the hukilau
Where the laulau is the kaukau at the luau
We throw our nets out into the sea
And all the amaama come a swimming to me
Oh, we’re going to a hukilau
A huki huki huki hukilau
What a beautiful day for fishing
That old Hawaiian way
Where the hukilau nets are swishing
Down in old Laie bay*
Every tourist that goes to Hawaii learns this hula dance at some point.
And here are the steps to the hula, as found on www.ifccsa.org/hukilau.html:
- Walk forward, swaying, hands on hips.
- Step right, using hands and arms as though pulling fish net.
- Pull four more times (as in #2), continue sliding four more steps to the right.
- Sway hips, extending arms out to front.
- Cross arms on chest. Repeat #2
- Sway left, cupping hands upward
- Sway right. Point two fingers toward mouth as if eating.
- Sway left. Move both hands to mouth, smiling
- Raise both arms high over head as if to throw net far out into the sea.
- Place right hand over left, palms down. Wiggle thumbs. Move hands outward and side to side as fish swimming.
- Point hands to yourself. Repeat # 1 to # 3.
- Sway right and left, raising arms slowly outward and upward toward sun.
- Sway right and left. Raise right arm as if to throw spear.
- Sway right and left. Hands sway side to side gracefully palms forward.
- Arms make circle in front to represent bay.
- Repeat # 1 to # 3.
Bless you Kepi. You’ve saved my sanity.
And here’s a link to a page with a RealAudio clip of the song:
http://www.mele.com/vc/info/362.htm
Mahalo!
Oops! Mahalo means “thank you”. I guess I should have said he mea iki, which means “you’re welcome” or more literally “it was just a trifle”.
By the way, Kepi is the Hawaiian version of my English name (Jeff). I have this great desire to learn how to speak Hawaiian. At this point, I know very, and I mean very, little.
Aloha!
More literally yet it means “a little (iki) thing (mea)”.
I know a smidgen of Hawaiian, but only because I know Maori moderately well. The grammar is close and the vocabulary is remarkably similar once you shift consonants a little: Hawaiian Honolulu becomes Maori Whangaruru (“long harbor”). Tahitian is even closer to Maori than Hawaiian, and Rarotongan is almost identical. The only big exceptions are words that were introduced by Europeans – Tahitian has a lot of French loan words whereas Hawiian and Maori have English additions. All Polynesian languages are pretty closely related – so much so that a native speaker of one could probably understand 80% of another language, which is what Captain Cook did on his voyages – took a friendly Tahitian along to converse with the natives they came across.
“You have no choice but to be impressed.”
Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan
Doubt and Certainty
Dunno where to find it on the here, but a pretty good source of basic Hawai’ian can be found in a book about Hawai’ian street names, believe it or not.
Used to have one but lost it in my move back to the mainland.
Does anyone have the words to Hawaiian War Chant (words and translation)? I think it starts out “Ta-ua-ila…” or something like that, but I cant seem to find lyrics when I do a search.