Words on Music Guest Speaker Series

“Hale Diabolo”: The Royal Hawaiian Theatre and Cultural Politics in late-nineteenth century Honolulu

2019 Words on Music Guest Speaker Series features Dr. James Revell Carr from the University of Kentucky. Dr. Carr is the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and the Director of John Jacob Niles Center for American Music. His first book, Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels (University of Illinois Press, 2014), about the musical exchange between American sailors and Hawaiian musicians in the nineteenth century, was a co-recipient of the Society of Ethnomusicology’s Alan P. Merriam Prize for outstanding book in ethnomusicology for 2015.

This presentation will discuss the social dynamics surrounding the Royal Hawaiian Theatre, Honolulu’s premiere venue for music, theatre, dance, and a wide variety of performances in the late nineteenth century. The Theatre was a meeting place for all strata of Honolulu society, from ali‘i to working class Kanaka Maoli, and from Chinese immigrant laborers to transient American whalers. The Theatre also represented an encapsulation of the larger social conflicts between those who championed Hawaiian sovereignty and the Christian missionaries who called the Theatre “Hale Diabolo,” the House of the Devil.

Event Sponsor
MUSIC, Mānoa Campus

More Information
(808) 956-8742, uhmmusic@hawaii.edu, http://manoa.hawaii.edu/music/events

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