Tradition, storytelling, and the cultural revival that carried hula into the modern world.
In a packed arena at the Merrie Monarch Festival, a dancer steps forward as the chant begins. The room settles. Every movement that follows is deliberate, shaped by language older than any written record in Hawaiʻi. What the audience is witnessing is not entertainment built for spectacle. It is the continuation of a cultural practice that once faced near erasure and survived through discipline, memory, and intentional care.
Hula did not endure by accident. There were periods when it was banned from public life, discouraged in schools, and treated as something to be replaced rather than protected. Knowledge was forced into private spaces. Lineages were disrupted. Yet hula remained alive because families, kumu, and communities made deliberate choices to preserve it even when visibility came with risk.
We trace that journey, beginning with hula’s sacred foundations in ancient Hawaiʻi, moving through the era of suppression that nearly silenced public practice, examining the revival led by King Kalākaua, and exploring how Merrie Monarch continues to uphold cultural standards today. Understanding this history reshapes how hula is experienced, whether as a student, an audience member, or someone seeking to engage cultural practitioners with care and respect.
The Sacred Roots of Hula in Ancient Hawaiʻi
Hula emerged long before a written Hawaiian language existed. It developed as an embodied system of knowledge transmission, closely tied to chant, known as oli, and song, known as mele. Perspective echoed by the Smithsonian National Museum, confirms that hula functioned as a living archive, preserving genealogy, land relationships, spiritual beliefs, and historical events through the coordination of voice, rhythm, and movement.
In its earliest forms, hula was inseparable from ceremony. It was performed in heiau, at royal courts, and during significant communal gatherings. Protocol governed everything from who could dance to when and why it was appropriate. Movements were not decorative. They were interpretive, shaped by the meaning of the words being spoken or sung.
Each island, and often each lineage, developed distinct approaches. Instruments, rhythms, and gestures varied, but all were rooted in ʻike, or knowledge passed intentionally from one generation to the next. This is why hula has never been a single, uniform style. It is a family of traditions connected by responsibility rather than aesthetics.
A common modern phrase suggests that the hands tell the story. Within traditional practice, the truth is more exacting. The story lives in the chant or song. The dancer’s body gives that story form. Without understanding the language, the movement becomes disconnected. Hula was never meant to be silent, nor was it meant to exist without context.
The Suppression of Hula and Hawaiian Culture
The nineteenth century brought dramatic disruption. Western missionaries and governing forces viewed Hawaiian spiritual and cultural practices as incompatible with new religious and social structures. Hula, deeply tied to both spirituality and language, became a primary target.
The National Endowment for the Arts documents how public performance of hula was discouraged and, at times, banned outright. Hawaiian language use declined. Cultural education was removed from formal spaces. What had once been communal knowledge was pushed behind closed doors.
Hula did not disappear. It adapted. Families continued teaching quietly. Kumu preserved chants, movements, and protocols in private settings. This period reinforced a principle that still guides cultural practice today. Survival depends less on visibility and more on transmission. Who teaches matters. How they teach matters. Why they teach matters. What they’re teaching is inherently connected to all of those things.
The suppression era also explains why contemporary practitioners are cautious about how hula is presented. When a tradition has been threatened, its guardians learn to protect it carefully. That instinct is not exclusionary. It is preservational.
King Kalākaua and the Revival of Hula
When King Kalākaua ascended the throne in 1874, he made a deliberate and public commitment to restoring Hawaiian cultural practices. Known as the Merrie Monarch, Kalākaua supported chant, music, and hula as expressions of national identity rather than remnants of a fading past.
His coronation and Jubilee celebrations included hula performed openly, reversing decades of restriction. This was not an attempt to recreate the past unchanged. Kalākaua understood that living traditions evolve. He encouraged new compositions alongside older forms while insisting that practice remain grounded in cultural knowledge and protocol.
This revival reestablished hula as a respected cultural practice rather than a private one. It also set an enduring precedent: cultural survival requires leadership willing to protect space for authentic expression, even as society modernizes. That precedent would be tested almost as soon as the king was gone.
Territory, Tourism, and the Selling of Hula
Kalākaua died in 1891, and his revival outlived him in unexpected ways. In 1889, Kini Kapahukulaokamamalu, known as Jennie Wilson, had danced hula for the king at his boathouse in Honolulu. In 1892, a year after his death, she and a small troupe left with an American promoter to tour North America and Europe, presenting hula in mass-entertainment venues far from the Kingdom for the first time. While they were away, the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893, and in 1898 the United States annexed the islands. Back home, Honolulu’s business leaders recognized a new export: Hawaiʻi itself. In 1903, the Chamber of Commerce and Merchants’ Association secured funding for the Hawaiʻi Promotion Committee, created to advertise the islands to mainland travelers.
Hula quickly became the centerpiece of that image, though only a certain kind of hula. The same promotion committee called one mainland exposition performance “a disgrace and a blot” on the territory’s name, even as the tourist industry built its marketing around a softened, Westernized version of the dance. As officials and business elites came to treat Hawaiian culture as a commodity, performances were tailored to visitor expectations. Chant gave way to English-language songs, and the poetry that once carried hula’s meaning became secondary to the movement.
The machinery grew. Beginning in 1935, the radio program Hawaiʻi Calls broadcast from Waikīkī to as many as 750 stations worldwide; about 30,000 visitors came to Hawaiʻi each year when it began, and 500,000 a year by the time it ended. In 1937, Kodak Hawaiʻi launched a free daytime hula show so visitors could photograph hula in daylight, which meant selling more film. During World War II, the military reshaped the lūʻau itself, adding hula and casting Hawaiians as hosts and servicemen as guests, a structure that carried directly into postwar tourism. The lūʻau most visitors came to know was built in this era, designed to entertain rather than to teach. Hula performers had helped convince once-skeptical Americans that Hawaiʻi belonged in the Union, and when statehood and the first jet service arrived in 1959, that stream of visitors became a flood.
Through all of it, hula did not disappear. Many of the dancers who worked these stages carried genuine knowledge and passed it on quietly to their students. But by the early 1960s, hula had become famous almost everywhere and understood almost nowhere. That is the world the Merrie Monarch Festival was born into, and fittingly, it began as a tourism idea itself.
The Merrie Monarch Festival and Modern Cultural Preservation
Planned in 1963 to draw visitors to an economically struggling Hawaiʻi Island, the Merrie Monarch Festival began as a celebration honoring King Kalākaua. In 1971, it added a hula competition, and over time it became one of the most influential cultural institutions in Hawaiʻi. The festival culminates with its competitive structure, divided between kahiko and ʻauana, established in rigorous standards that reward depth of knowledge, discipline, and lineage-based teaching.
Scholars have described Merrie Monarch as an act of cultural survivance, where dancers function as living archives. Each performance reflects years of study, not only of movement, but of language, history, and protocol. Precision is expected because meaning matters.
The festival extends far beyond the competition stage. Parades, exhibitions, craft fairs, and informal gatherings create space for shared practice and reconnection. Those who attend in person quickly realize that the televised performances capture only a fraction of the experience.
When competition ends, dancers from different halau often gather together to sing, dance, and share stories. That camaraderie reflects the deeper purpose of Merrie Monarch. Preservation is communal work. Excellence exists alongside humility and relationship.
Hula’s Living Tradition: Evolution and Authenticity
Hula today is not identical to its pre-contact forms, and it was never intended to be static. ʻAuana developed after Kalākaua’s revival, incorporating new instruments and musical influences. Kahiko retained stricter ceremonial structures, traditional instruments, and chant. Both demand discipline, study, and respect.
What unites them is lineage. A dancer learns from a kumu who learned from their kumu. Transmission includes far more than steps. It includes language, layered meanings within songs, historical context, and personal relationship to the material.
As the National Endowment for the Humanities has documented, hula masters have long worked to protect authentic practice against commercialization. The response has been renewed emphasis on education and protocol. Authentic evolution comes from within the culture, guided by knowledge holders, not from external demand.
This distinction matters when people encounter hula today. Authentic practice is not defined by costume or music choice. It is defined by whether the practitioner understands what they are conveying and why.
Why Hula’s History Matters When You Experience It Today
For those who teach and practice hula, history is not background information. It informs every decision, from song selection to how movement is explained. Having trained and competed at Merrie Monarch, Trinity Iwankiw approaches hula as an educator first, grounded in the belief that understanding must come before performance.
In her teaching, students do not simply learn choreography. They learn the words of the song or chant, the multiple meanings embedded within them, and how those meanings connect to place, people, and personal experience. Movement becomes a form of translation rather than decoration.
This approach reflects her lineage and training, shaped by decades of lived experience and instruction from kupuna and kumu. Readers interested in that foundation can learn more about Trinity and Halona Hula’s cultural grounding here: Learn about our lineage and leadership.
Understanding hula’s history also helps audiences recognize authenticity. When watching a performance or selecting a cultural experience, the question shifts from “Is this entertaining?” to “Is this connected to a living tradition?” That distinction protects both the culture and the experience itself.
For those seeking clarity on how hula is shared in different settings, including performances versus educational programs, additional guidance is available here: Read our frequently asked questions.
Whether you are planning an event or considering a structured cultural program, historical context helps ensure meaningful engagement rather than surface-level consumption. Learn about our services.
Conclusion
Hula survived because people chose to protect it. Families continued teaching during periods of suppression. Leaders like King Kalākaua restored space for public practice. Institutions such as the Merrie Monarch Festival upheld standards that reward knowledge over spectacle.
That legacy continues today through educators and practitioners who treat hula as a responsibility rather than a commodity. Understanding this history does more than add context. It reshapes how hula is seen, shared, and respected.
If you are interested in engaging with hula that is educator-led and culturally grounded, we invite you to continue the conversation.
