Angels of Ukulele Death Metal

SCAVENGERS

2006-07-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

SCAVENGERS

I've fallen down
Down into this city
Where my heart once beated
And was mesmerized by the evenings' light

Attracted like a moth
Down into eternal flame
An artificial luminance
That bespoke of my taint

If I was made perfect
That was my flaw
To realize up above
Wasn't all...

Apropos of something I
Had to chose my realm
The domain of my nascence
I shan't ever reclaim

But I dwell in lost memory
On a snowy deserted beach
Back against limestone
Sand under my feet

Drift into nature
Cause it was so like it before
My soul is a hawk
Yet above only crows and vultures

ON MAUNA KEA

2006-01-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

ON MAUNA KEA

I left my tears on the mountain
and my fears by the sea
Flashing distant lightning
Between the summit's peaks

There is a planet out there somewhere
Out there, calling out to me
Like the songs of our fathers
Ascending eternally

Distant flashing lightining
And the icy lava stone
Embedded magic crystals
And organic sliver swords

Somewhere over the ocean
Is a violent raging storm
I ascended without anger
Like the day I was born

Maybe on my island I am ancient
Maybe on my island I am new

On your way to the summit have no anger
And when you come down to the sea
Be thankful
For what
The Mountain
Brought to you

Ha 'ina

On Mauna Kea

My Space

2005-12-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

Anonymity revealed:

I have just linked this blog to my My Space profile
polynesian_metal

_the Ignoble Savage

2005-11-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

_the
Ignoble
Savage

_submitted by polynesian_metal
14 November 2005

_the Ignoble Savage

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s production of Mutiny on the Bounty, directed by Frank Lloyd (1935), provides us with a recreation of historical events concerning contact between the English Navy and the people of Tahiti when the Bounty weighed anchor in Matavai Bay, Tahiti. This motion picture is based upon the novel of the same name, written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norton Hall in 1932 and, similar to its precedent, takes liberty with the actual historical events of the uprising aboard the Bounty in its presentation of the mutiny as a romantic and epic tale of adventure. The director, Lloyd, at great expense to his studio, insisted that the scenes in Tahiti were for the most part shot on location (2005 www.turnerclassicmovies.com) and in doing so was able to create a mise en scene notable for its verisimilitude to post-contact Tahiti in the late 18th century. In addition Lloyd creates an “intellectual montage” (Raiford 2005) of some of the modes of Tahitian cultural production that resemble ethnographic documentary film in its construction. This motion picture is particularly notable, for in its depiction of South Sea Island life it, for the most part, eschews the trope of the noble savage and in contrast, offers us a vision of the savagery of the civilized by depicting the viciousness in which the Bounty’s Captain, William Bligh (Charles Laughton), employed to instill discipline aboard his ship and his crew under his command.

The film begins with a rolling title which states that on December 1787 the H.M.S. Bounty lay docked in Portsmouth Harbor prior to its voyage to Tahiti on its mission “to procure breadfruit trees for transplanting to the West Indies as cheap food for slaves” (1935 Lloyd). Master’s Mate of the Bounty, Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), at the head of a press gang enters a tavern and enlists five able bodied seamen against their will. These men later prove to be the characters that both instigate and aid Christian in mutiny. Captain Bligh is introduced and so is his sadism when he orders the flogging of a dead man who was previously charged with striking a superior officer. The ship sets sail and voyages to Tahiti. Bligh’s obsession with discipline and his escalating acts of violence against his crew characterize this portion of the film. The Bounty arrives at Tahiti and is greeted by hundreds of islanders who rush to the ship in canoes. Arriving on a double-hulled war canoe is Hitihiti, the island’s Chief (William Bambridge). While the breadfruit trees are being collected, romance develops between Midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone) and Tehani (Movita), and also between Christian and the Chief’s granddaughter, Maimiti (Mamo). Christian consummates his relationship with Maimiti while ignoring the order from Bligh to go back aboard the Bounty. Bligh’s cruelty to his crew is revisited on the return trip to England. Fletcher is accused of two counts of theft and the ship’s ailing surgeon dies when ordered on deck to witness another crewman’s flogging. This provides the impetus for Christian’s mutiny. In violent upheaval, Bligh and his supporters are set adrift in a longboat. Byam and a few other officers miss their opportunity to depart with Bligh while engaged in a scuffle with the mutineers below-deck. The Bounty returns to Tahiti with the mutineers and their hostages. Meanwhile, Bligh pilots the longboat to Timor and then arrives back in England where he partakes on a return mission to Tahiti aboard the frigate Pandora so as to apprehend the mutineers. The hostages, including Byam, report for duty aboard the Pandora and are duly put in irons. Bligh recklessly and fruitlessly pursues the Bounty, which results in the shipwreck of the Pandora. After returning to England, Byam is convicted of mutiny and sentenced to death by hanging, however, he is pardoned because of an entreaty to King George by his sponsor and mentor Sir Joseph Banks (Henry Stephenson). Christian runs the Bounty aground on Pitcairn Island, and founds a colony of mixed-race English and Tahitians which exists to this day.

Mutiny on the Bounty was released in 1935 amidst a period of European, American and Japanese imperial expansion in the South Pacific. In a 1938 article entitled “Outposts of Empire in the South Pacific,” Russell E. Hall, writing for the Far East Survey, provides an overview of the earliest contact by European explorers with the islands of Polynesia throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and sketches how they were considered of little value to European imperial interests. However, in the latter part of 18th century, the British were interested in the exploration of the South Seas in order to discover lands as yet uncharted, products which could be sold or used as a commodity (for instance the breadfruit), and in the case of the voyages of discovery by Captain James Cook, to make astronomical observations from the southern latitudes (Sir John Barrow 1831 [ed. G. Kennedy 1980]:21).

However, by the period post World War I, the islands of the South Pacific were looked upon as valuable imperial assets not for their meager agricultural and mineral output (Hall 1938:36, 41), but rather for their strategic positioning in an era where war by sea and by air would become more prominent (Hall 1938:35). Hall’s article is excellent not only for its prescience on the impact that air services and shipping would have on tourism as the leading industry of the Pacific Islands today, but also for the role these islands would play in World War II, most notably the Japanese attack by air of the American Territory of Hawaii in 1941 and America’s retaliatory nuclear air-strike on Hiroshima.

Yet because Mutiny on the Bounty deals with a pre-colonial, albeit post-contact, South Pacific, its geographical location represents not so much a strategic outpost for British Naval forces or, for that matter, scientific inquiry, but rather a potential and fertile site for the American ideals of liberty, justice and refuge from imperial tyranny. Frank Lloyd’s casting of English born Charles Laughton as the despot Captain Bligh, and of the film’s heroes Fletcher Christian and Roger Byam, played by American actors Clark Gable and Franchot Tone (imdb.com 2005), who although cast in the roles of British subjects do not affect a British accent helps to support this claim. Perhaps, on one level, the cultural work that the motion picture Mutiny on the Bounty does is to reiterate the social conditions of the British Crown’s oppression of American Colonists that led to the American Revolutionary War. Fletcher Christian’s founding of a new colony on Pitcairn Island has as its parallel the newly independent United States who employed violence to rid themselves of imperial rule.

But let us now turn to the question of race, notably in the way in which the Tahitian islanders are depicted in a sequence comprised of eight shots that runs exactly for one minute, 59 minutes midway into the film.

This montage begins with a dissolve from the bow and masthead of the Bounty festooned in long strands of flower hei, the Tahitian word for a garland of flowers usually worn around the head or neck (Joyce D. Hammond 1986:269), and resolves into a low angle medium long shot of a Tahitian male climbing up the trunk of a majestic coconut tree. Looking closely, one detects that his feet have bound between them a cord made of twine to facilitate traction as he scales the coconut palm.

Dissolve to a reverse angle low perspective shot of a stand of coconut palms. Tahitian men are in the tops of these trees and they hack down the giant palm fronds with iron machetes signifying that these islanders have had previous trade contact with Europeans and have since incorporated European tools into Tahitian cultural modes of production.

Dissolve as the classical score drops out and is replaced by the partially diegetic sound of Tahitian singing and conversing as six Tahitian women in the shade of trees growing by the shore of the beach kneel or sit cross legged as they scrape coconut meat into wooden bowls placed at their feet. They are arranged in a semi-circle from the foreground left and arranged to the horizon midline right. Foreground left is an oblong wooden vessel notched at one end to facilitate the pouring out of its contents. The vessel has wooden legs to keep it upright on an uneven surface. A Tahitian male enters the scene from off-screen left with a stalk of coconuts and drops them at the feet of another male who is splitting coconuts on an upright sharpened stick planted in the sand and handing the split husks to the women.

Dissolve to a medium close up of a coconut being scraped and its shredded meat falling into an oblong shaped wooden bowl accompanied by the diegetic sound of this action. The hair of the woman scraping the coconut streams gently in the tropical breeze. This shot shows part of the process of the making of coconut milk. The soaking of the coconut milk in water and then being strained through a cloth is not shown in this sequence.

Dissolve to nine women arranged seated in a circle that mirrors the oblong wooden bowl in the previous shot. They are all wearing crowns of hei and assembling lengths of these flower garlands. Three men enter the scene from screen left and into the center of this circle of women, the men throw down bunches of fern.
Dissolve to eight men gathering fish in a fishpond constructed of a barrier of sticks and foliage into a sort of a dam. The men drive the captured fish into a shallow area close to the shore. We can see the fish thrashing in the shallows of the restricted tide. The men scoop out fish with their bare hands and throw them ashore where the piscine flounder helplessly. Among the diverse species are reef shark, stingray, and ones that closely resemble parrotfish.

Dissolve to an over the shoulder medium shot of men uncovering the banana leaves that insulate an imu, or earth oven, to reveal a succulent roasted pig that has been baked alongside green banana, sweet potato and breadfruit.

The montage ends with a crane shot of the masthead and bow of the Bounty still festooned in flower hei. The children of Tahiti call to each other in delight as they dive off the top and mid decks of a ship at the end of its journey, wreathed and in repose.

This montage succeeds as a document attesting to Tahitian way of life by painstakingly replicating the activities and material culture of the islanders during the post contact-era. Not only does Lloyd achieve this by shooting the sequence on location in Tahiti, he also achieves this by avoiding the representation of the islanders in a synecdochic manner where an eye, a hand, a gesture or a single individual stands in for the whole of Tahitian community. In every shot of this sequence we see whole bodies and whole groups of bodies engaged in essential labor, which includes making time for fun and the beautification of one’s body. His deployment of dissolves as transitions from scene to scene also gives a viewer the sense that these activities are occurring simultaneously in all parts of the island, thus showing a thriving and working interdependent community. He clearly shows that in Tahiti there exists a sexual division of labor yet unlike the accounts by early European explorers and later those of early 20th century anthropologists and ethnographers that characterize Polynesia as a “lush and bountiful Garden of Eden” (Lepofsky 1999:1), he foregrounds the hard work that it takes to ensure that this is a self-sustaining society. However, apart from this sequence, the film does not entirely escape from the trope of the Noble Savage and the bounteous nature of tropical environs for shortly after this montage, while lying on the beach watching Tehani and Maimiti coyly comb out their hair as the women gaze at the two Englishmen, Christian confides to Byam as he pulls a banana from a tree above his head, “…look at them. They are so simple, yet so noble in their way…” (Lloyd 1935).

Although this motion picture is cinematically swept clean of some of the harsh realities of Tahitian culture, for example human sacrifice, a rigid caste system and ongoing warfare with neighboring islands, and also the plight of sexual and respiratory diseases contracted originally from Europeans then transmitted and retransmitted back and forth amongst themselves and the foreign interlopers (Lepofsky 1999:6-8), Mutiny on the Bounty depicts Tahiti as a potential and fertile environment where the ideals of American liberty could be nurtured and exercised. In one of the closing scenes, when Christian and his crew of mutineers aboard the Bounty are searching for a place of refuge with their Tahitian families, the mise-en-scene is one of depravity. All aboard the Bounty are dirty and bedraggled; the lively drums of the Tahitian homeland are replaced by a lascivious tom-tom beat. A Tahitian female is dancing in a manner that is more suggestive of a strip tease than a traditional Heiva (Bligh 1792 [1936]:81) and a crewman sexually accosts her until Fletcher Christian intervenes and instills order aboard ship. In this way Lloyd warns of the outcome of the integration of Europe and the South Seas, the subsequent loss of native innocence, and in doing so reifies the trope of the Noble Savage. However, this trope of the Noble Savage in Mutiny on the Bounty stands in dialectic opposition to that of the civilized yet Ignoble Savage, embodied in the personage of Captain Bligh, who in his sadism represents the European/Eurocentric mind set which seeks to conquer through violence and oppression and demands as its tribute total and entire submission.

*note: The Mutiny on the Bounty won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1935.

_Sources Cited
Barrow, John Sir. The Mutiny of the Bounty. Ed. Gavin Kennedy. (1831 [1980] David R.
Gordine: Boston, Massachusets)

Bligh, William. Bligh and The Bounty. (1792 [1936] E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.: U.S.A)

Hall, Richard E.. “Outposts of the Empire in the South Pacific.” Far Eastern
Survey (1938 Institute of Pacific Relations).

Hammond, Joyce D.. “Polynesian Women and Tifaifai Fabrications of Identiy.” (1986
The Journal of American Folklore. American Folklore Society).

The Internet Movie Database. “The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026752/. (Fall 2006).

Lepofsky, Dana. “Gardens of Eden? An Ethnohistoric Reconstruction of Maohi
(Tahitian) Cultivation. Ethnohistory (1999 The American Society for Ethnohistory: Duke University Press).

Lloyd, Frank. Mutiny on the Bounty. (1935 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer: U.S.A. [2004
Warner Home Video Inc.: Burbank, California]).

Raiford, Leigh “Class Syllabi for Race and American Film” AFAM 142D (2005
University of California at Berkeley).

MY DAYTIME

2005-10-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

MY DAYTIME

Summer's coming up, you know I'm thinking about
A honey little boy that I know
Who has brown hair, and blue eyes
And a smile that glows

I wonder if he wants to come in the sun
And find a special little place that I know
Where the shorebreak is gentle, the breeze is always mellow
And the seals come a rest in the cove

Coming with you is like coming on a Sunday
With nothing to do but spend a little time away
Coming with you is like coming on a Sunday
With nothing to do but spend a little time away

Spending my daytime with you

Midterms--Midsquirms

2005-10-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Just had a lame ass midterm and I never got to reach my conclusion. Not finishing things, it reminds me that I haven't updated this site in a long time. I guess when you have or play an instrument you kind of hit plateaus. I usually write the best when I fall into or out of love. Fell out a while ago, so I have had no impetus. I think I'm trying to get into a sweet 'ukulele sound right now. I want to practice more on my singing. I have a great teacher. I have been doing the Kapalakiko 'ukulele course and am now in the beginning of my third eight week session. I have come along pretty well as a player and I think my kumu is steering me more towards the old Hawaiian classics. That's good with me. But nothing relieves stress like rocking out in the computer lab, bitching about a fucked up midterm on a self serving blog and rocking out to Death Metal internet radio. Except for maybe playing some old Hawaiian songs on a naturist beach with the sun and the waves and the seals. Yeah, there is no schism here. I'm united by the pagan feeling of nature, being a part of the environment. That can be good or bad, dark or light but it is something to encompass. Something I struggle to make literate with a good chord structure and even maybe a fucking hook. Anyway, I've entered the new dark age and have finally gotten a home computer, so my latest goal is to piratize my Hawaiian vinyl collection and start some form of Polynesian Internet Radio, with the shit that's all out of print. Do you think you can help? Post some comments. Nobody reads this.

polynesian_metal

LEHUA TREES

2005-05-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

('Ukulele Queens 2004)

I promised you

You promised me

And then you burnt my paradise

All of my lehua trees

From the mountain

To the sea

Are on fire

All of my lehua trees

From the mountain

To the sea

Are gone

I promised you, you promised me

But then you burnt my paradise

All of my lehua trees

From the mountain to the sea are on fire

I promised you, you promised me

But then you burnt my paradise

All of my lehua trees

From the mountain to the sea are all gone

*This is the story of Hi'iaka-i-ka-poli-o-pele.. the beloved younger sister of the Volcano Goddess Pele. See the link for Goddess Hi'iaka for more information about this heroine.

About These Posts

2005-05-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
25 May 2005

I wrote Twin Peaks last night and decided to post it here. Of course I respect and observe "fair use practices" so I encourage anyone to perform or record any of the songs that I write or arrange, but if you do so, please give credit to the author and if you make a profit recording an original 'Ukulele Queens or Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal composition, you can send me the royalties by contacting me through this blog.

To keep things clear, all songs will appear in the "Previous Posts" section in all caps, just as the links do whereas regular topics will only have the first letters capitalized of each main word. Underneath the song title will appear the author in parentheses along with the year of the composition. My most recent compositions will be attributed to Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal whereas older titles may be attributed to 'Ukulele Queens. Maybe I will write a new song that is more Queens than Angels, for example Twin Peaks definitely has the old 'Ukulele Queens feeling because it is about a boy, but I haven't written the arrangement yet, so who knows...

In any event, I haven't figured out yet how to post the arrangements with the lyrics yet, when I tried before, everything got moved around.

So remember the tenets of fair use and also remember that music, like talent, isn't something one is given but is something to be shared.

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
polynesian_metal

TWIN PEAKS

2005-05-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

(Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal 2005)

Last night while kissing you

I fell in love with you

Felt like a wish come true

I was all over you

Watching the moon sweep over the sky of the city

At midnight in a Contour on opalipali*

Majestic heights--looking down at the city lights

The neon lights--the lumen lights

Looking down into the eyes of the boy I love

*Those places where the land rises up abrupt and steep like the side of a house are named pali; if less decided precipitous, they are spoken of as opalipali (David Malo, Hawaiian Antiquities--Mo'olelo Hawai'i, 1898 [1997]:17).

Northern California 'Ukulele Festival XII

2005-04-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
25 April 2005

Sunday ventured to the Northern California 12th Annual Ukulele Festival with Leigh and Laurie. I felt extremeley dweeby, geekin' and gakkin' at all the 'ukuleles, an afficionados tweaky obsession... I wanted to play some 'ukuleles, hear their sound and see if I fell in love and couldn't go home without one. Notable 'ukulele manufacturers were Ken Potts (KP Ukulele, Maui), DeSilva (Berkeley CA), but the best, no doubt is Tony Graziano (Graziano, Santa Cruz CA). I was comparing various tenors, especially 6 strings. Graziano has the most innovative designs and the instruments with the best tones-Graziano designed a tenor with a skull and crossbones inlay on the headstocks and the fret markers. The KP's sounded sweet too, but the 6 strings felt a little heavy in the headstock. The DeSilva's were well balanced and sounded sweet. All these makers handcraft their instruments--to order in most cases. So their prices are high--out of my price range--but understandably so because of their talent, innovation and quality product. I realized that I am ultra fortunate to have a Graziano Hulacaster because now, I know, I could never afford one. It was a perfect sacrifice at the time. Also playing all of those other 'ukuleles I realized I don't need another one, I just need to get better on the one[s] I have.

In light of this, and in order to engage with the 'ukulele and hula community at large (within the Bay Area) I'm going to do an eight week session of lessons that begin on the 2nd over here in my city in the 'hood of Bay View. I need to develop some fingerpickin' style, right now I am just strumming--chord arrangements for my and traditional songs. I've just [re]arranged Honolulu I Am Coming Back Again (words by F. B. Silverwood music by David Lindeman. 1922) and it sounds hot. I also want to go over and write solos for my own earlier compositions.

I have to give props to all of the performers at NCUF XII. Especially the kids and their folk who encourage them to play (and play with them). I'm looking forward to next year already. I want to get something together to perform at XIII.

Tonight I am doing a performance of my own as a final presentation for my Dune DeCal. I'll be performing Gurney Halleck's Evensong (Frank Herbert. 1965 [1990]:315). I'm playing an acoustic soprano over a tape recording and singing it in front of my peers. If I have more time, I'll post up the tab on this site.

Meanwhile I am listening to the German Death Metal band, Dead Emotions' mp3 Cluster. I like it. They deserve a link.

More to come, I encourage your replies/posts, even though I realize I am talking at you and not to you, and with that I am...

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
polynesian_metal

Sacred Uke

2005-04-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
20 April 2005

I am posting a link to Sacred Uke: sacreduke.blogspot.com
Here was my inspiration to create an 'ukulele blog of my own.
Pastor Darrell uses an 'ukulele to lead worship.
He already has posted charts and soon will be posting MP3s.
Although I will frequently be visiting Sacred Uke, think of this
site as your subaltern alternative.

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
polynesian_metal

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal

2005-04-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Angels of 'Ukulele Death Metal
20 April 2005

This is an initial post: I have been fascinated by the concept of Blogs, have enjoyed a few and had some contact with an interesting Australian philosophy scholar/sci-fi William Gibson enthusiast (Pattern Recognition, anyone?). In the nascent years of the internet, when the cyberworld was relatively pre-popup and loads of gay porn was to be had without fees, I, fiddling around and hacking in HTML had posted a few sites that had in them elements of an embryonic blog structure. But unlike the Blogs in this current age, they weren't diachronic in nature, my original sites contained, embarassingly, my junior college anthropology and psychology papers, and less embarassingly so, the musings of Crest Fallen, an alter ego used to work out the implications of self in an abusive and ego-destructing relationship... That, and my father's death.

However, on this site, I want to use it to promote an expression of myself, and my transformation through music composition and songwriting. Sort of a diary, or a chronicle of my progress. This site shall be centered upon the development of a type of style music that I am incubating. I am by no means a master, picture instead an acolyte. This is more about a pursuit than it is a statement of an accomplished goal. Herein will enter doubt as I plod on and on and on.

At present, I am a band of one. My cyberspace ID is polynesian_metal and the concept name of the band is 'Ukulele Queens. I play a Tony Graziano Hulacaster--stealth with no markings--a tenor hard bodied electric 'ukulele crafted in the manner of a Fender Telecaster. My songs to date have been composed on the beaches of Oahu or Pacifica on an old vintage late 1960's Harmony soprano 'ukulele, or my other, louder, no name vintage '60s mahogany soprano. Lately I have been writing more on my Hulacaster through an array of pedal effects. I mention this because, like many musicians, my quest is for a tone and a rhythm that exists in some untouched and unrealized part of my own deepest psyche. Hopefully, a fortuitous combination of chords, strums, lyrics and effects will evoke this part of me I am trying to reach and also touch some other place deep in the heart of others.