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Hawaiian chant (Click to select text)
Hawaiian Chant From what I understand the chant Kamamalu was sung sometime during a trip to England. I think it has a really solemn and somewhat sad mood to it. Because from what I got from it over all is that she did not want to go but was commanded to by a higher power, which I will explain later. What I notice mostly about this chant was in the way it was organized. The first four lines are like two separate categories. All most like they were meant for two separate readers. "Oh sky, Oh earth", which seem to me that she is saying goodbye to everything she knows from the sky to the earth and then "Oh mountains, Oh ocean", it's almost like the first two verses but it's not. The third and fourth lines seem to be more of what she will miss in a spiritual level. It as if she knew that she would never see the world she once knew. If I was to just read the first four lines I would think that she was not only talking to herself but to a God or Gods. But when you continue it can go either way, it's really hard to tell whom she's talking to, almost like there could be two versions of the same chant. Because you could easily separate certain lines and make two different chants with the same meaning but meant for two different audiences. The fifth and sixth lines sound the same also but just like the first four lines are different. "Oh (my) people/commoners", she's say's this in a way were it means her immediate family and I guess other people of royalty. Then in the next line she says, "Oh people of the land", which goes back to what we were talking about in class that in the Hawaiian beliefs they believe that they came from the land and that they are connected. So she's also mourning the lose of her people as a whole not just her close relatives. Then she states "Beloved are you! (Farewell!)", which shows her love for both the people close to her and for the rest of the Hawaiian's. I'm to sure what "Oh thing my father suffered for", means exactly. I think I need to know a little more about the background of this chant, for example what went on in England when they arrived there, why where they going? I do not have enough information to understand this line. But off the top of my head I think she's talking about either the way her father lost the land to the foreigners or she's talking in a more spiritual sense of how "her father" being a God like creature has done so much for her and her people. I also do not understand the line "Alas for you!". The translation seems to be a little vague. "Oh (adoptive) child my father sought", I believe is comparing herself as a child of the land and how now that she is leaving that she was merely adopted and that she was not meant to stay there on the land for the remainder of her life. And when she say's, "We two are now leaving your child", that the land is like a child to the God like entity she is talking to, which makes me want to say that the entire chant is meant to be for the God like entity. The next lines state that she is going to England because she was commanded to. By whom, God? That's what I perceive it to be the answer. And then she says she will not leave his/her voice, meaning she will still listen to what he/she has to say and she will follow his/her word. Then she repeats that she is going according to Gods command, almost to reassure herself why she is going and saying that it is not of her own free will. Then she states that she heard it right from the mouth of the creator/God/Gods, which I'm not to sure of. The chant seems to end kind of abruptly, almost like she was in mid thought when she finished. I wonder if this was the whole chant or was there meant to be more to it or did she stop short for a reason?
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