User:Maile66/Hawaii/Hui Kawaihau

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The origins of the Hui Kawaihau name dates to Prince William Pitt Leleiohoku II, who formed the Kawaihau Glee Club in 1876. "Kawaihau" is the Hawaiian name for ice water, and was an inside joke with the prince, referring to a woman who refused alcohol and would only drink ice water at the palace.

Leleiohoku II was the youngest of the musically talented “Nā Lani ‘Ehā” (the royal four) siblings that included King Kalākaua, Queen Liliʻuokalani and Princess Likelike. They each wrote and performed music, most often as part their individual glee clubs, described by Liliʻuokalani as, " ... engaged in friendly rivalry to outdo each other in poetry and song." Strolling glee clubs composed of vocalists and musicians were fashionable in Hawaii during the monarchy. Curtis P. Iaukea was one of the Kawaihau Glee Club members, " ... we used to go out of evenings with a new song the Prince had composed and make the rounds. First on King Kalakaua at Iolani Palace; then to Washington Place to serenade Princess Liliuokalani, and even as far as ʻĀinahau, the Waikiki residence of Princess Likelike. Reaching home again at “Kaakopua” on Emma Street, where the Prince made his residence with his Mother by adoption, Princess Ruth Keelikolani, half sister of the Fourth and Fifth Kamehamehas, in the “wee small hours of the morning. Happy days those were; the days when “Wine, Women and Song” were the rule of the day."

Leleiohoku II died of rheumatic fever at age 22 in 1877, effectively ending his glee club. The name was later used by others. Guitarist Sam Nainoa managed a version of the Kawaihau Glee Club that performed at the Hawaiian Hotel in 1905. The Kawaihau Orchestra of the same year was led by future Royal Hawaiian Band conductor Mekia Kealakaʻi. Kalākaua managed the group after his brother's death.

appropriated the name for his own purposes when he engaged in sugar cane planting on Kauai.


 * Kalakaua
 * John Owen Dominis
 * George W. Macfarlane
 * James Makee
 * John M. Kapena of the Island of Oahu;
 * J. S. Walker
 * C. H. Judd
 * Koakanu, a high chief of Koloa, on Kauai.


 * The Hui, thirty-two in number, for the cultivation of the lands of Kapaa, on Kauai, to sugar cane.

p=29 Glee clubs typically featured a chorus of voices with instrumental accompaniment and entertained both the aliʻi and the makaʻāinana. Prince Leleiōhoku, reported to be “an expert on the guitar,” organized one of the earliest and most influential such guitar groups, the Kawaihau Glee Club, in 1876

Hui Kawaihau