I have absolutely no objection to posting/linking the NPR article here, so please don't think I'm insuating anything about etiquette! I also shared it in one of my networks, and the "Kanaka" part is as relevant here as anywhere.

What I mention it to say is what it made me think about—which is that these kids (my ageism is showing?) have NOTHING to tell us about this music. (Or do they? I'll still listen, but I don't hear it yet.)

We're having a discussion about the intricate history of song origins. We use knowledge of several genres, of how performers put together them, of historical linguistics, of textual and musical analysis. And all the kids have to tell us is that, according to something they heard yesterday, "Kanaka" is a racist word. Hey, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I'm not likely to trust their assertion of it though being as I don't have much faith that the 13 year old that piped up to say it *really* had conversations with Hawaiians about they feel, or analyzed any historical texts for usage, etc. But sure, maybe it is.... and now here we end up, stuck on a word (the one Word... it always comes back to that with religious types)... and what happened to all the other thinking?

I mean, thinking could be, say, about aesthetics—it's not limited to discussion of origin. These kids could be talking about how to make their singing sound GOOD. Like, "What's our vision of what we'd like to sound like when we sing a chanty?" Lots of stuff to contemplate. Do they get into any of the "flavor"... any way of trying to understand the ethos of the songs? Etc.

Taking out "Kanaka" is NOT going to make that very ethnocentric scene of which they're a part any less ethnocentric. It's not going to become more inclusive, sorry. Other kinds of people are not going to flock to this sort of gathering of "traditional"/baby boomer revival music, because *all they're doing is recreating what appeals to their own ethnos*. They're taking what they could be learning from the music to become less ethnocentric or more broad minded or more passionate--living with life's paradoxes, within the struggles of love and hate-- and bringing it in accord with the vision of their own narrow ethnos and only cloning themselves.

I know they were talking about "Old Maui," but let's say it was "John Kanaka." I can picture a Black American/Caribbean seaman, maybe he's got a Hawaiian buddy on his ship whom he really admires. Out of affection, he calls his buddy John Kanaka. He tweaks the words to a popular song, inserting "John Kanaka" in the place of "Aunt Jemima." Maybe that didn't happen, but who knows? That door into the interaction between people is closed if we simply think "Kanaka" was a "bad word" that "bad people" said, and now we "good people" know the good word.