A lot of ground has been covered in this thread. If I said any more, I would be quoting someone else's opinions and there probably is enough wrong with my own. It has been interesting and got me to looking back to some of the stuff I picked up in Hawai'i, and into my small record collection. I wish I still had the old 78s my parents and grandparents had of Rodgers, Owens and others. Of course there were more scratches than music on them by the time they were tossed. The hymns mentioned by M Ted were, along with sailors and whalers songs, the beginning of the westernization of Hawaiian music. Hymns were not only translated and published in Hawaiian, but new ones were written. The high register singing could have had its origin in the old oral history, told in chant. A number of recordings of chant are available, but I doubt that they have much to do with the old pre-missionary chant, so a lot will remain hidden.