Tim Cooley, "Trouble in Paradise: Music and the Reinvention of Surfing" - Public Lecture via Skype

Abstract of talk: In pre-contact Hawai‘i surfing was thoroughly integrated in to society and practiced by men, women, children, royal and common. Surfing was complimented by elaborate contests, rituals, taboos, and chants that lauded the surfing prowess of women and men. After being annexed by the USA at the end of the nineteenth century, surfing become a key Hawaiian cultural export along with Hawaiian popular music. In the hands of European and American entrepreneurs, surfing was reinvented as a hyper-masculine sport that emphasized individual achievement and technological advancement especially in surfboard materials and design. These values were paired with the named popular genre surf music in the early 1960s centered in California, not Hawai‘i.

 

About the speaker: Timothy J. Cooley is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His current research considers how musical behaviors are combined with lifestyle sports—surfing in particular—to create meaningful affinity groups with a global reach. Cooley has published numerous articles, and is the author of Making Music in the Polish Tatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Mountain Musicians (Indiana University Press, 2005), co-editor of Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press, 2008), and editor of the journal Ethnomusicology from 2006-2009.

 

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Image: A photograph of the Waikiki Beach Boys taken in 1963 for an LP cover, and features notable surfers and musicians, including Duke Kahanamoku, the individual most identified with globalizing surfing in the twentieth-century. Illustration from Tim Cooley, "Playing Together and Solitary Play: Musicking and Surfing"