Tita Beamer Solomon

Tita Beamer Solomon
Tita Solomon is the daughter of Louise Beamer and makes her home today in Kohala, Hawaiʻi.

In our family, hula is a way of life. We have always been in the arts. My daughters Malama and Hulali represent the fifth generation. It has never been a question of choice but a commitment to our culture. My sister, Nona (Nona Beamer) and I spent every summer on the Big Island of Hawai‘i with our grandmother Helen Desha Beamer and we were brought up with music and hula. We thought every family played the ‘ukulele, sang, and danced. This was Grandmas philosophy for all of us and how we took it from there was our own kuleana.

Everybody had to be trained in the fundamentals of dance and music, so while other children were outside playing, we were with the family practicing. For Mother and Grandmother, the Hawaiian language was their first language but for my generation it was more important to learn English. The hula encompasses everything in the Hawaiian culture and Grandmother realized that unless she got all of us involved with the Hawaiian arts we would lose the Hawaiianess in our lives.

I began to dance at the age of two under Mother and Grandmother, and I was taught both kahiko and ‘auwana. When Grandmother would come to Honolulu, Nona and I would dance in the backline of her hula classes. Mother shared with us the quiet and the beauty of the art while Grandmother stressed discipline and perfection. The hula was something very special and we had to take care when we studied or danced it.

I graduated from the Kamehameha Schools and enrolled at the College of the Pacific in California. A local YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) was putting together a Hawaiian cultural program and I was asked to teach. This was how I began. I taught easy Haole hula because I wanted them to enjoy the art and not be intimidated with the culture. You always have to keep in mind that we are taking the Hawaiian lifestyle and sharing it with keikis who are coming from all different backgrounds. Hopefully they will blend it with their own. I do believe, however, that if a student of five trains with us until she is eighteen, no matter what her cultural background may be, she will know as much about the hula as any dancer. We are training children of all racial backgrounds to be proud of themselves and their heritage.

So where does the hula go from here? In Grandmothers and Mothers time everything was changing with the influx of foreigners and Waikiki was the only public showplace. For the hula to survive, it was taken from the home and the family and made available to everyone. Grandmother felt if we taught the keiki well then they would always have a love for Hawai‘i and the Hawaiian culture. Today you’ll see an image of the Hawaiian culture in Waikiki that is dominated solely by economics and this is what upsets me.

The hula is not just an expression of the culture, it is the heart of the culture. Today people are changing the hula and in fact are changing the Hawaiian culture. Unfortunately in time we may find that it’s easier to change the culture rather than perpetuate it.



Malama Solomon
Malama Solomon is the daughter of Tita Beamer Solomon and currently serves as a senator in the Hawaiʻi State Legislature.

I participated in a women’s conference in Hilo. When questioned if as a Hawaiian woman had I ever experienced an identity crisis, I responded, ‘No, because of my family’s involvement in the culture and the arts.’ The longevity of the hula definitely expresses the self- determination of the Hawaiians to survive in view of adverse conditions. From my grandmother’s generation till today, our culture has been subjected to a tremendous transition with pressures from Oriental and Western immigration. The influence of hula has kept our cultural vitality. Hawaiian music and dance not only identified the Hawaiian community as different but it also served an economic purpose.

My sister Hulali Solomon and I were tutored by Grandmother and Mother. We were taught as toddlers, and discipline and adherence to the authority of the kumu hula was mandatory. Today, learners treat authority casually.

The strength of our hālau is through the process of discussions and kūkākūkā; in collective thinking we can create. Accountability to each other’s interpretation of the art is the core and the end product of our hālau, and the dance reflects this
input of three generations.

My sister and I work well together and share the responsibilities of the hālau. Unlike many families which have been torn apart due to artistic differences and competition between its members, she and I were never pitted against each other and the family always had the last word in settling artistic differences. In our hālau training, dance choreography commenced only after in-depth discussions focusing on the personalities we were portraying. Discussions would detail for example, Pele’s different personalities, the power of her position among the gods and among the Hawaiian community. To be culturally correct demanded the comprehension of the characters before they could be executed through the dance.

At the age of nineteen, Hulali and I participated in a workshop under the direction of Uncle Henry Pa. The learning experience was totally different from our family hālau. His views articulated dance-style conformity. He described the ipu as the commander and a different pa‘i would signal a command. The lesson learned was only through humility can a student of one kumu hula learn the discipline of another.

I became an alaka‘i to teach hula at the age of fourteen under the stewardship of Mother and Grandmother. Today due to my schedule as a legislator, Hulali serves as the kumu hula in our hālau. The disappointment to us as the ones perpetuating our family art is the effort on the part of so many to standardize the hula. The cause of this we believe is that today’s teachers do not have the wealth and background of a family hālau to draw creativity from. The contemporary artist in the performance of the dance is relying on competitions to generate interest in the preservation and perpetuation of the dance. In prior years hula performances radiated with a feeling of sharing manao. It was a time to socialize with one another unlike contemporary counterparts who advocate professional separatism.

The question becomes, “Are winners of contests the role models for our art form?” Secondly, how are we to control the extent of the commercialism of the hula? In a Western cultural context, a group of professional elite would be asked to resolve these questions but in the Hawaiian culture the expression of disapproval in contests, etc., is resolved by non-participation. The problems created through contests illustrates the cultural reality that you cannot strain the hula through a Western sieve and be assured of the art form’s perpetuity.