Pod Insights Spooked Merrie Monarch About this episode It’s a spring night in Hilo, Hawaii. Lei-Ann and her hula sisters are about to take the stage at the 1986 Merrie Monarch Festival. They’ve been practicing for months. But the gods have other plans.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Glynn Washington? Bow your head to me. I'll make you better. But how long will I live? Eternal life and forever. But will I be the G that I was? So much more than you can imagine, even dream of. So relax your soul. Give me control. Close your eyes, my son. Well, my eyes are closed. You've crossed over the spooked. Stay tuned.
0:49 Speaker 01 Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:30 Glynn Washington? Nine years old, sitting in this church, angry. And my parents angry at these brethren in this place. And now their preacher, all puffed up, red-faced, bug-eyed, steps to the podium, commands us to open your battle to Exodus 32. Hear! Brethren, Moses climbs the mountain to see God. Do the people wait patient? They do not. Instead, they work with their forges, their ovens, with wickedness in their hearts, with evil. And look right here, look here, look here, look here. They pull a golden calf from the flame. What do they do then?
2:15 Glynn Washington? The very worst thing you can do. They call this thing, this abomination, a god. Who needs that other god? When this one gleams golden.
2:31 Glynn Washington? Then they bow their heads before it blast me. But know this brethren, there is no sure way to summon the Lord than to mock him.
2:41 Glynn Washington? The God that delivered them from slavery under Pharaoh stretches out his mighty hand and smites with fire and horror and pain for their betrayal. Remember that!
2:53 Glynn Washington? If you want to see God face to face, you remember that.
3:02 Glynn Washington? Later, anger has an idea. I snatch two hangers from the hall closet, bring them back to my bedroom, strip the wires from the hangers, bend them, fashion them. Wear it just so.
3:20 Glynn Washington? Then I cover it, not with gold. I don't have any of that. Nah, instead, I wrap sheet after sheet of aluminum foil around it. Pinch and shape it into a face, into horns, the body of a calf.
3:41 Glynn Washington? I admire it for a moment.
3:45 Glynn Washington? Beautiful. My own graven image. Then I went for a lull and the ever-present noise of my household peek outside my bedroom, down the hall, push the front door open, quiet, quiet, quiet. Pad down the front steps of our trailer, aluminum calf wrapped tight in my jacket, then I run.
4:09 Glynn Washington? Out to the middle of the woods, my secret, fast, fast, run, run, until I reach the spot reverently.
4:19 Glynn Washington? Set the calf down on a patch of hard earth, but doubt stops me, fear.
4:28 Glynn Washington? Then the anger returns, the fury. I have asked, begged their God to reveal itself as many ways as I know, still it judges me unworthy of even a word. Even a whisper, answer me.
4:48 Glynn Washington? This is all I have left.
4:51 Glynn Washington? So I steel myself.
4:55 Glynn Washington? Look to the sky, one last chance, answer me.
5:02 Glynn Washington? Then I drop to my knees.
5:05 Glynn Washington? Bow my head.
5:08 Glynn Washington? And I pray.
5:11 Glynn Washington? To my own.
5:14 Glynn Washington? Graven image.
5:19 Glynn Washington? Sloop starts. Now.
6:05 Glynn Washington? Now. How do you wake the god? Our next story begins on a spring night in 1986. Thousands of people have gathered in Hilo, Hawaii. Not just from around the islands. From the four corners of the earth to witness the largest, the most prestigious hula competition in the world. As the sun sets over Hilo. Rowers pack Eda Kanakaole Stadium. The rafters. Air tastes rich with the smell of Kalua pork and the sound of ancient drums. And in the distance. Dark clouds roll in.
6:41 Glynn Washington? Sloop.
7:03 Speaker 02 Good evening and welcome to the 23rd Annual Merrie Monarch Festival Hula Competition. We are here, live in Hilo.
7:09 Speaker 03 Tonight, the Kahiko Competition, where 30 halau will be sharing the ancient dances of Hawaii.
7:18 Speaker 04 Leanne Durant is backstage with the other dancers in her halau, or hula school. After nine months of practice and preparation, they're about to take the stage and perform their rendition of the Three Wind Storms of Hina.
7:36 Speaker 03 The women's chant, Kimo, speaks of the goddess Hina from Molokai and her three devastating winds that were able to bruise skins and devastate lands.
7:49 Speaker 02 And so we should get from these dancers, male and female, very strong, emotional Kahiko ancient dances. Should be very interesting this evening.
8:01 Speaker 05 And we were all ready to go, and we're standing in a circle. And then all of a sudden, the lights went out.
8:11 Speaker 05 It's pitch black. The storm is going crazy.
8:17 Speaker 05 That's when the dread really comes, like...
8:21 Speaker 05 I had bad feelings from the very beginning of learning the dance.
8:27 Speaker 05 I was like, "Okay, what do we do to stop this?"
8:37 Speaker 04 Leanne has been dancing hula for almost as long as she can remember. As a girl growing up in Honolulu, she learned to dance a version of hula called Hula Awana. It's an instrumental style of hula that became popular after the Hawaiian language was banned in the islands.
8:54 Speaker 05 I grew up in the generation where Hawaiian language, hula, was not accepted. During the overthrow of our monarchy, we were illegally taken by the United States. And once that happened, as a people, we weren't allowed to speak our language. Ancient hula was underground because we were not allowed to dance it.
9:21 Speaker 05 And then when I came home from college in 1977, there were things happening here in Hawaii, which they called the first renaissance of Things Hawaiian. And it all started with the hula.
9:39 Speaker 04 All over the islands, young Hawaiians were reviving hula ka hiko and bringing back those traditional dances and chants.
9:47 Speaker 05 It looked exciting. So I asked my neighbor if she was dancing hula anywhere. And she said she was. So I went down with her to a hula class with Kumuhula Mapuanadi Silva. She was teaching ka hiko, which is the ancient hula.
10:12 Speaker 05 Those chants go back, way back. It tells those stories of our ancestors. What kind of beauty did they see in a flower? What kind of beauty did they see in a rock? What did they do if things weren't right? What kind of battles did they have?
10:31 Speaker 05 And I just fell in love with it.
10:53 Glynn Washington? This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Imagine opening my closet, looking for a shirt, and I see that jacket. That jacket, that jacket I got for that party I never went to three years ago. That jacket, it's still there. It's still mocking me. Well, it was still there.
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12:13 Speaker 04 One day, not long after she started studying hula kaheko, Leanne remembers overhearing her kumu, or teacher, Mapowana de Silva, talking about entering the Mary Monarch Festival.
12:25 Speaker 05 I was like, what is that? That's how out of touch I was. I didn't even know about the festival. They started it as a little competition with a few halau. And over the years, it just, by word of mouth, by, you know, more the Renaissance was bringing more and more halau into being. And it just became one of the biggest things ever. And that's kind of like our big gold star, you know, in the spring is going to Mary Monarch.
13:05 Speaker 04 The first time Leanne went to Mary Monarch, it was 1981. She was in her 20s and having the time of her life, preparing for the festival with her hula sisters. Her halau didn't win that year.
13:16 Speaker 05 But it was just really a fun time. It was a really bonding time. Each halau would have their own fundraiser with their own little signature to it. And because even though we were in competition, we would support each other. We would go to each other's fundraisers. We would help them, they would help us. It was like a huge, huge family. But it was a lot of work. We'd make our own costumes, we'd make our own lei. We have to raise money to get there and be able to pay for hotels or vans.
13:56 Speaker 04 Not to mention the hours each week spent practicing the dances they were going to perform.
14:00 Speaker 05 They would have a dance of your choice. And then whoever the committee was would choose a dance where every halau danced the same. But each kubo brought their own spirit to it.
14:16 Speaker 04 They'd start rehearsing their dances in September and work on them all the way through to the competition in the spring. But for Leian and the other dancers in Halau, Mohala, Ilima, the point of all this hard work wasn't just to win. Although, in her first five years with the group, they did win, three times.
14:33 Speaker 05 What we would strive for was to share our hula and our interpretation with everyone.
14:41 Speaker 04 And then came 1986 and the three windstorms of Hina.
14:48 Speaker 05 It was about the goddess Hina. She's one of the oldest goddesses in Hawaii. And she was the female that could generate force in Hawaiian cosmology. And she was kind of a protector of the land, too. She had this gourd. And if the people wouldn't take care of the land, she would open her gourd just a little bit.
15:20 Speaker 05 When she opened that gourd just a little bit, the rain got stronger, the winds started to pick up.
15:28 Speaker 05 And it was kind of like a warning to the people that you better take care of business. And so as the chant goes on, the people still don't heed her call or, you know, pay attention. So she opens her gourd a little more. That's when you start getting lightning, thunder. The rain gets harder, the winds start whipping up.
15:53 Speaker 05 And on the third time, when she opens the gourd, it's the destruction of man.
16:05 Speaker 04 Leann was a really experienced dancer at this point, and she was a mentor to some of the newer hula sisters. But when she got into the studio to start practicing this one...
16:16 Speaker 05 Something was just weird. I remember going to hula and we learned the second verse.
16:26 Speaker 05 I, all of a sudden, just felt, I don't know how to explain it, I was a little frightened.
16:32 Speaker 05 I couldn't really explain why, but it was just a feeling I had in my na'au, in my gut.
16:40 Speaker 05 And that feeling carried through the whole, what I call the meribonic season, starting in September.
16:49 Speaker 04 Leann hoped that with time, she'd get more comfortable with the routine and the feeling would fade, but it didn't.
16:59 Speaker 04 When the spring rolled around, that uneasy feeling in her gut was still there whenever she practiced. She didn't mention it to her kumu or anyone else in her halau. She just kept pushing, trying to get it right.
17:14 Speaker 05 But I just couldn't get it. I couldn't get the dance, I couldn't get the chant. I made mistakes all the time. It just didn't feel comfortable to me.
17:26 Speaker 05 I never had struggles like that, learning a hula.
17:34 Speaker 04 Finally, the week of Mary Monarch arrived. Leann and her hula sisters flew to Hilo and checked into the Nani Loa Hotel. That night, they sat in the audience in Edith Kanakaoli Stadium and watched the Miss Aloha competition. The next day, it was their turn to compete, Kahiko Night. Leann remembers waking up that morning to perfect Hilo weather, blue skies with a cool mist coming off the ocean. The dancers spent the day rehearsing on the hotel lawn before heading over to the stadium. When they got there, they had some time to kill before they had to get ready, and most of the dancers wanted to watch the first groups perform.
18:15 Speaker 04 But Leann decided that she needed some time alone and fresh air to clear her head, so she made her way back outside.
18:24 Speaker 05 I was super nervous because I had a hard time with the chant. I needed to calm my nerves. So I remember going down. I sat on the sidewalk, kind of along the fence. I would just keep, kind of just, taking a deep breath. I would always just tell myself, just let it go. Just let it go. Once you get on that stage, you're gonna forget all your worldly worries.
18:54 Speaker 04 As she sat there, breathing in and out, Leann could hear the first women's group take the stage inside the stadium and start to perform Hino's chant.
19:05 Speaker 06 We welcome you, the people, throughout the state of Hawaii, from all of the Hawaiian islands. And now, from Las Vegas, Nevada, under the direction of Kuhulah, Wayne Fanoke.
19:22 Speaker 06 Hula halau o ka hoonei.
19:26 Speaker 03 This is our first opportunity to see the Wahine competition chant, which will always be performed first.
19:55 Speaker 05 And then, as I could hear the chanting on the stage,
20:00 Speaker 05 it started to rain.
20:04 Speaker 05 It came so fast, pretty soon it was pouring rain.
20:11 Speaker 05 At first, I didn't think anything because Hilo is unpredictable. It always does things like that, you know?
20:19 Speaker 05 So, I went in and I started dressing. And then my hula sisters came. We dressed under the bleachers so we could hear what was going on on the stage.
20:31 Speaker 03 Making their first appearance at the Merrie Monarch Festival, another opportunity to see Hina and her devastating wings.
20:58 Speaker 05 As I was dressing my hula sisters, I kept watching the rain. And I was noticing like the gutters of the tennis stadium was... The water was just gushing out and it was coming really quickly.
21:13 Speaker 05 All of a sudden, I just felt like this is the story.
21:22 Speaker 05 The rain kept coming and the rain kept coming. It seemed like every time I heard the chant, the rain got worse and worse and worse.
21:33 Speaker 05 I was just like observing and thinking, wow, this is like the first storm.
21:41 Speaker 05 Clouds were really dark and heavy and I could hear the chanting and I would see lightning or I'd hear the thunder.
21:51 Speaker 05 And then I went to, "This is like the second storm."
21:56 Speaker 05 We're dancing about the story. And the story is coming true.
22:04 Speaker 05 Everybody's on stage, like they're chanting and their energy is there and they're bringing this to life.
22:13 Speaker 05 So I felt very uncomfortable. And I did not want to go on that stage. What if we were the ones that she decided then and there, "Let's open the gourd the third time." And it would be destruction of men.
22:38 Speaker 05 And stadium was full of men.
22:45 Speaker 05 So I really felt dreadful.
22:49 Speaker 05 But I was not going to disappoint my kumu or my hula sisters. Like, I didn't want to be the one that was like, "I don't want to do this," you know? Because not performing on kahiko night automatically disqualified us from the competition. And we've worked so hard, you've sacrificed. You know, we've had girls sacrifice being in sports, going to proms, you know, doing all the things that you do as young people because we loved it so much. And what if I was wrong? So I talked myself back into it. It's just like, "Okay, you're here. This is a commitment. You can do it."
24:07 Speaker 05 Intermission was ending, people were going back to their seats.
24:13 Speaker 03 Welcome back to Hilo, Hawaii in the beautiful Edith Kanakaole Tennis Stadium.
24:18 Speaker 05 We're about to go on. My stomach is in knots. We were all ready to go and we're standing in a circle. And then all of a sudden, the lights went out.
24:32 Speaker 05 You hear the audience say, "Whoa." And then there was silence.
24:41 Speaker 05 It's pitch black and the storm is going crazy.
24:48 Speaker 05 I start to kind of panic because I felt like the lights were the warning. And I just kept thinking in my mind, "We need to break the cycle." "We have to do something to stop, to stop the momentum of this storm." And the only way I knew how to break the cycle would be to not dance.
25:16 Speaker 05 And then, one of my Hula sisters that was standing next to me, she told me that she was afraid and she didn't want to go out and dance. And several other people came up and told me that.
25:32 Speaker 05 I went into care, nurturing mode. So I said, "Okay, I'll go talk to Kumu and see what happens."
25:43 Speaker 05 So I left the circle and I went up to her and I said, "Mapu, I have to tell you something. We don't feel good about dancing."
25:58 Speaker 05 There was no anger. She just said, okay. So she came to the group and she talked to us and said, "Do you not want to dance?"
26:09 Speaker 05 You know, of course, everybody's kind of like, "Oh, what should I say?"
26:15 Speaker 05 And then I just said, "Well, I don't want to." And then the majority of the girls were like, "Yeah, we don't want to. We don't want to."
26:26 Speaker 04 Meanwhile, out in the audience, somebody had started to sing.
26:31 Speaker 05 I don't remember what song, but just to take the tension off, I think. Someone started to sing, and then everyone was singing.
26:41 Speaker 07 So despite the festive mood, it was haunting, if not coincidental, to think that the night's intense lightning and thunderstorm literally shook Edith Kanaka Ole Indoor Tennis Stadium. The storm caused a 40-minute blackout.
26:56 Speaker 05 Eventually, the lights went on.
26:59 Speaker 04 With the storm raging against the black sky, the announcer got on the mic.
27:04 Speaker 05 He says, "I'd like to announce our next halau, halau mo, hala ilima under the direction of Ma Puana de Silva."
27:16 Speaker 05 She comes up, goes up the ramp by herself, goes to a mic in the middle of the stage.
27:24 Speaker 05 And nobody knew what she was going to say.
27:29 Speaker 05 But then she said, "We have decided that our girls will not be performing this evening."
27:38 Speaker 03 My concern and care is first for my ladies. Thank you.
27:51 Speaker 05 Then everybody was clapping.
27:55 Speaker 05 I think they were clapping because she made her students number one. It mattered. What we felt mattered to her. And that we were willing to be disqualified.
28:11 Speaker 05 So this Mopwana came back from being onstage and making that announcement. The rain just stopped.
28:22 Speaker 05 As we were undressing and putting our costumes away and taking care of everything, it went back to being a light mist with a little breeze. And it was no rain for the rest of the competition.
28:41 Speaker 05 I don't know what would have happened if we went up.
28:48 Speaker 05 There were a whole bunch of halau after us.
28:53 Speaker 05 They danced, no problem.
28:56 Speaker 05 But I felt it's not meant to be danced by us. It didn't matter that we missed this competition, that we got disqualified. None of that mattered.
29:08 Speaker 05 Because I feel that we broke the cycle.
29:25 Glynn Washington? Thank you. Thank you, Leanne, for sharing your story. Leanne told us, even though her group was disqualified from the 1986 competition, the next night, they did have another chance to dance. And after all the ups and downs of the festival, they rocked the stage with one of the best performances ever.
29:45 Glynn Washington? And Spookster, you should know the next Merrie Monarch Festival is just days away. There'll be a link in our show notes where you can learn more. This piece was "Scouting" by Ishal Lopez. The original score was by Clay Xavier. It was produced by Zoe Fregno.
30:07 Glynn Washington? Now, for just a moment, let's talk about babies.
30:15 Glynn Washington? Tiny little bundles of joy, fat cheeks, that smell, that baby smell, the other baby smell. Makes your heart grow three sizes too big, but longtime listeners to this show know that it often starts at the beginning.
30:31 Glynn Washington? And if you know an infant, or a small child that demonstrates knowledge, powers, understandings, or memories that they didn't learn at nursery school, tell me about it. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener.
30:53 Glynn Washington? Spook Studios stands center between this world and the next, cloaked by KQED in San Francisco. Don't seek to find it.
31:03 Glynn Washington? Let's it seek to find you.
31:09 Glynn Washington? No Snap Studio content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. On Team Spooked, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIL Local 51, and Spooked is brought to you by the team that loves the hula dance, except for Mark Ristich. Now, Mark prefers to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
31:45 Glynn Washington? There's David Kim, Zoe Fergino, Eric Yanez, Marissa Dodge, Regina Berriaco, Miles Lassie, Taylor DeCott, Suichu, Evan Stern, Eve Jeffcoat, Yeshal Lopez, Jack Darrow, Doug Stewart. Nicholas March, the Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is from Washington.
32:09 Glynn Washington? And you know, on the way to my auntie's house, my auntie's place, I'm contemplating my little quest for the divine.
32:18 Glynn Washington? A search I know she would think was silly. My auntie, uh, she always wanted kids of her own. I think she did, I think, think that she did. But it never happened that way for her. So I believe this was my personal stroke of good fortune because when I was in the crazy at my house,
32:44 Glynn Washington? she could sometimes be the escape,
32:47 Glynn Washington? the respect, the hug,
32:50 Glynn Washington? the hot meal, the field trip fee, the couch to sleep on, the kind word, the new kicks, the gas money, the good book, the screaming from the stands at the graduation they addressed her right down when I didn't have an address.
33:09 Glynn Washington? The emergency contact.
33:12 Glynn Washington? Well, I didn't have an emergency contact. All these little things, I think about this, walking to her tiny apartment, busy searching for the divine, but here the divine is shining bright in front of me and now the divine is cussing me out, putting all that cold air inside, leaving her door wide open.
33:34 Glynn Washington? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, never turn out
33:46 Glynn Washington? the light.
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