lue for the indirect light it will shed on
ancient conditions and on racial characteristics. The
reaction that has taken place in Hawaii within historic times
in response to the stimulus from abroad can not fail to be of
[Page 139] interest in itself.

There is a peculiarity of the Hawaiian speech which can not
but have its effect in determining the lyric tone-quality of
Hawaiian music; this is the predominance of vowel and labial
sounds in the language. The phonics of Hawaiian speech, we
must remember, lack the sounds represented by our alphabetic
symbols _b, c_ or _s, d, f, g, j, q, x_, and _z_--a poverty
for which no richness in vowel sounds can make amends. The
Hawaiian speech, therefore, does not call into full play the
uppermost vocal cavities to modify and strengthen, or refine,
the throat and mouth tones of the speaker and to give reach
and emphasis to his utterances. When he strove for dramatic
and passional effect, he did not make his voice resound in
the topmost cavities of the voice-trumpet, but left it to
rumble and mutter low down in the throat-pipe, thus producing
a feature that colors Hawaiian musical recitation.

This feature, or mannerism, as it might be called, specially
marks Hawaiian music of the bombastic bravura sort in modern
times, imparting to it in its strife for emphasis a sensual
barbaric quality. It can be described further only as a
gurgling throatiness, suggestive at times of ventriloquism,
as if the singer were gloating over some wild physical
sensation, glutting his appetite of savagery, the meaning of
which is almost as foreign to us and as primitive as are the
mewing of a cat, the gurgling of an infant, and the snarl of
a mother-tiger. At the very opposite pole of development from
this throat-talk of the Hawaiian must we reckon the
highly-specialized tones of the French speech, in which we
find the nasal cavities are called upon to do their full
share in modifying the voice-sounds.

The vocal execution of Hawaiian music, like the recitation of
much of their poetry, showed a surprising mastery of a
certain