Kumu hula Noenoelani Zuttermeister has her halau in Kaneohe, Oahu. She is also a lecturer in Hawaiian chant and dance at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her knowledge has been passed down to her by her mother Kaui Zuttermeister.
Aunty Noe is a staunch guardian of the old ways and feels a responsibility to perpetuate the Hawaiian culture and the legacy her mother left to her. “It is important that we remember our past because it is there that we can find our roots”, she says.
She along with her family and students have been invited to appear in numerous national and international festivals. Aunty Noe has judged many hula competitions. She has been judging in the prestigious Merrie Monarch Festival since 1990 and will be judging in the year 2000.
In 1999, she traveled to teach workshops in Ikaho, Japan and in the 38th Asia Folk Dance Camp in the National I-Lan Technology College in Taiwan, R.O.C. She has been asked to perform along with her halau at the Smithsonian Millennium Celebration.
Noe was featured in the 1995 Friends of Music at Manoa (FM-AM) Newsletter. (See tab)
Learn about the Hula & Chant Ensembles.
MEET OUR LECTURERS: NOENOELANI ZUTTERMEISTER
from 1995 Friends of Music at Manoa (FM-AM) Newsletter
Noenoelani Zuttermeister, lecturer in Hawaiian chant and dance in the UHM Music Department, considers herself part of a precious tradition handed down from generation to generation in Hawai’i. Noenoelani’s Hawaiian mother, Kau`i Kukahiwa Zuttermeister, began learning hula in her twenties, urged to do so by her husband, an American of German descent who had retired from the U. S. Navy and settled in Hawai’i. “My Mom was not eager to become a haumana [student] of hula,” says Noenoelani. “She thought that shaking the hips was sinful, but my Dad encouraged her, driving her to her hula class several times a week. It’s ironic that it has often been non-Hawaiians who have helped us see value in our own Hawaiian traditions.” Kau’i went on to become a kumu hula [teacher of hula], found her own halau [center for hula instruction, also referred to as “hula studio”], and teach the hula/chant tradition – handed down to her from her kumu Samuel Pua Ha`aheo of Kahana, O’ahu. In 1984 the United States National Endowment for the Arts awarded Kau`i Zuttermeister a National Heritage Fellowship.
Noenoelani started learning hula when she was three years old; she was only twelve when her mother gave her a class to teach. At the age of fifteen she took over her mother’s halau in Kaneohe. Her daughter Hau`olionalani takes over her hula classes when she goes on vacation, but is not a regular teacher. She hopes that her eight-year-old granddaughter Kahula will carry on the tradition.
When Noenoelani was asked to teach at UHM she was concerned about transmitting what is essentially an oral tradition – hula and chant – in a Western-based curriculum that stressed writing. Fortunately, the Music Department supported her approach. Her mother’s kumu, Pua Ha`aheo, would not allow his haumana to write down or record chants. (Noenoelani describes chanting as “the language of the gods.”) Everything in the class had to be learned by ear.
Continuing the tradition, Noenoelani’s students commit nothing to paper; they memorize the chants as well as the motions of the dance. Noenoelani goes through the chants with them word by word. “Students don’t have to be fluent in Hawaiian, but they need to know the precise meaning of every Hawaiian word they chant or dance to, because the dance illustrates the chant,” she says.
Noenoelani does not change the chants or dances learned from her mother because she believes that the tradition should be transmitted unchanged. “If you inherited a beautiful holoku [long dress] from your grandmother, would you cut it up to make something new?” she asks. “No. You treasure what she has handed down to you from the past. Likewise, you keep the old chants and dances intact. Of course, there is nothing wrong in creating your own new chants and dances to celebrate the present. But you keep the past and the present separate.”
Noenoelani has students of diverse ethnic backgrounds in her classes. Some are of Hawaiian descent, young people getting in touch with their own culture. Others are of Asian or Caucasian descent. She says she has been somewhat surprised because in addition to learning about places important in Hawaiian culture and the physical benefits of the dance, the students say that they find the dancing and chanting a relief from stress. She is pleased about this by-product of her instruction. What she wishes to impart to students above all, however, is the realization that they have mental powers capable of committing complicated dances and chants to memory, thereby becoming vessels for the transmission of an ancient tradition to the present generation.