A new documentary is capturing the music of Hawai‘i’s plantation history.
Japanese workers cutting sugar cane passed the time and dealt with difficult conditions by improvising songs called “Holehole Bushi”.
The name roughly translates to “dried cane leaf song”, and they became musical windows into the hardships of early plantation life
But the songs were almost forgotten as workers left the fields for the city. Their memory was preserved in recordings from a music teacher named Harry Urata who recorded hundreds of examples in the early 80’s.
More recently, the Cainfields song project is working to preserve the legacy of holehole bushi. The Project includes Voices from theCanefields, a book about holehole bushi by Franklin Odo; a sugar plantation website designed by UH West O?ahu Creative Media students, and the preservation and digitization of historic video interviews with original plantation workers.
Professor Chris Conybeare is the film’s writer. He says “holehole bushi are the Japanese immigrant equivalent of ‘the blues’… the songs themselves inform us about all aspects of immigrant life. A surprising number chronicle the seamy side of existence on Hawai?i’s plantations, including workplace brutality, sexual tensions, drinking, and gambling.”
Canefield Songs: Holehole Bushi premieres tomorrow (Thursday) at 9pm on PBS Hawaii.
