Post #570081 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Dec 23, 2010 2:40 PM

On 2010-12-23 08:54, woofmutt wrote:
A lotta folks don't know that the mid century Hawaiian craze was the second big wave of fixation with Hawaii in the US...

What, they didn't read the Book of Tiki !? :D (Sorrry, couldn't resist)

Indeed, If one would want to, one could divide the Pre-Tiki Polynesian pop period into two separate phases, the first being the Hawaiian music craze, which began around 1915, the second being the "Avalanche of Bamboo", as Jim Heimann calls it, in the 30s, when the first Polynesian nightclubs were built to house Hawaiian/Tahitian bands and dancers, among them a South Seas hideaway called Don The Beachcomber.

To me, this 1916 sheet music cover says it all:

Sheet music covers of the 10s and 20s are really the most prolific source of South Seas cliche imagery. If there ever was any question that the Hula girl was THE ambassador of the Polynesian pop world, sheet music covers really erase any doubts. She was cast for all kinds of tropically themed songs:

We see the same free-spirited mixing of tropical cultures that was present in later Tiki style. Hawaiian and Hapa Haole music conquered Broadway, and much more more than the later bamboo and Tiki crazes, even spread to Europe:

Stylistically, these graphics (as wonderful as they are) were too far away from the Tiki period to be included in my books.