Post #650121 by Otto on Wed, Aug 29, 2012 8:21 PM

On 2012-08-29 13:54, Tiki-ESP wrote:
The theme for this year was awesome. For next years theme - hulabilly - is there any fashion/design you could direct me to for ideas?

first off, thanks to everyone for participating in this year's event and theme and for ideas posted here.
Because we only do a show ONE time a year it can take a few years to get around to some of these ideas!!

As for the HULABILLY theme next year, we will post images, musical references, and eventually a history of HulaBilly on the Tiki Oasis Website before the end of the year and announce it here.

Suffice to say that HulaBilly has its roots in Paniolos but really flourished in the 1930s-1940s in middle California (Fresno, Bakersfield, Riverside) as Western Swing. Almost all groups featured slack key guitar - with the likes of Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, Bob Dunn being the most famous. Also, pretty much every one of those groups did covers of some Hawaiian tunes. Likewise, some Hawaiian groups of the time played danceable Western Swing rhythms for mainland tourists. It continued as a minor sub-genre of country music and/or Rockabilly music and I would cite it's official end with Blue Hawaii and Elvis' "Rock-A-Hula"
Of course Elvis was a major HulaBilly force for the better part of his career. ; )

I don't want to start a big debate on this (yet), just want to give some reference because a lot of people are asking about it