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At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai‘i’s multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The "edu-tainment" spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai‘i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawai‘i. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation.
Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies, and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of how the carefully crafted staging of Hawai‘i’s cultural diversity was used to serve a national narrative of utopian multiculturalism—one that collapsed social inequities and tensions, masked colonial history, and subordinated indigenous politics—while empowering Hawai‘i’s traditional artists and providing a model for cultural tourism that has had long-lasting effects. Heather Diamond deftly positions the 1989 program within a history of institutional intervention in the traditional arts of Hawai‘i’s ethnic groups as well as in relation to local cultural revivals and the tourist industry. By tracing the planning, fieldwork, site design, performance, and aftermath stages of the program, she examines the uneven processes through which local culture is transformed into national culture and raises questions about the stakes involved in cultural tourism for both culture bearers and culture brokers.
“Until now our only look at folk festivals has been through the eyes of visitors or through the insider eyes of folklorists and others who practice ‘public folklore and folklife’ as they have worked on such festivals. Diamond’s fine book places the reader between those two poles of naïve appreciation and heavily-invested, insider commentary.” —The Yearbook for Traditional Music
“A critical, multi-vocal case study that explores tradition, representation, cultural commodification, identity, tourism, sovereignty, and nationalism through the processes and outcomes of culture brokering for public consumption. . . . American Aloha will interest a broad readership interested in Hawaiian culture and history, museums, representation, tourism, and the construction of nationalism. Diamond’s skill at weaving theoretical themes with detailed data and anecdotes makes the book read like a collection of personal memories and characters with whom the reader can identify.” —The Contemporary Pacific
“[This is] a well-written, nuanced version of the relationship between culture and tourism. It provides an accurate and compelling narrative of Hawai‘i’s cultural identity as well as teases out the complexities of tradition, culture, and institutional intervention. . . . By focusing on one historical event, it carefully and articulately examines important issues. American Aloha is a must-read for scholars interested in Hawai‘i, cultural productions, folklife, or tourism.” —Annals of Tourism Research
“[Diamond] effortlessly weaves together the more arcane elements of the ‘negotiation of tradition’ with personal anecdotes from Festival participants as well as Smithsonian staff. . . . American Aloha is an important text, and should be required reading for all folklorists, museum staff, and other culture brokers involved in public folklore programming with ethnic groups that are not their own.” —Western Folklore“Diamond’s book is a well-written, nuanced version of the relationship between culture and tourism. It provides an accurate and compelling narrative of Hawai‘I’s cultural identity as well as teases out the complexities of tradition, culture, and institutional intervention. Overall, American Aloha is a must-read for scholars interested in Hawai‘i, cultural productions, folklife, or tourism.” – Annals of Tourism Research (36:2, 2009)
“Heather Diamond’s prose is eminently readable, and she effortlessly weaves together the more arcane elements of the “negotiation of tradition” with personal anecdotes from Festival participants as well as Smithsonian staff…. American Aloha is an important text, and should be required reading for all folklorists, museum staff, and other culture brokers involved in public folklore programming with ethnic groups that are not their own.” – Jo Farb Hernández, San José State University
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