Dr. Jace Kaholokula Saplan | Choral Conductor
Dr. Jace Saplan - He/Him
I had the pleasure of meeting Jace about 6 years ago when we both were at a conducting workshop together. Even in the short week we spent together conducting choirs, I knew I had met someone who was incredibly driven, talented, hardworking, and intelligent, but more importantly bright, kind, charismatic, and indelibly positive. Admittedly, I haven’t seen Jace conduct in person in 6 years, but watching him years ago was to watch pure joy and light. A light that was expertly and effectively delivered to the musicians in front of him. In no way am I surprised that Jace has become an important clinician, conductor, pedagogue, musicologist, and musician. I was thrilled to talk with him again for ClassicalQueer and hear his thoughts on the intersectionality of musical and cultural traditions of Hawaii and being a Queer individual.
Dr. Jace Kaholokula Saplan serves as the Director of Choral Activities and Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Dr. Saplan received his Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, his Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from Concordia University-Portland, his Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the University of Oregon, and his Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting with cognates in Music Education and Ethnomusicology from the University of Miami Frost School of Music.
Known for his work in celebrating the intersection between Hawaiian music and choral performance, he is the artistic director of Nā Wai Chamber Choir, a professional vocal ensemble based in Hawaiʻi dedicated to the preservation and propagation of Hawaiian choral music. Under his direction, Nā Wai has commissioned and mentored emerging Native Hawaiian composers and conductors, toured throughout rural Hawaiian communities, and led workshops on the performance of Hawaiian choral music at schools and universities throughout the country.
Prior to his appointment to the University of Hawai’i and Hamilton College, Dr. Saplan served as the chorus master for the Frost Opera Program at the University of Miami where he prepared a number of contemporary works such as Golijov’s Ainadamar, Kuster’s Old Presque Isle (done in collaboration with the John Duffy Composer’s Institute and the Virginia Arts Festival), and a premiere work by Grammy-nominated composer Shawn Crouch. He also served as an instructor of choral music at Florida International University where he directed of the FIU Master Chorale and taught courses in undergraduate and graduate choral conducting.
His work in preparing choruses and as a festival clinician are vast, resulting in performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Hall, The Oregon Bach Festival, Old South Church (Boston), Church of the Holy Trinity (Philadelphia), La Madeline (France), and the Harrogate Music Festival (UK).
Dr. Saplan’s research focuses on the performance practice of Queen Lili’uokalani’s choral compositions; multicultural perspectives in the choral rehearsal; intersections of choral pedagogy, gender, and sexuality in communities of color; and Native Hawaiian agency in music. His scholarship on these topics have also led him to lead clinics at the state, regional, and national level for the American Choral Directors Association, National Association for Music Educators, National Collegiate Choral Organization, and the LGBTQ Studies in Music Education Conference. He is a frequent clinician and adjudicator for state, regional, and national conferences and festivals.
{Jacob} - I am very interested in intersectionality and how individual’s personal identities and their musical life can blend. After reading your recent work, it seems that you are also quite interested in intersectional work, as a Hawaiian, as a queer person, and as a choral conductor and musician. So, I’m wondering, is that something that you think about a lot? How do identity and music pair? Or, is it all just happenstance?
{Jace} - That’s a great question. I find myself having to step out and think about it when I’m in a space of scholarship, more specifically Western scholarship. For my role as an Indigenous person, the identity I have is called Mahu. Mahu is a gender expression that is assigned to you on the basis of where you are in your family. Many of us who identify as Mahu are the youngest person in our family, and are expected to celebrate constructs of what is Kū and Hina. The appropriate Western transfer to make is “masculine” and “feminine”, and our role in celebrating what is both Kū and Hina is also to take on our family chants, our family songs, to know the genealogy, and we’re expected in our Native Hawaiian community to take on the roles of song propagator, song preserver, educators, and child caretakers. So, by nature of my identity as a Native Hawaiian individual, a queer person, and where I am in my family, my role as a musician and as a choral conductor was only kind of set up for me. When I think about that as an Indigenous person, it just lives and breathes and it’s just effortlessly intersectional and tied to Indigenous responsibility. As an academic trained through a Western lens, both as a musician and as a scholar, it’s interesting to think about how gender expression is assigned through that construct, that your role in life is assigned, and then the discussion of whether one is able to live in a space of freedom or choice, ... I felt so incredibly called to that role, and I felt so incredibly at home and at peace with my role as a queer person, as a Mahu individual, and as a full conductor.
{Jacob} - I’ve interviewed a few people who are Indigenous from across different continents, and what I find very interesting is that when we have conversations, it seems that many pre-colonial groups have long since reconciled gender identities and sexuality, and every culture has come to their own understanding of gender and sexuality long before colonial and Christian contact, which has just ruined everything. So, it’s just really interesting to hear about the Indigenous Hawaiian version of that terminology and that understanding of a role within a family unit, but it’s really interesting to me that there is apparently a musical connection there. When you say it comes up in song and in the role of keepers of tradition and song, how does that actually relate? Are those songs that you sing continually, are those things that you’ve arranged, are those things that translate into choral music today? How does that connect?
{Jace} - Yeah, I mean, it’s all encompassing. I think the beauty of Hawaiian music, or what we think about Hawaiian music before Western contact is that music is truly functional. Right? For example, before I enter a home, I need to offer this specific chant or song to be given entrance. Before I speak to an elder, or before I speak to someone from this part of this island, I need to ensure that I sing my genealogy. That’s something that seamless transfers to my work as a choral conductor and as a choral musician, because it’s inherently tied to the voice, especially at the university. I think that to put something down on paper can be really powerful for a Native Hawaiian musician that is within the conservatory setting, like the University of Hawaii, and it makes meaningful transfers when we arrange something that was passed down through the Mahu tradition, and put it on paper. What types of knowing and A-Ha moments that has for my queer students, that may not necessarily be tied to or come from Hawaiian traditions that no longer identify as cultural practitioners. I think it’s important to my role as a Mahu individual, as well as a choral conductor, that we celebrate these songs that I’ve been given the responsibility to pass down both in traditions of rote, as well as in traditions of writing it down and preserving it in Western notation, especially as our culture begins to re-define what basic literacy is, what music literacy means, and how that is connected to one’s queerness. It’s been really interesting, as I’m passing this music down to not only my Christian students, but my Native Hawaiian students at the university… some of them will come and will acclimate themselves to these chants, these songs, and these Indigenous sound worlds, so quickly through the rote tradition, and will struggle when it’s written on paper. However, it provides such a seamless chance for them to grasp Western notation and to learn about this incredibly important skill if they want to pursue music in life, so that they’re able to encounter the music of Beethoven, Mozart, and the Western canon more resiliently.
{Jacob} - So, was it entirely rote? Is there a written notation system that existed pre-Western contact with Hawaii or is everything translated to write it down?
{Jace} - Yes, everything was entirely oratoric.
{Jacob} - That’s fantastic. There’s an album by cellist named Chris Dirkson, from Western Canada, just on the border of the States in Canada… they’re a two spirit cellist who was entirely trained in the Classical genre, and is now writing all of this music based on their Indigenous culture and Indigenous music. They wrote this beautiful album called Orchestral Powwow, and they put the drumming circle in the entire understanding of the orchestra. There’s no conductor, so they’ve completely decolonized the structure of how the orchestra operates. The people who are in charge of tempo, interpretation, rhythm are those in the drum circle sitting in front of the orchestra, and the orchestra follows the music that is presented to them that way. It’s a beautiful album, if you want to go check it out, it’s fantastic.
So, you’ve lived across the states, correct? Miami, to my recollection?
{Jace} - Yes.
{Jacob} - Where else have you been?
{Jace} - I spent two years in Oregon for my masters program, three years in Florida for my doctorate, and then a year in upstate New York when I entered the professoriate.
{Jacob} - Right. So, given the current climate of the States, I am admittedly very politically Green on Hawaii, but my cursory understanding is that it is a much more Liberal state.
{Jace} - You are correct.
{Jacob}- So, how does that feel? How does that fit into your music making?
{Jace} - Being in Hawaii?
{Jacob} - At this moment.
{Jace} - Oh, I think it’s been such a humbling homecoming. My time in my training across the continental U.S. was both a lesson in seeking to be understood and how one does that within an artistic vessel that is not inherently yours historically, and how you can divide your Indigeneity through it. There were so many moments and constant lessons of grace and humility throughout that time. To be able to be home and know that the spectrum of code switching is incredibly smaller, and there are a lot more spaces in which my students and the community that I serve can see much more of the nuance of who I am, and vice versa... it’s really humbling. To step into the role of what is like the first Native Hawaiian with this specific degree, there’s a lot of responsibility in creating what is a Native Hawaiian choral sound, and how do I take this humongous canon of Hawaiian choral music, and create a criteria for it, and how can I be a communicator of what conductors need to know when they decide to program these things? How can I articulate an informed performance practice around it? So, I see a lot of my work now being back home in Hawaii with the identity that I have is a balancing act between: how can I be an informed archivist and an informed propagator of this unique Indigenous choral culture, and at the same time, champion this new upcoming generation of Native Hawaiian choral conductors, composers, and choristers, so that they’re able to be more prepared, resilient, and are able to scan in between these two worlds of Indigenous and Western music in ways that are more grounded if they decide to leave Hawaii for a while.
{Jacob} - Do you view your championing of Indigenous language and Hawaiian choral tradition as an act of rebellion against the more Western Classical choral tradition? Is that too heavy of a word to put on that?
{Jace} - Yeah, I think you’re totally right. I’m totally comfortable saying that it’s an active rebellion in creating spaces more multidimensional than exist in the Western canon with Western people. But, also, our ideation of gender and queerness in Western choral culture is global in scope. I will work with group that is not my own on the continental US. That in and of itself is an act of rebellion, because for so many of those singers and musicians, they have never met a queer Native Hawaiian choral conductor on the podium. I see my work not only in creating Hawaiian space, but insuring that queer choral spaces reflect the diverse and multi cultural sunscape, and the identity that is America, and to go back to creating and propagating this Hawaiian choral sound as an act of rebellion. I think by just merely existing and by merely teaching this new generation of Native Hawaiians that that their identities and traditions are worthwhile and are sufficient before they step into choral spaces that are not inherently their own.... I think that in and of itself is a humongous act of rebellion.
{Jacob} - It’s so emboldening and nice to see that, the more I talk to people and look at programs that exist, this is such a conscious part of university programming. It’s starting to be, at least here in Canada. I’m encouraged that it’s a conversation that people are at least having, that we are trying to actively correct the disproportions that existed in Western Classical music, and I am always really happy to hear that people like you are taking on such a vocal, championing role of queer spaces and Indigenous spaces and non-Western Classical things. It’s so nice. That’s such a blasé way put that, but it is. It’s interesting to me that I’m on the East Coast of Canada, and that music is just not something that we get exposed to a lot on this coast, and it’s such a shame. So, I’m happy to hear that there is a cohort of people that you are training and working with, who are taking that music across the world and are creating those spaces and are bringing that to life. That’s not really a question, just a statement. So, my follow up question to that is, are there any barriers that get in the way of that goal? What do you face that gets in the way of all the important work that needs to be done?
{Jace} - So, I think the first example that I have is — I hear this a lot from my colleagues, and I have to decolonize that thinking — is knowing that we are a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific, and that the ocean provides a barrier, right? The cost of living in Hawaii is incredibly expensive, a plane ticket to Hawaii is incredibly expensive, we don’t get a special, local price to go on vacations to Halifax, you know, we have to pay the same price as everyone else. A lot of people take a look at this body of water that separates us as a boundary. Decolonized thought and Oceanic thinking, Polynesian thinking, takes a look at the ocean as something that connects us, and provides an infinite amount of opportunity. Something that I struggle with, and am constantly trying to think about is allowing my students, and giving them the responsibility to know that the role of my specific generation of educators was to get educated and to come back, to ensure that there is a foundation and a stronghold for multiple perspectives that is rooted in Hawaiian thought. Therefore, their responsibility is to have the option to stay in Hawaii, or to go away, or just spend a life in a part of the Honua, a part of the world that they never would have even dreamed about living or existing in that space, because they are innately rooted to their homelands, because the ocean connects us. That paradigm of thought is something that I’ve started and I’m working on, and that I am hell bent instilling within this next generation of students. Something that also provides a barrier is allowing my students to look at their language, their culture, and their own unique traditions both in the choral ensemble and outside of the choral ensemble, as something that they don’t have to code-switch out of. I remember so much of my training and my work with these incredible, artists and teachers, but they say it as their responsibility between this new language, this new way of existing, and so that I could be successful, and I could be a communicator, and so that I could “white” myself, or “un-brown” myself so that I could be more passable to an academic, scholar, or artist that has never seen or worked with a Native Hawaiian before. That code-switching is a huge barrier. So, allowing them to know that their traditions and their culture is enough is another barrier. I have a responsibility to champion this repertoire and to fight against cultural appropriation of what people think Hawaiian music is, by championing it, programming it, and allowing the spaces in which they come across that outside of Hawaii, to be opportunities to not only learn, but to educate.
{Jacob} - Yeah. That’s a fantastic answer. You're doing such great work. So, what projects are you working on? So, what is your next big thing that you are doing?
{Jace} - We’re in the process of putting on the second annual Native Hawaiian Language Theatre Festival, and we are premiering this new work that is a musical all in the Hawaiian language, rehearsed in the Hawaiian language, done in the Hawaiian language, and I am serving as the composer and director for it right now, at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. One of my choral ensembles,which is an ensemble dedicated to the preservation, propagation, innovation of Hawaiian music, will be doing an album in which we have taken all of these hymns from these forgotten churches across Hawaii, and as an effort to preserve that music, we’ll be putting forth an album about that. At the University of Hawaii, we will be doing a concert next fall that celebrates the intersection of music from the Pacific rim and space, and we’ll be doing that a planetarium at the Bishop Museum, as well as preparing for our new graduate degree in choral conducting that will be offered in fall 2020.
{Jacob} - That’s a lot on your plate, that’s a lot happening.
{Jace} - I’m very excited about it.
{Jacob} - As you should be, that’s great. How long have you been at the University of Hawaii?
{Jace} - I just finished my first year here.
{Jacob} - So, that was all of the questions I had… but I always ask, is there anything else that you would love to say that I didn’t cover or didn’t ask? Is there anything that you felt that would be useful to the conversation?
{Jace} - You know, there’s been a lot of discussion in the choral world about inclusivity and creating spaces that are welcoming and affirming for queer-identifying humans and choristers and such, and I believe that the role of my work is to ensure that while that work is incredibly important, it is also important to value the intersection of queerness and race, and to understand that if we’re going to create these frameworks and constructs that open up these spaces for queerness, that they also include and are applicable to individuals that identify both as queer and of color. That’s it, that’s what I was missing.
