Monday, July 6, 1998

Surf festival
in France lets aloha
flow freely

Ho‘olaule‘a a la Française

By Greg Ambrose
Special to the Star-Bulletin

Some of Hawaii's top cultural ambassadors are heading to France for Europe's largest annual ho'olaulea.

The Biarritz Surf Festival, which this year runs July 13-19, is a weeklong beach party devoted to ocean sports and honoring the Hawaiian culture.

Makaha lifeguard Mel Puu is a renaissance Hawaiian and favorite guest of festival organizers. The muscular Puu sings, plays guitar, dances hula, surfs, paddles outrigger canoes and demonstrates jet ski rescue techniques for appreciative crowds in Biarritz.

"At night there are 20,000 people on the beach, with spotlights on the ocean changing colors and we're doing jet ski rescues, it's amazing," Puu said.

"They really appreciate what we are trying to teach them and help them along with surfing, so they treat us extra well."

The festival opens with a Ho'okupu ceremony where surfers mix ocean water from their homelands amid Hawaiian chants and blessings. "The cultural thing is really great," Puu said. "The Basque people are into their culture. They have a lot of their traditions that they teach us, and we have our ceremony to start the festival."

During the festival, Clyde Aikau will introduce curious Europeans to the mysteries of wave riding, Oahu lifeguard Mark Cunningham will conduct bodysurfing clinics and Maui lifeguard Archie Kalepa and Puu will demonstrate ocean rescue using thrillcraft.

The state and county governments in Hawaii have been indifferent to this festival that promotes the Hawaiian culture to hundreds of thousands of Europeans, Australians and Japanese. According to kamaaina Sondra Kilohana Silve, whose Paris hula halau performs for the event, the mayor of Biarritz has begun to ask why his town continues to dedicate the festival to Hawaii while paying for the event.

The international television, magazine and newspaper coverage of the Biarritz Surf Festival has done more for tourism in Hawaii than anything the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau has done in a decade, Silve says.

The festival's Hawaiian dancing, singing and surfing have inspired thousands of Europeans to visit Hawaii and its booths explain how they can get there. "The contest directors keep hoping that someone in the Hawaii government will realize how important this event is to Hawaii," she said.

"At the very least they would like the state to send musicians to the festival to help inspire more Europeans to visit the islands."

Former world surfing champion, state legislator and gubernatorial candidate Fred Hemmings Jr. is pleased to share the brotherhood of surfing with the Europeans and take them wave riding in outrigger canoes.

Hemmings is optimistic that Hawaii will begin to send some kokua to the Biarritz festival, thanks to new management at the HVCB that has sparked an interest in culturally rich ocean sports. He points to the bureau's support of a Hawaiian outrigger canoe race around the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor last week.

Hemmings predicts that within a few years, six-man outrigger canoe teams will compete regularly in the Biarritz festival, reflecting the worldwide growth of this ancient Polynesian sport.

"With outrigger canoes, you can race even without surf," a condition that has frustrated festival surfing competitors in the past.

But lack of waves isn't really a problem. Although world champion professional longboarders Rusty Keaulana, Bonga Perkins and Dino Miranda compete at Biarritz, the French festival is a hanai brother to the Buffalo Keaulana Big Board Contest in Makaha, where winning is less important than having a swell time.

Contest directors have accepted help from surf industry giant Quiksilver. Apprehension that having the huge beach-apparel manufacturer as primary sponsor might strip the festival of its local charm and aloha spirit was quickly dispelled by the schedule of activities.

Quiksilver quickly added a longboard contest for women, the first in Europe, a masters surfing competition for men 45 and older, and paddleboard races. It also maintained its focus of Hawaiian culture, keeping the popular outrigger canoe wave riding demonstrations, longboard surfing competition and tandem surfing.

The festival also will feature the menehune competition organized by Makaha surfer and lifeguard Rell Sunn, who in 1995 brought Hawaii's young future surf stars to the festival to teach the European keiki how to surf with aloha.

"What is refreshing about this festival is it celebrates aloha and Duke Kahanamoku as much as the surfing," says Hemmings. "It is something the state of Hawaii should be very proud of."