Tags: Surfing, Beach Boys, Hawaii, Boardmasters, Coldplay
By Amelia Cox
Set against the backdrop of Cornwall’s golden coastline, Boardmasters festival attracts surf enthusiasts and music lovers from all over the world. At the core of the festival is the World Qualifying Series event, in which surfers compete for a spot in the World Championship tour. Over five busy days, the festival sprawls across Fistral Beach and Watergate Bay to immerse festival goers in the laid-back acoustic sessions and punk rock rhythms that define the festival’s spirit. But beyond the expansive festival grounds lies a rich history of how music and surfing intertwine.
Surfing is an artful dance with the ocean, just like a dancer listens to the harmony of music, surfers listen to the waves, their fluid movements mirroring those of their natural surroundings. Nobody understands this better than Timothy J. Cooley, a Professor of Ethnomusicology and Global international studies at The University of California. He has travelled to the best surf spots around the world and spoken to some of the best surfers and musicians, turning his two biggest passions into a career. “I’ve been a surfer since I was adolescent,” says Cooley, speaking about growing up in Florida, before moving inland.
“I identified as a surfer at that point. So, one of the things I did, I guess in protest, I just kept wearing my flip flops to school. I just got these thick socks and tucked them in because it was really cold.
“My surfing identity was curtailed somewhat because I didn’t have access to the ocean, but my musical identity benefited because I had access to a pretty large faculty of music teachers for a high school.”
While studying music, he maintained his passion for surfing, even surfing on Lake Michigan where, only once, he saw another surfer.
The birthplace of Surfing or ‘he’e nalu’ has been traced back to Hawaii, where it is believed that it was introduced by the god of the sea, Kanaloa. With stiff wooden boards carved from the Koa tree, the noble people would surf. Surfing in Hawaii also had huge societal implications and a connection to people’s spirituality, so much so that their hierarchy correlated to the type of board they could use and wave they could ride.
Typically, the smaller, easier waves were reserved for the chiefs or royalty, and it was considered a violation warranted only by severe penalties including death, if a common person rode that wave.
The importance of surfing translated to their music. Cooley says that “much of what we know about pre-revival surfing comes to us from Hawaiian legends and mele – the original surfing music.”
Hapa haole (half foreign) songs were then made – a genre which combines English lyrics with Hawaiian words and phrases, with then-popular mainland styles such as jazz and blues music. “Hapa haole music, like surfing itself, became one of the greatest exports for Hawaii globally.”
A shift in surf music occurred in the 1960s when surfing travelled over the Pacific Ocean to California. According to Cooley, “Surf music is the term that came up in 1962, I think it was what a DJ used to call what the Beach Boys were doing and Dick Dale and The Belairs. He called it surf music, it sort of stuck and it became like a brand, a genre of music, but with two strands, the instrumental rock and the songs about surfing.”
The state had seen huge advancements in technology and economic growth following the war and the California dreamers had reimagined every element into a pop art infused haven. He adds that, “Things were happening that were connecting the idea of surfing with a popular cultural concept post World War Two.
“A lot of people had served and had been overseas in Hawaii and back to Southern California. Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States in 1959, so just a few years later we have a thing called surf music and it’s identified with Southern California not Hawaii.”
Characteristics then emerged of having a groovy, surf-themed title, smooth guitar playing, and a catchy tune, which Surfin’ U.S.A by The Beach Boys accomplished. However, he says: “By the end of the sixties the music was considered fairly passé by some surfers. Although in the seventies when I was surfing, I identified with the Beach Boys, but when I started doing this research, I realised that there was actually a lot of resistance to this idea of surf music in the surfing community. If you were a surfer and a musician people would expect you to do that kind of thing, which is quite antique now.” ‘The Beach Boys were stealing their culture, and they didn’t even know how to surf. ‘Almost as quickly as it appeared it disappeared.
Despite the resistance to the genre, music and surfing remain intertwined, each influencing the other. Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin – who The Equaliser tried to contact – even shared in a TV interview how the title of his song ‘Everglow’ originated from a conversation with a surfer.
Andrew Cotton, an award-winning professional big wave surfer, says that music is also crucial in promoting surfing, “Music’s not a big part of my life, but I think for social media and watchful content, I think it’s super important. Recently I’ve been using more classical music on some videos, and I think they fit really well. It’s not really the thing you’d usually see on a surfing video, but I think it heightens the emotion.”
Similarly, events like Boardmasters allow the fusion of music and surfing to dance together. This year Boardmasters is headlined by Chase and Status, Sam Fender and Stormzy, three incredible artists who showcase perhaps more of what surfers listen to as opposed to surf music.
For those who will be attending the festival and strolling into the various wetsuit scented, surf shops lined with boards of every size, shape and colour, they will witness more of what surfers listen to. Luke Hart, from Fourth Surfboards, a surf shop in Newquay says: “Music is communication and expression, similar to surfing, but I don’t think any particular music ‘goes’ with surfing, it just works well with it.”
Surfing nevertheless, is a musical journey, from the sounds of the surf shops to the punk rock that hypes surfers up and the concluding, calming acoustics that follow.
Cooley says, “Many of the surfers did talk to me about their amping up and then cooling down music. That was one of the terms that came up a few times with surfers: ‘I use this music to get ready for surfing and I use this different kind of music after surfing to sort of chill out’.”
Even during, surfers are accompanied with a score of waves forming and crashing. He adds, “They have created waterproof earbuds, I don’t see them being used, which I’m glad about as the sounds of surfing are very nice. I think a lot of surfers don’t want to hear other sounds; they enjoy listening to the waves.”