Emma Farden Sharpe

Emma Kapiʻolani Farden was born in Pu‘ukōli‘i, Lahaina on September 16, 1904.[1] She was part of a large family with 13 children born to mother Annie Kahalepouli Bastel Shaw Farden, of Hawaiian-Hungarian heritage, and Charles Kekua Farden, of Hawaiian-French German heritage.[2] The family's ancestral home was named Puamana and was located on Lahaina's Front Street.[3] Each of the family members were musicians, with Emma and her younger sister Irmgard Farden Aluli the most well known.[2] Growing up, the children sang harmony as they worked in nearby sugarcane fields.[2]

Sharpe was a schoolteacher at King Kamehameha III Elementary School for forty years, beginning in 1923.[3][4] She had three children with her husband, David Taylor Sharpe.[3]

Five members of the family released singles under the name The Farden Sisters: Emma, Irmgard, Edna, Maude, and Diane.[5] The Farden family as a whole won the Hawaiʻi Aloha Award from the Hawaiian Music Foundation in 1977.[2]

Sharpe's best known work, Lahaina's Fabulous Emma Sharpe, was published in 1960.[3] The album featured members of her troupe, including her daughter Kaloulukea Imamura.[3] In the 1960s and the 1970s, Sharpe performed every Sunday evening in the Discovery Room at the Maui Surf Hotel (later the Sheraton-Maui).[4] The dancers of Sharpe's Puamana troupe, named for the Farden family house, danced there and at other hotels nightly through the 1980s.[6]

She composed songs such as "Hula O Pakipika" and "Nani ʻUlupalakua."[1] Sharpe also established the Hawaiian Cultural Festival (Na Mele O Maui).[1]

Sharpe learned traditional hula from several teachers. At age fifteen she began studying with Kauhai Likua, a dancer for the royal court of King Kamehameha IV.[7] [8] She would pass Likua's style, flowery and gracefully, on to her students.[3][6] Sharpe would later study hula with Joseph Ilalaʻole and scholar Mary Kawena Pukui.[7] Sharpe taught hula to anyone who wanted to learn, instructing thousands of visitors to Hawaii as well as kumu hula such as Nina Maxwell and Kathy Holoʻaumoku Ralar.[3]

Sharpe was recognized by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii as part of the Living Treasures of Hawaiʻi program in 1984.[9] She died in 1991.[1] The Maui News described her as "the leader of Maui's cultural scene for more than half the century."[6]

She started a hula festival as part of the Na Mele O Maui; it phased out in the 1990s but was restarted in 2014 with a new name honoring Sharpe.[7] The annual Emma Farden Sharpe Hula Festival is an invitational event in Maui featuring performances, cultural workshops, historical exhibits, and artisan crafts.[10]

• Kumu Hula Emma Farden Sharpe of Maui 1982 interview and hula demonstration