Hawaiians preserved their entire library as chanted verse until the 1800s

Evidence

Before literacy became the measure of education, aural traditions were. Our first libraries, if you will, were places of listening: the supper table, bedside, churches, town squares. While in Hawaii to record chants for the Smithsonian, I learned that until the nineteenth century Hawaiians had no written language. Their entire library was chanted. A single chant, such as the Kumilipo, or creation chant, tells of life arising out of the ocean and onto land. It runs more than 2,000 lines. — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 367

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what other cultures functioned as ‘chanted libraries’ and what sound-recording methods captured them?
• XREF: Connects to the orality/literacy tension and to Hempton’s argument that wilderness is the original library.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 367