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Hawaiian
Music History
For most people, Hawaiian music revolves primarily around
three kinds of guitar-based music -- steel guitar, slack-key
guitar and the ukulele -- and the hula.
The earliest
known music of Hawaii was the hula, which featured a chant
(mele) accompanied by ipu (a gourd) and 'ili'ili (stones used
as clappers). Listeners danced in a highly ritualized manner.
The older, formal kind of hula is called kahiko, while the
modern version is auana. There are also religious chants called
mele; when accompanied by dancing and drums, it is called
mele hula pahu.
Guitars
first came to Hawaii with Mexican cowboys (vaqueros) brought
by King Kamehameha III in 1832 in order to teach the natives
how to control an overpopulation of cattle. The Hawaiian cowboys
(paniolo) used guitars in their traditional folk music.
Ukuleles
arrived with the Portuguese in the 1860s and slack-key had
spread across the chain by the late 1880s. Legend has it that
a ship called the Ravenscrag arrived in Honolulu on August
23, 1879, bringing Portuguese field workers from Madeira.
One of the men, Joao Fernandes, later a popular musician,
tried to impress the Hawaiians by playing folk music with
a friend's braguinha; the Hawaiians called the instrument
ukulele (jumping flea) in reference to the man's swift fingers.
Others have claimed the word means gift that came here or
a corruption of ukeke lele (dancing ukeke, a three-string
bow).
The
slack-key guitar (ki ho'alu in Hawaiian) is acoustic
and fingerpicked. The strings are "slacked", or
loosened, which creates unusual tuning. Each string typically
has a major chord, or more rarely, a chord with a major 7th
or 6th note.
Playing techniques
frequently mimic the falsettos common in Hawaiian singing;
these include "hammering-on", "chiming"
and "pulling-off".
In the 1880s
and 90s, King David Kalakaua promoted Hawaiian culture and
also encouraged the addition of new instruments, such as the
ukulele and guitar. Kalakaua's successor, his sister Lili'uokalani,
composed music herself, and wrote several songs, like "Aloha
'Oe", which remain popular.
In about 1900,
Joseph Kekuku began sliding a piece of steel across slacked
keys, thus inventing steel guitar (kila kila); at about the
same time, traditional Hawaiian music with English lyrics
became popular -- this was called hapa haole.
Vocals predominated
in Hawaiian music until the 20th century, when instrumentation
took a lead role. Much of modern slack-key guitar has become
entirely instrumental.
In the early
20th century Hawaiians began touring the United States, often
in small bands. A Broadway show called Bird of Paradise introduced
Hawaiian music to many Americans in 1912 and the Panama Pacific
Exhibition in San Francisco followed in 1915. The increasing
popularization of Hawaiian music influenced blues and country
musicians; this connection can still be heard in modern country.
In reverse, musicians like Bennie Nawahi began incorporated
jazz into his steel guitar, ukulele and mandolin music. Inspired
by Nawahi, Sol Ho'opii became a legend in Hawaiian music and
helped spread the steel guitar around the world.
In the 1920s
and 30s, a group of men came to be known as the Waikiki Beachboys
and their parties became famous across Hawaii and abroad;
most of them played the ukulele when not surfing, sitting
on the beach and eventually began working for hotels to entertain
tourists.
The most influential
slack-key guitarist was Gabby Pahinui, who began recording
in 1947 . Leland Isaacs Sr., Sonny Chillingsworth, Ray Kane,
Ledward Kaapana, Keola Beamer, Peter Moon and Leonard Kwan
came a few years later and helped popularize the sound, especially
after the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s. George Kanahele's
Hawaiian Music Foundation did much to spread slack-key and
other forms of Hawaiian music, especially after a major 1972
concert.
Modern slack-key
festivals include the Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival
and the Gabby Pahinui/Atta Isaacs Slack Key Festival.
Don Ho from
the small Honolulu neighborhood of Kaka'ako figures among
the more widely known Hawaiian musicians. Although he perhaps
does not produce completely "traditional" Hawaiian
music, Ho has become an unofficial ambassador of Hawaiian
culture throughout the world as well as on the American mainland.
Ho's style often appears to combine traditional Hawaiian elements
and older 1950s and 1960s-style crooner music with an easy
listening touch.
In the 1980s
and '90s, reggae became more popular and combined with Hawaiian
pop to form "Jawaiian" (Jamaican reggae+Hawaiian).
A Hawaiian form of hip hop also emerged, with Sudden Rush
being the most well-known group.
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