Racial segregation in the South likely increased the islandersвЂ™ contact with black Americans, since they would have shared boarding houses and restaurants with other nonwhite traveling entertainers. Louis Armstrong featured Hawaiian guitar on a 1930 track. Walter вЂњFatsвЂќ Pichon (1906?вЂ“67), a New Orleans jazz singer and pianist, hired Hawaiian guitarist вЂњKingвЂќ Bennie Nawahi (1899вЂ“1985) to accompany him, for instance. Oral testimony, newspaper clippings, and other evidence show that Hawaiian musicians frequented southern cities from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Memphis, to New Orleans, вЂњworking every small town, nook, and holler along the way.вЂќ They sometimes collaborated with black musicians.

In American sales of recorded music in 1916, Hawaiian guitar tunes topped all other genres. Marines overthrew the government and ended Hawaiian self-rule-more than a few of them carrying guitars and igniting a steel-slide craze wherever they went. He was one of many Native Hawaiians who left their homeland after 1893-the year U.S.

Kekuku taught other islanders to play as he did, and then left to perform elsewhere, touring North America and Europe for an eventual three decades. Vaulted in status from serving as a typically rhythmic, accompanying instrument to that of a much more dynamic and melodic, or lead, instrument, the guitar would never be the same.вЂќ It вЂњsonically revolutionized every musical tradition it touched. вЂњThe effect, as described by all who first heard it, was transcendent,вЂќ Troutman says. Over the next seven years he honed the lap-steel style and hacked his guitar to accommodate it, raising the strings from the fretboard. With all these foreigners also arrived-in the early 1800s, and likely via Mexico-the Spanish guitar, which quickly caught on as an accompaniment to the local hula song and dance.ДЄ few decades after the first guitar appeared in the islands, Joseph Kekuku (1874вЂ“1932), a Native Hawaiian youngster, flipped his own instrument to lie flat on his lap and played it with a piece of metal he slid across the strings. Half a world away, Honolulu harbor received a steady stream of вЂњsailors, whalers, merchants, missionaries, entrepreneurs, and laborers from distant lands such as the United States, Portugal, Mexico, and Japan,вЂќ as well as cowboys from Latin America brought in to wrangle cattle. In the 19th century, the American South was just one of a number of regions around the world experiencing an influx of newcomers. Tracing the proliferation of their playing style, writes Troutman, a historian at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and weekend steel guitarist, once again underlines just how many ethnic and racial groups have shaped southern culture. Troutman argues in Southern Cultures, is that the musical technique popularized in the Mississippi Delta came from traveling Native Hawaiian musicians. Scholars have mostly agreed that the slide style was directly influenced by the вЂњdiddley bowвЂќ or вЂњjitter-bug,вЂќ a single-stringed instrument they say was carried to America by West African slaves. 1949) would further improvise on the sound. Later blues and rock musicians such as Muddy Waters (1915вЂ“83) and Bonnie Raitt (b. Sliding a steel bar or other hard object over the strings to change the guitarвЂ™s pitch, they created a sound eerily like that of a weeping or singing human voice. Blues prophet Robert Johnson (1911вЂ“38) and other early blues guitarists captivated listeners with a new way of playing their instrument.

Blue hawaii music