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Joseph Kekuku
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Joseph Kekuku (around 1874 to 1932) was a Hawaiian-American musician and the inventor of the steel guitar. He was born in Laie, a village on the north coast of Oahu, in what was then the Kingdom of Hawaii. His exact date of birth is uncertain. At fifteen he went with his cousin to a boarding school in Honolulu. In 1889, at the Kamehameha School for Boys, he discovered the steel guitar technique by chance.
Music and breakthrough
The story goes that he was walking along a road in Honolulu with an old Spanish guitar when he saw a rusty bolt lying there. When he picked it up, the bolt accidentally set a string vibrating and a new, pleasing tone sounded. He practised with the bolt, then with the back of a pocket knife, next with the back of a steel comb and finally with a polished steel bar, as is still used today. In 1904 he left Hawaii for good and performed in vaudeville theatres in the United States with Kekuku's Hawaiian Quintet. In 1919 he went to Europe for eight years with the show The Bird of Paradise, which had begun on Broadway and was well received in Europe.
Influence
Afterwards he settled in Chicago, where he ran a successful music school, and later in Dover, New Jersey, where he gave guitar lessons. He died in 1932 of a stroke. In 1993 the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame inducted him as the inventor of the steel guitar, and in 2015 he was given a statue at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie. The gliding tone he discovered later became important in country music and in many other genres.
Listening
Mentioned in other articles
- Hawaiian slack key and steel guitar Genre
In the 1880s Joseph Kekuku slid a metal bar over the strings, the beginning of the steel guitar.
- Steel guitar: lap steel and pedal steel Technology
According to tradition, the Hawaiian schoolboy Joseph Kekuku discovered around 1889 in Honolulu that he could play a guitar by sliding a piece of metal over the strings.