The Steel Guitar Forum

it's the fact that at that time there were no railroads on Hawaii.

None of ANY kind, some have suggested that the Pineapple Plantations had some. The FIRST Railroad engine commissioned in Hawaii was brought into service in ..1890 see my post earlier in this thread..

Just a humble half a groats worth.

In the series of You Tube clips of Jerry Byrd and Marty Robbins kindly posted by Basil, Jerry Byrd states that Joseph Kekuku was sat whittling a piece of wood with his guitar across his knees when he dropped the knife. The back of the blade slid down the strings producing the sound that inspired him to develop this style of play.

Sounds credible given the development of the flat type of bar and the later? use of knife blades by American blues players.

Perhaps this must just remain one of the great known unknowns.

John Billings wrote:Alan, my friend, I bow to your superior knowledge of railroad tech! I was just thinkin'! My railroad facts go no further than Lionel!

...you just happened to have picked on my favorite subject. I've been a railroad fan since childhood. I have a vast collection of photos I've taken, stereoscopic slides, home movies, railroad books, and I have three rooms full of model railroads in the basement.

basilh wrote:

it's the fact that at that time there were no railroads on Hawaii.

None of ANY kind, some have suggested that the Pineapple Plantations had some. The FIRST Railroad engine commissioned in Hawaii was brought into service in ..1890 see my post earlier in this thread..

Not even a horse or mule drawn line? I don't know, does the legend say how long the railroad was, where it went, and how it was used?

Y'know given the proliference of flat steels initially in the Hawaiian Steel Guitar development, Robert Shafer's postulation is probable, and maybe the TRUE story.(About Joseph Kekuku)

The ACTUAL development of sliding an object across strings is an entirely different matter and methinks will forever be shrouded in the mists of times long ago..

Basil is there any chance you could drag yourself away from the mists of long ago, just long enough to print the magazine?
One could say who ever was responsible for the Steel Guitar has got a lot to answer for.

I'd expect that the rail story is just one of those stories that "sounds right" to people - it's a nice memorable story that seems to make sense. People like a simple answer to a question like "who invented steel guitar?"

Like most urban myths, people believe it without checking the facts or thinking it through because it's easier that way.

To me, it seems most likely that indentured workers from India were the source of the method, since there were a great many of them at that time in the Pacific region, and since that technique has a long history in Indian music.

But it's also possible that it was an independent invention - that sort of thing happens all the time. When the time is right for something to happen, it happens.

The telephone, the steam engine, powered flight, the lightbulb, radio - all of them were "invented" by different people who knew nothing about each others work at around the same time. One person gets the credit because people like a simple answer to a simple question - but if you look up the histories of those innovations, it's obvious that the time was right for those inventions to happen.

In the same way, written language - writing - was invented at least a few times in human history. When European explorers reached the new world, they found Native Americans had writing, played ball games, played board games, and so on. All things that must have been invented independently because the Americas had been isolated from the rest of the world since prehistory.

Plenty of people believe crazy conspiracy theories about ancient astronauts to "explain" why the south American natives and the ancient Egyptians both built pyramids, but the real answer is that people are clever and people invent things all the time. It's not surprising that similar things get "invented" at different times in far flung places. People are amazingly inventive, and rarely seem to get credit for it, because people also prefer inventing stories about how something was created to giving the human race credit for being amazingly inventive.

So, the most likely scenario seems to me to be: if the slide came from an outside source, it was probably India, but it's also entirely possible that some clever Hawaiian came up with the idea by himself. And, around the same time, some clever person in the southern US had a similar idea. But we'll never know the names of those people because, unlike inventions that get patented like radio or the lightbulb, musical innovations just spread from person to person and the origin disappears into history.

We know who invented pedal steel, because that happened during modern times in the mass media era, but it's instructive to note that the answer is "several different people working independently around the same time."

Could it be that Joseph Kekuku was the first person to make a name for himself playing the guitar in that style? Could it be that people assumed that he must have invented that style of play because they had never seen it before? Could all the stories have followed from that?
Or how about this, the steel guitar was more or less simultaneously invented by several people at the same time. It happened with airplanes, automobiles, electric lightbulbs, electrical generation and who knows what else. Then pair this up with the first paragraph. Several people were into it at more or less the same time and Joseph was just the only one able to do anything meaningful with it.
Joseph Kekuku and the steel guitar are about like Jerry Byrd and his C6 tuning. If anyone else was doing anything significant with it, why aren't we hearing about it? And until we do, I'm happy to accept the conventional wisdom or whatever else you want to call it.

That's a good point, Edward. Joseph Kekuku might have "invented" the technique, or he might have adapted an outside technique to Hawaiian music, or he might have just been someone who picked up on it early.

Whichever is true, he's the first person who really took it somewhere and popularised it, and he certainly deserves credit for that.

The railroad story sounds to me very much like a myth that was created to give a simple answer to a question that doesn't really have a simple answer.

Really, the important thing here is not to be able to name the exact person who "invented" a technique that had been invented quite a few times already by that point, but to give credit to the people who took that invention and made something really great with it.

There is some pretty good thinking going on here.
Sometimes called educated speculation!!

Dave says,

But it's also possible that it was an independent invention - that sort of thing happens all the time. When the time is right for something to happen, it happens

That is a very plausible explanation which history does reveal in many cases.

Aloha,
Don

Don, your e-mail is bouncing all my mails to you , PLEASE change your spam settings to include me, OR am I Personna Non Grata ?

....am I Personna Non Grata ?

Never, Baz.

I do not know why this is happening, because I received your emails before. Nevertheless, we
will get it corrected.

Aloha,
Don

Don the letter'S" is missing on the e-mail address you have for me It should be basil@waikiki-islanders.com .
You have basil@waikiki-islander.com:

Playing a string instrument with a bar is known from antiquity, in both ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek scrolls, as is the blues scale. I think people need to know that the blues is at least a million years old, and did not originiate in New Orleans, and slide playing goes right back to prehistoric times. It didn't originate in Hawaii, Africa, or anywhere else. Its derivation goes right back to the wheel, the hunting bow, the fire, and all those things that we take for granted. Don't waste time trying to find the origins of the Hawaiian guitar, it existed before the guitar was invented, and before the Hawaiian Islands were populated.

Alan F. Brookes wrote:Playing a string instrument with a bar is known from antiquity, in both ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek scrolls, as is the blues scale. I think people need to know that the blues is at least a million years old, and did not originiate in New Orleans, and slide playing goes right back to prehistoric times. It didn't originate in Hawaii, Africa, or anywhere else. Its derivation goes right back to the wheel, the hunting bow, the fire, and all those things that we take for granted. Don't waste time trying to find the origins of the Hawaiian guitar, it existed before the guitar was invented, and before the Hawaiian Islands were populated.

Well said, and with a lot fewer words than I used.

Nothing seems sacred anymore...I just learned on Dec. 25th that Santa is a myth ! Well, I still believe in the Easter Bunny and Joseph Kekuku.

George Keoki Lake wrote:Nothing seems sacred anymore...I just learned on Dec. 25th that Santa is a myth ! Well, I still believe in the Easter Bunny and Joseph Kekuku.

...and don't forget Charlie Brown's Easter Beagle.

What about the Great Pumpkin!!??

Alan Brookes wrote:...and don't forget Charlie Brown's Easter Beagle.

No, not Snoopy, but my daughter's beagle.
She didn't invent the Hawaiian Guitar.

You talk about Hawaiian time, it took Alan almost 4 years
to get his Beatle response completed!

But it was nice to review this thread again.

Aloha,
Don

The mutt was probably a pup when the thread ended last time!

Don Kona Woods wrote:You talk about Hawaiian time, it took Alan almost 4 years
to get his Beatle response completed!

But it was nice to review this thread again.

Aloha,
Don

It was Don, particularly since in has now emerged that Gabriel Davion Played Hawaiian Guitar at King David's celebration in 1883, when King David Kalakaua (first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the earth.)reinstated the Hula.(At that time Joseph Kekuku would have been NINE years of age)

“Hula is the language of the heart, therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.” King David is quoted as saying at the lavish event.