David-- I greatly appreciate you reading the piece and weighing in on the Kekuku vs. Davion issue. And I appreciate the respectful manner in which you disagreed with the Kekuku claim. My hope with this particular piece, of course, is that informed readers who support the Davion claim will not dismiss the main thrust of this essay-the establishment of the relationship between the Hawaiian guitar and the development of the blues slide technique in the South. I did not go into the varying origin stories of the technique in Hawaiʻi due to space constraints (I mentioned that these competing claims exist in footnote 7), and also because it was beyond the scope of the essay , but rest assured that these competing claims are taken up at great length in my manuscript.
I do not want to go too far into this on this post, but suffice to say that, when I began my research on this topic in earnest, about seven years ago, I was totally with you on the Davion position-- that Davion (or someone else from India, likely a sailor) introduced the gōttuvādhyam to the islanders. This theory only bolsters the conception that Honolulu was one of the most significant crossroads in the world in the mid-19th century, and a direct connection to India would only further the idea that the Hawaiian guitar is a truly trans-continental, transglobal instrument.
We must acknowledge at the outset of all of this, of course, that speculation plays a key role in any position we take on the origins of the instrument. We have a great deal of evidence that we can sift through, but at the same time, there is a great deal that we do not know, and will likely never know, with any degree of certainty. In addition, there are as many people, if not more, just as invested in disputing the origin of the Hawaiian guitar in Hawaiʻi, as there are people invested in defending that claim. So this is complex issue and people take positions for a variety of reasons (just as many, for decades, dismissed the idea that Hawaiians played a role in the development of the blues slide guitar).
But like I said, I was with you and many other on the Davion claim, from the get go. Two accounts exist that mention a Gabriel Davion-- one is a fleeting reference to him, made in 1932, and the other is the story that we all know of him, delivered once over the radio by Charles E. King, the prominent Hawaiian composer, in 1938. Census records do not do much for us on searching for Davion. There is one Davion listed in the 1910 census that could fit our Davion's age, but the census lists him as coming from South Africa, not India. Of course, census records are often incorrect, and our Davion may have passed away before the first U.S. censuses were conducted in the islands, or moved away or dodged them.
But the King account is the one and only account in the historical record, at least, that provides us with the Davion claim-- he described Davion as an Indian boy who was kidnapped by a sea captain and brought to Hawaiʻi, where he then showed this "new" method of playing the guitar, and Kekuku took it with him to the continent.
This is a thrilling story and makes perfect sense, given that people had been running objects over strings to make music in India for over a thousand years. I was invested in that connection, but as I delved deeper into the project, I became less convinced of such an influence on Kekuku, or any other islanders.
I won't dive too far into it here, but after spending months at a time in the archives, I developed several concerns with King's claim, or even the claim that these Indian instruments were introduced to the islands. Here are a couple of the concerns (I will save the others for the broader discussion in the book).
1) When Kekuku began showcasing the Hawaiian steel guitar, he generated a lot of interest in the press-- a LOT. This was a method of playing guitar that, it seems, NO ONE had seen before. So the press took to it, and tried desperately to describe it. But after poring over Hawaiian and continental newspapers and newspaper databases, NO articles referencing objects on guitar strings turn up, anywhere, before it is Kekuku himself who is performing. If Davion was indeed playing in this manner, on any object, let alone the guitar, in the islands, then I believe something either in the press, or in additional reminiscences or other stories coming from the islands, would have turned up.
2) The gōttuvādhyam is a classical Indian instrument. After speaking with scholars of Hindustani music and reading their publications, it is clear that this instrument, and its relatives, existed by the 19th century only in the most elite of families. As Australian Hindustani music scholar Adrien McNeil put it, "the gottuvadyam or vichitra vina were both classical instruments in limited circulation and unlikely to be heard outside of the circumscribed environments of the princely courts or the homes of very wealthy patrons." It is quite unlikely that a stowaway or kidnapped child, or sailor from India, would have ever seen or heard those instruments. Of course, the possibility is there, for sure. But it seems less than likely.
3) I found an earlier discussion of the origins of the Hawaiian steel guitar by the same Charles E. King, from 1925, when he clearly attributed the development of the steel guitar to... Kekuku. And Kekuku alone-- he does not mention Davion or anyone else. So for some reason, I am not sure why, he had changed his story by the late 1930s, after Kekuku had passed away. This was a few years after someone in a hawaiian newspaper in 1932 mentioned a Gabriel Davion playing steel guitar at one of Kalākaua's celebrations (this is that 2nd, of 2, mentions anywhere of a musician named Davion existing). No other accounts of anyone playing in this manner at Kalākaua's coronation or birthday celebrations exist. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that King read that account, and then, by 1938, he had convinced himself of its truth. I could be wrong, of course.
I found much to support the Kekuku claim, including a couple of of wonderful family accounts of the origin, but I will save all of that for the book
But suffice to say, after doing the research, I think it is indeed entirely plausible and likely that yes, Kekuku, an adolescent working in the machine shop of his school (actually a well-endowed school-- the Kamehameha School for Boys), developed the technology required to competently perform the steel guitar technique on converted Spanish guitars.
Sheer speculation and additional challenges remain to the Kekuku claim, of course, Many individual accounts link Kekuku to the origins of the instrument, but many of these differ. The railroad spike or railroad stories, I think, are completely made up--even Kekuku mentions the railroad story once or twice later on in his career, and I think he was romanticizing the story by that point. On top of this, yes, people have been running objects on strings everywhere, forever. But my position is that no one had yet developed a competent and translatable version of this technique on Spanish guitars until Kekuku came along.
So for many of us, I think it depends on what you consider the "origin" of the steel guitar technique. Is the origin the emerging curiosity of humans, thousands of years ago, to make music with gut strings? Or does it begin with the first melodic development of this practice on Spanish guitars? My guess is that many of us will differ on this question. But as a historian, I have to collect all of the available evidence and then weigh in, and although I began with Davion, I have since become less convinced of this claim, or of the claim that others from India introduced the concept. If anything, I think Kekuku was trying to model a guitar sound off of the violin, and this is the technique he came up with to do that.
But I am totally with you in that the Davion claim remains possible; it is obviously tantalizing and makes for a great story. I weigh it out in the book, as Lorene Ruymar did in her wonderful source book on the history of the instrument. My hope is that folks on all sides of the question will consider my treatment of it balanced and well-established.
The case that I make for the Hawaiian influence on the blues slide guitar, likewise, will never be settled, and people are certainly, deeply and personally invested in that question as well. But I have had a great time digging up these questions again and considering them in light of new evidence and new interests in the history of our instrument! Thank you again for checking out the piece and weighing in!
There's at least another book in there.
