The Hawaiian Tradition

     The first missionaries arrived in Hawaii around 1809 and introduced native Hawaiians to their first exposure of Western Harmony during this time. At this time, according to Elizabeth Tatar in "Hawaiian Music and Musicians", chant was the basic form of musical expression. She states that "the chant or mele of Hawaii is the single most important cultural expression belonging to Hawaiians". (Kanahale p.53) For Hawaiians the chant was a vital part of daily life and was the way Hawaiians established daily contact between the mortals and the gods.

     This "contact" was established with the help of accompanying dance performed in temples. Dancers and chanters were part of a "hierarchal" system that existed in Hawaii at the time and were highly trained specialists. Training was conducted in temples under strict conditions. "The imitation of natural sounds seems to have been a favorite training method." (Kanahele pg. 64) There were (and still are) a number of different vocal techniques that were passed on from teacher to students in these ways, emphasizing various vocal techniques such as vibrato, glides, trills, etc. These vocal techniques later became an important part of the string music of the area as well.

     In pre-European times the ukeke was the only stringed instrument in Hawaii. This instrument was a musical bow made of a hardwood and ranging from 15-24 inches. (Kanahele pg. 392) Helen Roberts did a large amount of research in Hawaii in the early part of the 1900's and found various forms of this instrument. These instruments ranged from one to three strings in variety. The two string models were tuned a fifth apart, while the three string models were reportedly tuned in triads. (pg. 18) The three stringed model is especially important in possibly drawing links to open chord tunings that were adapted to guitars.

     Jas Obrecht states in an article written on Hawaiian slide guitar that missionaries or possibly Mexican cowboys brought the first guitars to Hawaii. (Obrecht pg. 91) In a documentary on slack Key guitar by Susan Friedman, Hannani Apoliona states that the guitar was "brought by the Spaniards during the last days of ranching." The Hawaiians then took their existing melodies and songs and transposed them to the guitar. A student of Raymond Kane's (a prominent modern slack key guitar player), mentions that:

"Slack key guitar developed through people who really
loved guitar but didn't know how to play the original
guitar and they learned to tune the guitar to the songs
that they liked to play and that's passed on from
master to student and from student to student. It's
something that people can't learn to do on their own.
It's something that is traditionally passed on." The
term "slack key" refers to the slacking of certain strings
from standard guitar tuning and tuning the guitar in triads
to a chord. This type of tuning is commonly referred to as
an "open tuning".

The slack key tradition also incorporated aspects of traditional Hawaiian chant. Eliazabeth Tater mentions "Both the rhythms and the melody of slack key are distinctive because they clearly reflect traditional hula rhythms and the melodic ornamental vocal qualities of the chanter". (pg. 354) In order to recreate these vocal characteristics on the guitar the musicians developed guitar techniques such as hammer-ons. Hammer-ons are techniques where the instrumentalist strikes one note and lands on another note with another finger, making the two notes sound as if one has "slid" from one note to the next, like a singer does while singing. Another technique used was the trill, which is a rapid succession of hammer-ons. These techniques that had been developed had a great influence on the slide guitar tradition as it developed in Hawaii.

     There are three different persons that have been credited by various sources as the "originators" of the Hawaiian slide guitar tradition. In a Honolulu newspaper published in 1932 David M. Kupihea states that James Hoa developed a slide guitar technique in 1876 after witnessing William Bradley, a barber, playing the guitar with some of the tools that he used as a barber. These tools were used to make "chimes". Chimes or artificial harmonics, incidentally, are a technique used quite frequently in slack key guitar playing of modern day. Sonny Chillingworth mentions in "That's Slack Key Guitar" that different techniques such as "playing the guitar while simultaneously holding a needle attached to a string, and allowing the needle to strike the strings while being fingerpicking a melody on the guitar", were ways guitar players tried to achieve more volume on the guitars. This technique also created a "vibrato" like effect similar to that of the slide guitar.

     Gabriel Davion is another gentleman credited as a possible originator of the slide guitar in Hawaii. Davion was reportadly an Indian gentleman who had stowed away on a ship on its way for Hawaii. In 1884 Charles King reports to have witnessed Davion playing a guitar layed flat in his lap and using a pen knife layed on top of the strings to sound the notes while he plucked the strings with the other hand. Mantle Hood, in an article published in "The 1983 Yearbook for Traditonal Music", favors this account favoritism, due to the fact, that coming from India, Davion could have witnessed one of a number of instruments that Indians played with different objects used as sliders. The vichitra vina and gottuvadyam are the instruments that Hood referred to and will be looked at later in the Indian section.

     Lorene Ruymar and the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association all agree rather wholeheartedly that Joseph Kekuku developed the style in 1885. According to Ken Kapua, Kekuku first got the idea for slide guitar when he found a bolt on the side of the railroad tracks, picked it up and subsequently slid the bolt across the guitar strings. (The Hawaiian Steel Guitar pg. 2) Kekuku tried various other objects such as combs, pen knives, and a straight razor to slide across the strings to sound the guitar. Many of Kekuku's schoolmates around this time confirmed his reported development of the techniques and by 1889 he was fairly adept at playing in the "lap style". That is with the guitar seated on his lap and played in an over hand manner. Kekuku also developed a standard steel bar to use as a slide, a device to set over the bridge to raise the strings off the neck and higher the "action" of guitar, and developed fingerpicks for the picking hand enabling louder volume and easier control.