Many music historians say that Hawaii first met the guitar when Mexican cowboys brought it to the islands in the 1800s. (Why did Mexican cowboys come to Hawaii in the first place? In 1793 a British captain gave King Kamehameha I a present of five head of cattle. The King forbade Hawaiians from harming them by law and allowed them to free reign of Hawaii’s “Big Island.” By 1830 there were so many cattle roaming freely on the Big Island–getting into mischief, destroying crops–that Kamehameha III brought in 200 Mexican cowboys, many bearing guitars, to ranch them.) Hawaiians took the guitar and changed the way the strings are tuned, enabling musicians to change the chords by sliding one finger up and down its neck. Sliding notes up and down the guitar fretboard seemed to be a natural complement to the swaying and sliding Polynesian folk songs. Let’s watch this video of Ledward Kapana playing “I Kona” on the Slack-Key guitar.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site — the information you’re seeking may still be here, but a lot of links are broken and details may be out of date. We are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our class offerings, our “pen pal” program and how to become one of our teachers, and will eventually be moving all the goodies from here over to there. So, GO TO THE NEW SITE!
