Kika Kila

in their sound. I loved their sound, but I only knew of their sound and context of country music for the most part. MY name's John Troutman. I'm the curator of music at the National Museum of American History. John's intrust in the steel guitar began some twenty years ago. I was a graduate student at the time in Texas writing a book on American Indian dance. I was also working as a musician in Austin and had recently bought a steel guitar that I found in the attic of

the music shop in Tucson, Arizona. This is a pedal steel guitar. I ended up taking out to gigs throughout Austin. When I was playing in different rock bands, learning on the fly the fundamentals of the instrument now the time in the late nineteen nineties, there was very little information about the steel guitar save for a few liner notes on some Hawaiian music compilations, and it was really at the beginning of the internet era, so there weren't a

whole lot of opportunities for studying the history online. For his book Kika Kila, How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music, Seck John worked with Hawaiian scholars, archivists, the families of musical legends, and some of the greatest steel players working today, including the one you're listening to now. So there's a ninth card right right there at that spot. That's a big difference. Yeah. My name is Allen Acaca. I've been the teacher for more than thirty years, playing

music ever since I was in elementary school. Taught myself out of play the kle along with the upright bass, the guitar, and my number one love, the Hawaiian steel guitar. As early as the third century, Polynesian explorers were paddling through the Pacific by canoe two thousand miles north around the twenty one parallel, they came upon the Volcanic Archipelago we know now as the Hawaiian Islands, the most isolated land mass on Earth, cut off from the rest of

the world Cannakamaole. The native Hawaiians developed their own systems of worship, governance, agriculture, food, and music. The Hawaiian musical traditions that had really saturated the islands were really rooted in chants and rhythms provided by a variety of percussion instruments. Pre colonial instruments like the Ipu gord drum are still

in use today. But global imperialism would find its way to Hawaii eventually, beginning in seventeen seventy eight with Captain Cook, who, upon landing in typical fashion for a European explorer, renamed the chain the Sandwich Islands. By the fifties and eighteen sixties, the islands had become recognized as one of the most significant cultural and mercantile cross roads in the globe. Ships for visiting the islands from all over the world en route from or to East Asia, South America, Canada in

the United States. It was a really rich and extraordinary place in that time, and of course today is one of the most diverse populations, not only in the United States but in the world. It's been that way for a very very long time. One trade good entering Hawaiian harbors was the Spanish or classical guitar. Eighteen thirties and the eighteen forties, not only the guitar, but pianos and banjos and violence and other instruments are brought to the

islands from ports far away. Native Hawaiians see the guitar with greater and greater frequency by the eighteen fifties, and it's really by the next ten or fifteen years or so where we begin to find accounts of Native Hawaiians adopting the guitar to suit their own musical purposes. The wine music was always influenced by what was going on in the mainland, from the missionaries bringing over their new England.

Him those two, Henry Berger bringing music from Germany. He was from outside of Berlin, then the Hawaiian royalty studying under him. By the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies, photographers were taking photographs of Hawaiian musical troops dominated by women, as the instrumentalists playing percussion instruments indigenous to the Islands,

playing guitars in some cases ban Joe's. Like any musicians anywhere in the world, they were going to play instruments that were the most exciting to them and that spoke most directly to their own interests. An important difference to them, well, the rest of the world was still using strings wound from catgut. Islanders were earlier opters of strings made from steel. Hawaiians are actually responsible for two major innovations on this centuries old instrument, the steel guitar, and it's now more

popular cousin, the slack key guitar. You can hear the steel guitar in the airport, but more often than that, when you hear a guitar, you hear a slack key guitar. The slack key is a special way of tuning the Hawaiian guitar. It's essentially a style of playing based upon specific tunings that were developed in the Islands that speak to specific genres of Hawaiian music making. We find the first instances of descriptions of this style going back to

the eighties and eight nineties. It involves people beginning to in some cases de tune their instruments to slack the strings to an open chord formation. It's a voice that is quite striking and beautiful on its own, even when you say police strung the strings without even fretting the instrument. But Hawaiians began developing a method of playing on top of open tunings of the guitar that would enable them to create these really lush, vibrant and poetic styles of

guitar playing. Holy The steel guitar is also an instrument that requires an open tuning, so a lot of the same open tunings were developed for both the slack key style and the steel guitar. But the steel guitar also requires some physical modifications to the instrument and the use of a steel bar to be played on top of the strings as well. In the case of the steel guitar number one, you play it horizontally normally on your

lap unless it has aids or stand. Then the nut is raised so that the strings are not so close to the fret board. It has to be that way because we use a metal bar to slide across the strings. If we use a standard guitar will bump into the raised threats with the raised nut I could just glide. I'm not structed. In all parts of the world we find instances of people developing stringed instruments where they're running a bead or some sort of tool on top of

the string to generate sound. But what seems to be quite unique about the steel guitar in Hawaii is the fact that Native Hawaiians were the first people to really figure out a logic to it the development of the first steel bar, which is where the guitar got its name. The steel guitar derives from the Kamehameha School for Boys on Olwaukee, and there are many different virgin stories of

the steel guitar. I kind of investigated all of them when I was working on this book, but the one that seemed most compelling was the story associated with a teenager named Joseph Kuku, who was a student for a while at the Kama School for Boys in the late eighteen eighties and early eighteen nineties. There's one family story Kikuku and his cousin samnin Noah. We're sitting on a stoop in layer Oahu. Joseph was leaning over the guitar, his cousin Sam was playing violin. He had one of

those steel combs in his shirt pocket. At some point the comb literally fell out and pounced on the strings, and then he got the idea of, oh, well, maybe we can actually run this on top of a string. It worked, it made sound, and it made interesting sounds. Because his strings were steel. Those three elements, the steel bar on steel strung guitars set to open tunings had not really manifested themselves elsewhere in the world. He's not

only able to develop a logic. He walks into the command of School for Boys machine shop and builds the bar. He also makes fingerpicks of the machine shop. These are all new innovations at the time, and he develops a translatable style of playing such that by or so he begins sharing this technique with his classmates. They learn it on their guitars, then they take it back to their own islands that are scattered throughout the archipelago, and that's

where the instrument really begins. While mechanical and stylistic improvements have been made along the way. When Alan is beginning with a new student, his curriculum recalls the fundamentals Kuku instigated over a century ago. The first thing is the bar. The left hand. You gotta learn how to hold the bar between your thumb and your middle finger and squeeze it.

What Jerry Bird would say, pinch it and flip the bar over, place it on the strings, hold it down and make sure that the bar is even with the frets. Here's another difference between the guitar and the still guitar. We place the bar over the line, not between the lines. Over the line. When you're sliding the bar, Yeah, keep the bar even. You can hear that. Keep it even with the frets. And then when you're exercising, going from one threat to the other, make sure you stop right there,

right over the fret. Okay, put your bar on string three, fret three. Okay, Now, slide up to frat five and pick on string one, same string, fret three, same string fret six. The important thing is having that slide between the two notes. It's like when people sing, you know, the great singers, their notes are all connected. We have to do the same thing with this voice. By the way, that's an opening line for Beyond the Reef, a classic tune. Can you give me the next little bit of beyond

the Ring? I'll play here. Back in the days of Joseph Cucku as Hawaiian's all over the archipelago. We're embracing this new invention. Dark clouds were looming on the horizon, So that's the first verse. By the early eighties, the

political situation had grown incredibly tense in the islands. A number of merchants from other parts of the world were not only leasing lands for their own sugar plantations, pineapple plantations, and what have you, but they were also beginning to wrestle their way into the governance structure of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

At the same time, the sons of missionaries who had first received invitation to settle in the islands in the twenties developed very specific ambitions for expanding their own wealth. They begin also conniving their way into the governmental structure

of the Hawaiian Kingdom. By seven, David Kala Kawa, who is the king of Hawaii at the time, is forced to sign what's known as the Bayonet Constitution, which stripped Winian people of their voting rights and begins to significantly diminish the manner by which Kala Kawa can wield his sovereignty in the islands. He had seen this coming, and one of the methods by which he was pushing back

was through music. He comes to realize, when asserting their sovereign right to govern themselves, Hawaiians should also recognize that sovereignty is constituted in cultural traditions as much as through anything else. He begins throwing these huge parties headlining Hawaiian music making as a very specific political sovereign practice, so

music was immediately central to these political struggles. At the same time, hula dancing was being prohibited because plantation owners in the islands felt that the dancing was lessening the labor pool that they could draw from, that Hawaiians are spending too much time dancing or performing music, and that by prohibiting these things they would be able to gain

greater control over the labor. The Hawaiians really rejected the plantation labor from the very beginning ng which is a whole other story, but music was implicated in all of these things. Fast forward a little bit by three, David Kyokawa's sister, Lilio Klani, is now the queen and the monarch of the islands, and she's arrested and imprisoned in her own home by a bunch of these American merchants

backed by the U. S. Marines and a coup. She had always been recognized by world governments as the sovereign queen of the Islands. Hawaiians reached out to world leaders, demanding that that illegal overthrow be rescinded and that the monarch could be restored to her kingdom, but these calls for justice fell on deaf ears. Under house arrest, the queen was left to molder away and her elegant palace.

Lilio Klani was herself an accomplished composer, and while she was cut off from the outside world, even denied newspapers to read, she managed to write songs and sneak them out of prison. These became anthems for people who were losing their home. The most famous is Aloha Oi, farewell to the one becomes clear that the United States is

going to annex the islands. In Many of these musicians who had had their language prohibited from being taught in the schools, who have had their dances prohibited by the Calvinist missionaries and then the provisional government, and who were also quite well aware of how Native Americans are being treated on reservations in the us in order to sing the songs of Yo Kolani and her family, to sing the songs of the monarchy, and to advocate for the

Hawaiian people. But I think they felt their obligation. In some cases, their only opportunity, rather than being rested under the control of these political authorities, was to leave the

diaspora led away from the islands in all directions. I mean, Hawaiians have been traveling to other parts of the world for a very long time, but by the eighteen nineties you can see this incredible mapping out of Hawaiian musicians fanning into the world, playing in Shanghai and various parts of Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, throughout the United States, and in Europe as well. While Hawaiian music encompasses an array of long writing traditions, the styles that traveled with

the diaspora became globally dominant genres. The first wine troops that really gained success outside of the islands are string bands, violin les, couple of guitars, often with the banjo, almost always playing hula kui music, literally the stitching together of new and old musical traditions. They were playing music that was written by members of their royal Hawaiian family. They were very specific in terms of their topics, being centered

upon wine ideas, wine stories, wine places. By the turn of the twentieth century early d you find other genres of music poppy up one much more in the pop realm, being happa holly music that can combine English with some Hawaiian words. That music was much more accessible for non Hawaiian audiences because they connect with the tim panale musical traditions that have become really popular in the US and in the Islands. Eventually, this string band has become more streamlined.

But in nineteen twenties you begin to find you were violent and really see banjos anymore. You'll begin to see a troupe that consists of an acoustic guitar player, player probably not bright bass player, and steal player always. That's essentially the lineup musical troops far and wide would perform alongside dancers. Hula remains a domain for male and female

dancers alike. In the nineteenth century, it was in some cases dominated by males, whereas most of the photographs that I've seen in the nineteenth century Hawaiian musicians are women. They began to shift to conform with the expectations of audiences that they were encountering outside of the islands, meaning by the early nineteen hundreds, men were essentially relegated to the stage as the technical performers on the instruments and women dancing in front of them. Hawaii would not be

Hawaii without the dancing girls. Touring in the US generally meant hitching your cart to a particular circuit. The performers would sign onto a contract and then play town for a week and then take the train go to the next town. One was the Chautauqua circuit, kind of the white middle class antidote to Vaudeville, which they saw as low grade, trashy performances. Chautauqua circuit was a speaker's circuit.

They would provide musical performances, poetry recitations, and actually a number of Hawaiian musicians, including Kuku, got involved in signing contracts with Chautauqua groups because they provided steady pay and access to booking that didn't require having your own manager to book every booking for every town. The other kind of circuit was the Vaudeville circuit. Essentially a variety show where you could have ten different acts in one night.

Chinese acrobats, mariachi performers, black faced initial cy troops, and Hawaiian musicians as well performing, and they all play a handful of songs. The vaudeville circuits were appealing to musicians because you're booking is essentially taken care of now. It doesn't mean you to actually get paid, but you'd be scheduled, so it provided a really rapid way for them to

dig into hitting all the markets in the US. One market rife with complication was the American South Hawin performers playing in the Jim Crow South encountered a lot of the same hostilities and potential threats of violence as other performers of color. One of the women that I interviewed, Lonnie McIntyre, was traveling with her father and her uncle's on tour throughout the United States. She remembers as a kid in Memphis, walking down the street and being spent

on as a six year old. Her dad and her uncle's would look into a hotel in New Orleans, for example, assume a residency performing every night, but they wouldn't be able to stay there. Because it was white only, and there are boarding houses that were set up all over the South, run for the most part by African Americans to cater to musicians of color who were touring the

South and had nowhere to stay. Lonnie McIntyre told me at the same time that she recalls these all night jam sessions where everybody after their gigs would come back these boarding houses and you would again find mariachi performers, Hawaiians and African American singers, blues singers all playing together as a consequence of Jim Crow. It's hard to overstate just how popular this music became. My nine Hawaiian guitar music was out selling every other form of recorded music

in the US. A lot of his popularity came down to the fact that it was seen as different and quite novel, elevated through the relentless touring. Hawaiian steel guitars are really the first guitars that are popularizing the guitar as a lead instrument. With still guitar on parade, manufacturers were always looking to improve the instrument's design. The biggest hurdle, especially for live settings, was the guitars low volume. The turn of the century twenty century, they were on acoustics

a lot more picking right. They probably use a different tuning too. It would do rows like they would just pick more, you know. Later on Nationale came out with the track one. There was a Wise in Bound company, though Brow of Cars came out Worth Theirs that acoustically amplified the sound to a degree. And the thirties the electric amplifier was developed, and then the electric guitar, and

the first electric guitar was a still guitar. In one the Rick and Backer Company began mass manufacturing its electro an aluminum lap steel with a tiny body and long neck, better known by its nickname the fry pan. A big difference with one amplification to sustain still guitars. Today you can make each note sing more, especially the lisandos. No instrument can do lisando like a steel guitar. As Hawaiian music took the world by storm, virtuosos of the steel

guitar became international celebrities. It's on gospel music interpretive in the Hawaiian style by Hope. In terms of players, Saul Hopie is the player to listen to. He stowed away on a ship leaving the Islands to arrive in the US, worked as a boxer for a little along in San Francisco, trying to make ends meet, made his way down the l A and then redefined how people play steel guitar. Great players have come on since then, but he really set the bar high in terms of his musician ship.

Allen's influences, many of which he studied under or shared the stage with, read like a who's who of still guitar fame. I was very lucky to be at the end of an era where I could play with so many different still guitars. So many my influences were like David feg Rogers, then his uncle Bennie Rodgers, of course Jerry Bird, and then Jewels. I'll see from what You Calls.

There's a Call from Hawaii. How about You Calls was a show that was broadcast for about forty years, from pre war all the way to about nineteen seventy four. It was a showcase of the talent in the Islands out for the park. Every week. Stations across the United States and even in Japan would er what You Calls. Of course it probably would be one week later. America, Canada, Oh pretty nice and I remember a friend saying he would run home just in time to sit in front

of the radio to listen to What You Calls? Oh, how are you Calls? Featured the great voices Alfred the PoCA, Danny Kinni Lau, great singing, great music arrangements by Benny Callama, still guitar, Oh yeah, lots of still guitar. And they had the best Jossie Barney, Isaac's Eddie Pang for a little while, Danny Stewart, j K Lee caud he had, David Killy, Joe Costino, Jerry Bird, Ohio born. Jerry Bird

was especially influential in Allen's life. Hello, you know, video tape is a great engine and a medium for us to get together on a more personal basis. I met Jerry for the first time in the What You Cause Office, of all places. He sat me down, he says, play me something. I was holding the skinny bar and I was playing the still guitar. At the end of the song, he says, give me that bar. Sorry, handed it to him reluctantly, of course. And then here under wrapped this

brand new bar. Now here is the most important two of all. It was wider, and it was to his specs two and five as long, three quarters of an age of diameter. He says, here, I'm going to show you how to hold this down. I use this and all of my teaching, and that was a start of my lessons with Jerry. He was an incredible teacher. Don't just play what's on the paper. I want you to play what's not on the paper. That's most important. He taught me musicality, which to me is the most important

how to play musically rather than plain notes. The steel guitar had made its way from a distant chain of islands onto the global stage, and then America went Hawaii crazy. Who I'm saying, By the twenties and nineteen thirties, everybody knows what Hawaiian guitar is. In the US, nine lounges were opening, There were Hawaiian themed venues. This is real Hawaiian, even the Macaroni sal in Hollywood, New York. Into the

parts of the country. Now let's stay on the same two strings and slant the bar and a forward slant. There's Hawaiian guitar schools set up all over the country, with hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls enrolled in the schools go to any seventh chord reversal land. At one time, Oahu Publishing in Cleveland, Ohio actually gave certificates of completion to two hundred thousand of the still guitar students.

That's incredible, very easy, not difficult at all. We begin to find recordings by don Hawaiians adopting the steel guitar style, whether it's into the blues or into jazz. There's a transitional period where you actually do hear quite clearly these Hawaiian music motifs being integrated into other genres, most notably in country music. And Yacoff was kind of the king

of the grand o opera. But before his rise to fame, his steel guitar artist, Bashful brother Oswald was literally stalking Hawaiian musicians trying to learn how to play the steel guitar. So if you listen to the Cuff records from the nineteen forties and you listen to Oswald's playing of the dough broke, you actually hear him taking all of these techniques from Hawaiian music making and adopting them to this

country music sound. Did they say that if I ever came back and you show what they won't gold ring o w yes. The kika kila's application and what was then called hillbilly music led to the development of the pedal steel guitar, which rests on a stand outfitted with foot pedals and knee levers that raise or lower the pitches of particular strings. Finly, I'm falling more in love?

What do you The steel guitar totally overtakes country music by the late nineteen forties as the pivotal central weed instrument. Ladies and gentlemen Sam Juel and Johnny. In the nineteen sixties, you see steel guitar and rock and roll music. Ironically, the wide scale endorsement of the steel guitar is why it's Hawaiian roots have been obscured as it's adopted into other traditions of music making in the US, and the

steel guitar becomes dissociated from Hawaiians. Music making the Islands remains fiercely Hawaiian, but younger native Hawaiians they're listening to rock and roll, They're listening to the Beatles, They're listening to all this other music. If you fast forward to the Hawaiian Renaissance movement of the nineteen seventies, half a Hallowe music and hula kui music becomes a side of

consternation for younger Hawaiians. They actually came to see that music, which was composed by Hawaiian people and performed by Hawaiian people in the early part of the century as being not politically mindful enough for really the realm of the tourist industry that they saw as wrecking the islands, destroying them literally. During the Renaissance, many Hawaiian musicians decided to avoid the steel guitar altogether. It never disappeared, but people

didn't really know what to do with it. You hear some of the up and coming acts disparaging the steel guitar saying we're not into that kind of music because they've seen it so closely associated with tourist music and waikiki. So they began pursuing this acoustic music, embracing the slack key guitar. The folk music movement in the nineteen sixties is happening in Hawaii just as it is happening elsewhere in the country. That was you know, they hate ash

very days Vietnam War. Things were changing in America, so was the style of music, and I could hear it in the islands. Here some recordings that are considered classics today, they're from that era. In those days, I didn't want to listen to them. I couldn't relate to them. They were not the traditional Hawaiian music that I grew up

with and love. There are, however, some notable exceptions when you listen to some of those foundational earlier recordings by Gabby Pahnui and others, actually still guitars all over the place on this record. Feet Rogers was one of the steel players most associated with the Renaissance period of the seventies, and he had a very different, more subtle style of playing than what you did here with the Ape Alley music.

David Fete Rogers was actually my first teacher. Off of his LP, the Five Faces album by the Suns Up You are what many of us called the Red album because of the cover. It was a new sound. It wasn't like the older traditional groups. It was different, but they were all traditional songs. But it was something about the steel guitar. It was such a simple style. It fits right between the cracks musically. I just loved his

playing and followed him through the years. Every now and then, depending on the style of Hawaiian music, I'll kick into his style whatever fits, especially with the more contemporary Hawaiian music, because it's so simple strumming of the guitar they used to dole the melody of the songs. Even the lyrics in Hawaiian are different from before, different times, and so with the still guitar, you know, scaling back is a good idea. Are you gonna do something like this that

might not fit? But if I do this, just a simple try at an archego that might fit better for a musician and artists, it's not just squeezing in but fitting in. Within the twentieth century, the steel guitars profile shifted from global ubiquity to relative obscurity. Today you hear

steel guitar all over the place. It's an instrument that's become adopted widely for use and soundtracks because it's so evocative of the vocal of a human voice and talking guitar that is put to use in many different contexts. Even though nobody knows what the instrument is, nobody knows what they look like, nobody knows what they're called. The

steel guitar has fallen out of the popular imagination. The sound is everywhere still, but the idea of it as an instrument and its connection to Hawaii is totally gone. The Hawaii legislature proposed a bill declaring the state instrument as the ukulele. I got wind of the meeting so late I ran down to the state capital where they were having the meeting. Members of Ukulele Company were just walking off the dark and they said, oh yeah, they just gave the testimony, and I went, damn, I better

run in there. I got in there and he said, okay, you know, we're going to vote on this now, and they said, wait, may I say something. You know, the still guitar is only string instrument modern day string instrument invented here in Hawaii. The kalle was adopted and adapted

in Hawaii from a Portuguese instrument. Although the kal is well known more than the still guitar today, it was a still guitar that actually learned a lot of people to the islands, and in some cases it's still does still guitars, most of them here in Hawaii play Hawaiian music the uk You see it at festival, as you see it in videos. A lot of the locals playing non Hawaiian music. So the motion was, maybe we'll ask

the students in the schools. I said, wait a minute, they only know the uk ell they probably don't know the still guitar. The chairman says, you know what, Okay, we're gonna table it. Then let's do a little more research. A lot of people rolled in in favor of the still guitar. Well, the next year came about, they had another meeting and they made uk elli the state instrument. And it's like wow, Casai said. After the uk elea became the state instrument, you it was like this fire

was burning inside of me. I wanted to do whatever I could to bring the still guitar back to prominence. I was attending it was called the Henry Allen Still Guitar Festival at the time. The hotel approach me and asked me would you take over the festival, which I did, and so I renamed it the Maui Still Guitar Festival. That same year, I was approached by one of the senators. He says, could you do one in Waikiki? What do

you see? So all of a sudden I was running two still guitar festivals, and that's when I started my nonprofit hide Mela, which is the Hawaiian Institute for Music Enrichment and Learning Experiences. So it's Himeli that coordinates and operates all of these still guitar festivals. Him Mela now puts on eight festivals a year throughout the Eleans. Alan also travels the world doing workshops and conventions from New

York to Yokohama, Japan. Kakola Mela Allen's music school on Oahu focuses on Hawaiian music, and he offers steel guitar lessons to anyone with an Internet connection, and so little by little we're reaching out. First thing you gotta know is how to hold the bar still. You times more visible. We have people playing that home or going to backyard parties, and then we have all these cake cake our youngsters in Hawaiian cake or playing still guitar and seeing adults

in the audience with their jaws dropped. If you can imagine just a jam featuring kids and adults, we call it Conney Kapila in Hawaiian Conney Coppela strike the band. So we're doing this jab session, switching musicians, switching the instruments. Ah, this is so nice. This is hawai eat to me. And that's what many people told me. After all the steel guitars and signature sound of the Islands, signature sound.

The steel guitar has come to be more greatly embraced by young Hawaiians today as they come to see it once again as part of the extraordinary constellation of Hawaiian music making due to the concerted efforts of Alan Akaka, who has really played a fundamental role in reintroducing the steel guitar to people throughout the islands. And then and then it might be putting in volunteer work to coordinate and operate these still guitar festivals. It's a start. So

satisfaction for me really is the start of joy. I mean, you know, I come back and I'm like ready to not for twelve hours. But we're making the still guitar more visible. We're exposing many people to it. Have you ever tried? And the great thing is his free and open to the public. The workshops, the concerts, the jam session, they're all free. So little by little we're bringing the

still guitar back to the Islands. Today. There's professional steel players in every kind of major music market of the country. Elsewhere in the world, I mean, there are steel players everywhere. They all congregate to really nerdy internet forums. That's kind of how you find them, how you track them down. But there are brilliant steel players, incredibly talented steel players,

obsessed steel players. I mean. The reason why I started playing steel guitar originally before I even thought about where the steel guitar came from, was that I moved to Austin, Texas thinking I'd be a guitar player and make money while I was in grad school, coming to realize that there were literally ten thousand other guitar players in Austin, Texas at that time. So I realized that I had to diversify and come up with other things that I could offer to bands, and so I took up the

steel guitar. Steel guitarists are scarce enough such that they can be the go to players for all kinds of bands in their communities, but they're also growing in number. So I think the future is bright for steel guitar. But it's a fragmented story and it's one that doesn't really have much impact. And major conversations and popu war music today. They're they're kind of on the fringes, they're on the sidelines, but they're there. But who's to say

the steel guitar will stick around this time. Alan feels the most vital contribution he can make is to inspire the next generation. Kickula Millery was started because I could see that other schools we're not really teaching Hawaiian. You were teaching everything else using the lookal l as a primary instrument. Maybe they're learning some rock and roll song that has four chords one, six, four or five and

that's it. I want to bring back some of the old songs, some of the songs that talk about the islands. So in my class, I teach him about the islands, about the lifestyle, about the culture, even history through the songs like being power points of the past, especially for the young ones. You have no clue, so I can

show them. I have a lot of baloo students. I have a lot of still guitarist students around the world, true skype and I have many different levels from you know, beginner all the way to a pretty done good able to take the stage that good. I'm teaching my student Malias some of the songs her great grandmother sang and she has the same range. Whenever I hear her saying, we say over here, you know chicken skin. Chicken skin is like goose pimples. And then I have another girl

in elementary school and I'm teaching her songs. That's her great great grandfather wrote Alvin Isaac's and he wrote a lot of class tunes a lot. And her great grand uncle was on Hawaii cause was a famous steal guitarist, Barney Isaacs. And yet she's the only one in the family playing still guitar. We know, mom Now, I said, Okay, these are all your family songs. We're going to learn them. So she is, she's learning them. I said, yep, you gotta keep this going no matter what. You are the

link to the past, Momocome. It's started like my contribution to society, especially for Hawaiian society. I mean there's a lot of teachers, you know, teaching language, teaching hula, teaching protocol, or even teaching slacky or teaching singing and so on. But for me, it's solo, working ensemble with the still guitar, with songs that I grew up with, our played with these old timers, these legends bringing out those songs because if I don't, you know, it might die, it might

fade away. M H m hm m H. Ephemeral is written and assembled by and produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young, and Max Williams. With special thanks to this episode to Daniel Tremblay, Laura Duff, Toby Nova, Ronald Young Jr. And to callin Troy for his ukulele rendition of k Sara Sara. John Troutman's book is Kika Kila, How the Hawaiian steel Guitar Changed the sound of modern music. And to find out what Alan Acock is up to and sign up

for lessons via Skype, visit Kakola Mela dot com. K E k u l A m E l e dot com. Links to these and more at our website dot show Next Time on Ephemeral. Honestly, if it wasn't from my neighbor, I would be dead. It was one o'clock in the more earning. The phone rang and everything was going fast. The phone lines were going down, the electric lines, we're going down. And she said, the firest jumped the freeway. We haven't much time, and that's when I packed everything.

And she's absolutely right. We didn't have much time. When I got down to the end of the driveway or the road there, it was just blazing. Support ephemeral by recommending an episode, leaving a review, or dropping this a line at ephemeral Show. More podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and learn more at ephemeral dot show.