In 1889, just a few years before Hawai‘i was annexed by the U.S., Kekuku was a high school student growing up in Lāʻie on the island of Oahu. In the decades that followed, Hawai‘i would be radically transformed by colonization, missionaries and global trade. Cook’s arrival marked the beginning of North American and European interest in the Hawaiian islands as an ideal mid-Pacific stop for ships sailing between the U.S. The Hawaiian kingdom came into contact with westerners in the 18th-century when British explorer James Cook first sailed there. “His ingenuity resulted in the total kind of sonic transformation of the music that would become known as country, blues, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, and other genres as well,” says Troutman.īefore its soft, lilting sound became inseparable from music in the American South, the steel guitar captivated listeners in Hawaii, who were living through one of the most tumultuous chapters in the islands’ history. The instrument is played on the lap, and the guitarist plucks the cords instead of strumming them while running a steel bar over the neck. After inventing the Hawaiian steel guitar in his high school dorm, Kekuku became a world-touring guitar soloist. To music historian and curator John Troutman of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the steel guitar, an instrument invented by a Hawaiian teenager named Joseph Kekuku, isn’t just notable for being wildly popular, but for how it influenced various genres of American music. In 1916, 78 rpm records featuring an indigenous Hawaiian instrument outsold every other genre of music in the United States. mainland and the ukelele and steel guitar were introduced to the public at expositions, Hawaiian steel guitar music grew wildly popular.

As Hawaiian steel guitarists started touring the U.S.

At the turn of the century, the lilting sound of the Hawaiian steel guitar captivated Americans fascinated with the tropical islands that were newly annexed by the U.S.

Inventor steel