Hawaiian steel guitar
Guitarra de acero hawaiana (steel guitar)
- Date
- c. 1885 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lāʻie, Oʻahu, Hawaii, United States
- Credited to
- Joseph Kekuku
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A technique and guitar in which the strings are stopped with a metal bar rather than the fingers, allowing continuous glissandi. Credited to student Joseph Kekuku in Hawaii around 1885.
Kekuku is the traditional inventor, around 1885 at the Kamehameha School; other accounts point to origins in contact with sailors or Portuguese rhythms. The date rests on later testimony.
What it led to
- lap steel, pedal steel and resonator guitars in country and blues
- the electric steel guitar, the first commercial electric guitar (Frying Pan, 1931)
- Hawaiian popular music with mass appeal in the US of the 1910s