In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Steel Guitar 4 Steel guitar, slide guitar, bottleneck guitar, Hawaiian guitar, lap-steel, pedalsteel , Dobro—these terms are commonly used today, but what do they mean? Not even those who make or play the many variants of the instrument agree on a basic terminology. This brief chapter attempts to clear some of the confusion that surrounds the instruments employed by the musicians of the Keith and Jewell Dominions. The steel guitar takes its name from the bar, sometimes called the “tone bar,” that right-handed players hold in the left hand and place lightly on one or more strings to make notes. The first bars were made of steel, thus the name of the instrument.Although steel remains the most popular material , today bars are made from a variety of materials including glass, brass, zirconium, plastics, and ceramics. Similarly, the materials from which the instrument itself might be made include wood, plastics, brass, aluminum, and even modern synthetic composites.The materials from which the steel guitar is made have nothing to do with its name. The instrument is named for the most common bar material: steel. The steel guitar is said to have been invented in Hawaii in the late nineteenth century, exactly when and by whom are specifics that may be debated at length. The most common claim is that Joseph Kekuku began to use a metal object to make notes on a guitar at age eleven in 1885.1 The popular story is that while walking along a railroad track strumming his guitar he picked up a bolt and ran it across the strings of his instrument to produce the characteristic slurred, singing sound of the steel guitar. Kekuku was by no means the first person to make notes on a string instrument in this manner; similar methods have been used in Africa and Asia for centuries. In Hawaii, the instrument became known as kikā kila (kikā: guitar; kila: steel); in the mainland United States it became known as the “Hawaiian steel guitar,” “Hawaiian guitar,” or simply the “steel 54 chapter 4 guitar.”The term “Hawaiian guitar” is another source of confusion. Early in the twentieth century, the term was sometimes used for the instrument now known as the ukulele. Today,“Hawaiian guitar” is sometimes (many would say erroneously so) used to denote“slack key”guitar, the Hawaiian manner of finger-picking the standard guitar (usually an acoustic version) in any number of open tunings. While Kekuku’s claim to be the inventor of steel guitar may be disputed by some, it is clear that he did much to develop steel guitar technique and popularize the instrument. In 1893–94, while a student at the Kamehameha School for Boys in Honolulu, he experimented at length in the machine shop to make a bar suitable for his technique. After trying several shapes, he ultimately settled for a slim, solid-steel cylinder about four inches long. He began to realize that the kikā kila technique was more than a novelty and worked hard to develop a degree of mastery. On a steel guitar the strings are raised high above the frets (or position markers). When the bar is placed on the strings to make notes, the strings do not touch the fretboard. Steel guitars are played horizontally. Because the pitch of notes played on the steel guitar is determined by the placement of the bar and not restricted by fixed frets, an adept steel guitarist may execute subtle variations in pitch, seamless glissandi, and unrestricted vibrato—techniques that result in sounds that the player of a standard, fretted guitar may approximate but cannot duplicate. Kekuku became an accomplished steel guitarist and did much to popularize the sound of the instrument, presenting concert performances to his classmates at the Kamehameha School for Boys and to the general public at various venues in Honolulu.2 Many other Hawaiians soon took up the instrument. Kekuku became a professional musician and, in 1904, departed for the United States mainland to work as an entertainer. Many other Hawaiian musicians came to the U.S. mainland to perform too—some before Kekuku—and Hawaiian music and dance became quite popular during the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1915, the Panama-Pacific Exposition was held in San Francisco to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. It proved to be a major showcase for Hawaiian music and fueled an interest that quickly blossomed into a popular music craze of unprecedented magnitude. More than seventeen...

Share