“Slide” is not a “guitar” at all, it’s a method of playing a regular Spanish guitar using a metal cylinder slid over the left hand pinkie, to make a sound imitating the steel guitar.Īnother misnomer: on the mainland in the early days we said, Hawaiian Guitar. The name implies that there are no other manufacturers (Weissenborn, National, and many others).Īs if we’re not confused enough, we now hear people calling it a slide guitar and in that they are totally wrong. That’s not really correct, because Dobro is a manufacturer’s name. But they referred to the steel guitar as a Dobro and still do. The G tuning is still popular in that genre of music to this day. music took the instrument in, but tuned it more to suit the banjo player, to G Major low bass (1-6) D.B.G.D.G.D. In later years the players of blues, bluegrass, folk, etc. That name has been used on Joseph’s plaque in the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. Possession of that title meant they were “ali’i”. Translation: Keeper of the nets that surround the kingdom of Kame-hameha. This is a title the family held in the service of the king. What I was told at press time was: Joseph Kekuku’upena-kana’iaupunio kamehameha Apuakehau. Members of the Kekuku family have not yet agreed on the correct form. It was originally tuned A Major low bass (1-6) E.C#.A.E.A.E, which has three strings tuned the same as the Spanish guitar. It was originally a 6-string wooden guitar built to be a Spanish guitar, but converted to a steel guitar by inserting a metal converter nut (adapter nut) (extension nut) over the nut at the headstock to raise the strings about a half inch off the fretboard.
But if you want to go first class, you’ll call it a steel guitar. That’s how it got stuck with lapsteel which is still much used. When mainlanders first saw it, they didn’t know what to call it, so they reported that it was held on the lap and played with a steel bar. The original name, given in Hawai’i where Joseph Kekuku invented it around 1889, is: Kika Kila (geetah-steel-ah). It has so many slang expressions, no wonder the public is not sure yet what it is.
In addition to a history of the steel guitar, I want to give you my school-teacher rant about properly naming the steel guitar. “ The Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Its Great Hawaiian Musicians.” By Lorene Ruymar, HGSA founding member and author of
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