Starting the Work

 

This past week has seen many wonderful reconnections with old ukulele friends, great discussion on ukulele technique and absolutely fascinating archive work.

I've spent three afternoons in the Hawaiian Music Archive on King St right next to Iolani Palace. Jesse, my person at the archive as long as Adam is out of town, told me, that this is apparently the only proper palace in all of Hawaii. The archives are situated under huge Banyan trees and you can wait in the shade outside if the entrance area is too busy.

And this is exactly what we did with Kimo Hussey and his two friends before we transferred over to the MPR at Capitol Modern to do the interview. We talked at length about how Kimo came to play ukulele and how he thinks of how he plays it. Recording video of his playing was done in a flash and this gave me time to have a conversation with Kimo's friend Debbie Guarneiri, who's designing prosthetics for kids without limbs to enable them to play the ukulele. Please check out her project on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UkuleleProsthetics/ 

Monday evening I had gone to Duke’s Waikiki to watch Bryan Tolentino and Halehaku ‚Hale‘ Seabury play. It was great to see them after all these years and Bryan was nice enough to introduce me to Myrna Kamae, Eddie Kamae’s wife, who was also there listening. Myrna has many wonderful stories and I hope to hear more of them in due course. If you’re interested in some of them, you can find clips of her and Eddie’s documentary work on instagram: @eddiekamaesongbook 

On Tuesday night I also reconnected with Mika Kane and Kala’e Camarillo. Mika is the first person to graduate from UH Manoa playing ukulele. It was great to catch up with both of them and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them again soon.

Now, back to the archives: before I arrived they had prepared about 20 boxed of print material to go through and had arranged them in chronological order. By now, I’ve finished going through the box „Ukulele instruction 1912-1924“. I found several method books that I hadn’t been able to get copies of before. One of them is Guckert, E.N. 1917. "The Original Guckert’s Chords for the Ukulele at Sight" and another one is Littig, Frank L. 1923. "Littig’s New Harmony Self Instructor : chords for ukulele, banjuke or taro patch fiddle".

In the Littig method I found a technique description which correlates with a technique Kimo showed me. Exciting! 

I feel I’ve been barely scratching the surface of the archive material, but it’s also showing that after a while the method books tend to repeat themselves and sometimes literally copy each other. Generally, it looks like I haven’t missed any major techniques when I went though the methods I had last year and most of the strokes and strums have found their way into the "Hawaii Etudes“ I published in July. https://amzn.eu/d/2w6EqJ4 

Saturday was another busy ukulele day. First I went to the Ukulele Club of Hawaii in Kaneohe with Sarah & Craig. Had lunch with them afterwards and there was great conversation around ukulele education and some exciting projects starting up on their end. In the afternoon I met with Shawn Yacavone in his ukulele show room and got to play some historic instruments as well as hand made contemporary ukuleles. Live streams of this enjoyable afternoon and the banter I had with Shawn and the friend he had brought along, Joseph, can be watched on my Facebook profile.

And that was my week. I hope you’re enjoying these lab notes. Let me know if you have any questions in regards to the archive material. I’ll do my best to report live.