Hawaiian Music & Musicians: An Encyclopedic History

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music

Hawaiian Music & Musicians: An Encyclopedic History Details

This book chronicles Hawaiian music from its roots in ancient chants to the flowering of the musical renaissance in Hawaii. It describes leading personalities and groups, organizations, songs and publications, and discusses the extraordinary popularity of Hawaiian music round the world. There are biographies of musicians from every period of Hawaiian musical history from Henry Berger, David Kalakaua, Queen Liliuokalani, and others of their time, to the great names of the 20th century. There are major articles on chant, slack key, steel guitar, ukulele, himeni, falsetto, Hawaiian orchestras, humor in Hawaiian music, radio, television, the recording industry, and more. Definitive essays tell the story of all the ancient and modern musical instruments, and the most loved and important songs of the last 150 years. Many rare photographs of historical interest are among the illustrations featuring singers, chanters, dancers.

Reviews

During the time living in Hawai'i 5 years I learned to love the music. Once Wall street crashed the islands in 2008 I ended back on the mainland unemployed and homeless, but I realized how my heart and mind were still in the islands and its way of life. I was given an 'ukulele for my birthday and this book is a great reference for melding together the bits and pieces of Hawaiian culture in its music that I do know, learning the history---I love history!--and learning all the foundation of the music. The photos in the center are delightful. For me especially as I saw so many of these musicians play in venues weekly. It is so important this book was written to even clarify what exactly IS Hawaiian music and to establish the important events that developed it over the years. A must music book!

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