Stringed instruments from hawaii series#
Poverty, famine, and a series of natural disasters that led to the collapse of the wine industry made the island a better place to escape from than to. Unfortunately, by the mid 1800s, Madeira wasn’t such a great place to be.
Stringed instruments from hawaii windows#
Because there were no encased windows on the houses in this hot climate, it must have been difficult to not hear strains of music, both day and night. Local musicians strummed waltzes, mazurkas, and folk tunes on the Spanish guitar and a small, guitar-like, four-string instrument called the machête (pronounced “ma-CHET”), also known as the braguinha or the “machéte de Braga” after the city in northern Portugal where the instrument originated. Visitors were often entertained by music played in the streets of Funchal, the island’s bustling port city.
Two centuries ago, Madeira was also a popular tourist spot for European visitors who were drawn to its picturesque landscapes and exotic flora. Grape growing and winemaking have been a staple industry there since the 16th century. But it’s probably best known for Madeira wine, the fortified, sherry-like beverage that became popular because it didn’t spoil on long sea voyages. The heavily forested island (Madeira means “wood” in Portuguese) once had a thriving timber industry and a long history of furniture making. Not unlike the Hawaiian Islands, Madeira has a tropical climate and is part of a volcanic archipelago. Madeira, a small mountainous speck of land in the Atlantic southwest of Portugal, about a 350-mile swim from the coast of North Africa, is the actual birthplace of the beloved uke. In fact, I informed her, the earliest ukes only date back to the mid-1880s. Then, pausing for effect, I added: “And they weren’t invented by the Hawaiians.” Looking like a six year old who has learned that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, my confused friend furrowed her brow and considered the ukuleles hanging on my wall anew. True, the actual history of the ukulele begins on an island, but not one in the Hawaiian chain, nor one in the Pacific Ocean, for that matter. The belief that Hawaii lays sole claim to the ukulele-the instrument that would seem to have grown up over centuries in relative obscurity among the descendants of the Polynesians-is a widely held misconception, and one that I’ve often been obliged to dispel. “When did the Hawaiians invent the ukulele?” a friend of mine asked as I was giving her a tour of my collection of 430-plus vintage ukes.
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