Hawaiian Music & Musicians: An Encyclopedic History

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.