We’ll soon have a chance to explore music history, some not very well-known music history, at least not here. Joseph Kekuku is credited with serendipitously creating the steel guitar. There’s history and legend involved with this origin story. Both history and legend are explored in the production “Joseph Kekuku and the Voice of the Steel Guitar,” written by Moses Goods and produced by Honolulu Theatre for Youth. That company is bringing the show to Northwest Arkansas as part of its first-ever national tour.
There will be a public performance Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11 a.m. at the Jones Center in Springdale. It’s part of the Jones Center’s first FamJam Saturday. Eric Johnson, artistic director of Honolulu Theatre for Youth and director of the show, says one of the most fascinating elements of Joseph Kekuku’s story is that he created this revolutionary instrument when he was 11.
Johnson: And this is one of the things that really brought us to the story. We do theater for families and for young people, and when he was a young man, and there are several versions of the story, both told in the play, but he found a new way of playing the guitar, which involved the slide and what’s now known as the Hawaiian steel guitar.
And basically, he stumbled across this idea as a young person at 12 and then spent his whole life refining and learning and building guitars and creating the techniques that really changed certainly American music, but also global music at the time.
Kellams: You mentioned there are two versions, sort of two origin stories, both told in the production. Is this because legends can grow up over a century or so?
Johnson: That’s right. Yeah. And he never clarified exactly which version was real, but one of them involves him sitting by a railroad and a railroad spike hitting his guitar and him sort of taking the inspiration from there.
And what we do know is that he was a very curious child and he was very innovative and persistent in his innovation of taking the guitar and reimagining it in different ways. And that’s really at the center of the production that we’re doing.
Kellams: Yeah. Wherever the truth lies in the legend or whatever, it was sort of a serendipitous experience that he decided to explore. And I think that’s the really interesting nugget here.
Johnson: Yeah. And I think that the fact that he explored that for the rest of his life, really, he invented this new way of playing. It became all the rage in his lifetime. And then he spent the rest of his life teaching people about this form of playing. He traveled all over the world, played for kings and queens in Europe, was playing in vaudeville houses with Black musicians all up and down the country.
And one of the interesting things is a lot of the early blues players credit the Hawaiian style with thinking about sort of techniques that they were using in that guitar playing. And with the vaudeville circuit around that time, there was actual crossover between lots of different cultures and lots of different types of players who were picking up some of these techniques.
But a lot of it’s a story that a lot of people don’t know that began in Hawaii and was taken on the road by these Hawaiian musicians. And Joseph was sort of the father of this particular style of guitar playing.
Kellams: When we see the production, what will we see, what will we hear? What will we experience?
Johnson: This is wonderful question. So we’re really delighted that Mālie Lyman, who is one of the foremost steel guitar players, I would say, certainly in Hawaii, maybe even around, she’s very young, has been playing professionally from childhood all the way up, and she’s going to be onstage live playing the steel guitar. And so you’re going to be hearing the instrument and a lot of Hawaiian music right there in the piece. She’s also acting in the piece, which is great fun.
And then you’ll get to meet some of the characters along the way. And the piece itself starts with a big rock ’n’ roll number, which seems counterintuitive in some ways, but we kind of explore all of the legacy, not just of Joseph in his time, but what it meant to pass on some of these traditions to the future generations.
Kellams: The innovator, the inventor, the father of steel slide and Hawaiian guitar. Is his story well known? I couldn’t help but notice it took the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame 15 years to induct him into their Hall of Fame.
Johnson: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s a piece of history that is not well known. And we’re really honored to be taking, just telling that piece of the story.
One of the things, an interesting little tidbit is his steel guitar, actually in the year he passed away, was turned into the first electric guitar ever made. So the steel guitar is actually also the predecessor to electric instruments. So if you trace that lineage back, it’s really amazing to think about all of that coming from this little 12-year-old boy and his innovation. So I think that that is a story that’s not told often enough.
We’ve been so lucky. At the center of this creation is Moses Goods, who’s a local playwright and performer, and he helped develop the piece. But then Jack Johnson and his foundation has been an advocate and supporter of this story getting out there. There’s a lot of people here locally in Hawaii who have recently discovered this story and are trying to sort of bring it to light and make sure people understand a piece of the lineage of the music that we all listen to and love so much.
Kellams: I want to ask about Honolulu Theatre for Youth. You’re there in a metro area of more than a million people. There’s plenty of folks there, but you have something like this production, or “Tales of the Sun and Moon” that will go on its first national tour. Why is it important for Honolulu Theatre for Youth to take productions to the rest of us?
Johnson: That’s a great question. I think, well, Joseph himself toured all over the world and brought this piece of Pacific Island culture and Hawaiian culture to other parts of the world. And I think that we’re very much continuing in that legacy, that the United States is such a vast country with so many different types of stories and culture and music. And so to be able to bring a little piece of the story of Hawaii other places, I think, is just a celebration of what exists out there in the world.
And what we’re finding is it’s wonderful to be able to take these stories from our place other places. The cast is super excited to explore Arkansas and to meet local people and see how our story intersects with the families and children and adults there in your community.
And I think this is a really exciting story for music lovers of any ilk, can be an inspirational story for young people. And I think that we’re hoping that we can bring that little bit of inspiration and remind people, at the time, Joseph was from a very, very rural part of the island in the most isolated landmass on Earth. And the ripples from this invention and his life spread out all over the world. And I think that that’s what we hope, young people and their families can dream big and get a little piece of inspiration from the story.
Eric Johnson is artistic director for Honolulu Theatre for Youth and the director of the theater’s production of “Joseph Kekuku and the Voice of the Steel Guitar,” written by Moses Goods. It’s about to embark on its first national tour this fall, and there will be a public performance of the show Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11 a.m. at the Jones Center in Springdale. It’s part of the Jones Center’s first FamJam Saturday of the fall. FamJam tickets are $10 for Jones Center members, $12 for nonmembers, and those tickets include access to ice skating and swimming that Saturday, as well as a themed craft activity after the show.
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