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Cândido Drummond de Vasconcellos (fl. 1841-188?) was just such an accomplished machete player. According to the Funchal newspaper O Defensor, Drummond’s performance at an 1841 concert was “listened to with the greatest attention” and received “thunderous applause, the general opinion being that it would be difficult to find a rival for Mr. Drummond.” Remarkably, the music of Drummond survives, preserved in a manuscript of machete and guitar duets dated 1846 that surfaced in Madeira in the 1990s.
 
The appeal of this other-island music was not lost on contemporary Hawaiian listeners. Scarcely two weeks after the arrival of the Ravenscrag, an article entitled “Portuguese Musicians” appeared in the Hawaiian Gazette:

“During the past week a band of Portuguese musicians, composed of Madeira Islanders recently arrived here, have been delighting the people with nightly street concerts. The musicians are true performers on their strange instruments, which are a kind of cross between a guitar and banjo, but which produce very sweet music in the hands of the Portuguese minstrels. We confess to having enjoyed the music ourselves and hope to hear more of it.”

Advertisement for Madeira Wine, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, August 30, 1879. (Hawaii State Library) Advertisements for Dias and Nunes “machets,” O Luso Hawaiiano, August 15, 1885. (Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii) Advertisement for Espirito Santo’s “Guitar Factory,” Aurora Hawaiiana, August 3, 1889. (Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii)

However, little more was heard from the Madeirans, who under the terms of their three-year contracts shipped out to plantations on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai. Most Ravenscrag passengers did not return to Honolulu until the early 1880s, when they resumed their former trades as “mechanics, cobblers, tinkers and all sorts” since few—if any—were agriculturists.

Among the first to settle in Honolulu were cabinetmakers Augusto Dias (1842-1915), Manuel Nunes (1843-1922), and Jose do Espirito Santo (1850-1905). By 1886, all three had opened shops making furniture and stringed instruments, including guitars, five-string rajãoes, and machetes—the latter two referred to as taro-patch fiddles. Within three years Dias, Nunes, and Espirito Santo would create a hybrid instrument that combined the small size and figure-eight body shape of the machete with the “my-dog-has-fleas” tuning (sans fifth string) of the rajão. It was called the ‘ukulele.

Crafted from the indigenous Hawaiian wood Acacia koa, the ‘ukulele made its debut in Island society during a party aboard the British yacht Nyanza at Honolulu in 1889, introduced by a trio of young women that included Princess Victoria Kaiulani. Due in part to royal patronage (Kaiulani’s uncle, King Kalakaua, was also a player) and the association of koa wood with aloha aina or love of the land, the ‘ukulele quickly assumed a Hawaiian character and an unprecedented popularity with the native population.
 
The identities of the first ‘ukulele players are mostly unrecorded, submerged within anonymous groups like “the Hawaiian Quintette Club” and “the famous Taro-Patch Quartette.” Nevertheless, the names of William Aeko (fl. 1893-1915), Mekia Kealakai (1867-1944), and Ernest Kaai (1881-1962) have surfaced as early proponents of Hawaiian music and the ‘ukulele. They were performers (Kealakai and Kaai were also teachers) with lengthy careers who played important roles in the spread of popular Hawaiian culture.

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© 2007 by John King and Jim Tranqauda.
All images collected, digitized and © 2007 by John King.