But the history of the instrument, which is sometimes known as
the lap steel because it's played on the lap with one hand
plucking the strings while the other runs a steel bar along the
fretboard, dates back much further than that. The story starts
with a boy named Joseph Kekuku in the 1880s. "Rumor has it, when
he was a schoolboy in Hawaii, he dropped his comb on his guitar
which lay across his lap," said Ann Arbor musician Gerald Ross,
who will play the instrument Saturday at the Fretboard Festival.
|Gerald Ross, 1-2:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by a workshop at 3
p.m., Kalamazoo Valley Museum, 230 N. Rose St., Free. 373-7990.|
Kekuku slid it on the strings and invented a new musical form.
Ross thinks there might a bit of myth in the story, but Kekuku
was the Hawaiian steel guitar's first big star. He was recorded
on the earliest records, toured the world with his guitar in the
early 1900s "and it just took off like gangbusters." The
phenomenon really took root in 1915 during the Panama Pacific
International