Interesting Academic Paper On Steel Guitar Origins

[Mark Helm]

Howdy, Folks!

I sometimes contribute to an academic paper "warehouse" of sorts and so I get to download a certain amount each year.

I recently came across one called "Across the Pacific: The transformation of the steel guitar from Hawaiian folk instrument to popular music mainstay" that challenges the Kekuku story to an extent and is quite interesting.

If you're interested in a copy, shoot me your email and I'll send one over. It was written by a couple of guys from the Univ. of Adelaide in Australia. Here's the abstract:

"This project examines the transformation in the early 20th century of the steel guitar from a Hawaiian folk instrument to a mainstay of American popular music. The steel guitar – here characterised as a prepared instrument and a performance style whereby a guitar is positioned face up on the lap of a seated player who stops the strings by means of a steel bar – is a late 19th century Hawaiian adaption of the Spanish guitar. Its original role was that of a solo and accompanying instrument in the performance of Hawaiian music, which was itself an ethnic music tradition that had developed under American and European colonial influences. Once Hawaiian music was exposed to Western audiences in the early 20th century, its popularity grew rapidly and it evolved from an ethnic curiosity to a global popular music phenomenon. The steel guitar was at first synonymous with Hawaiian music, but just as the music became more global in its outreach, so too did the instrument itself. The steel guitar came to be gradually divorced from its original, ethnic Hawaiian context, and was incorporated steadily into a range of mainland American popular music stylings. This study examines the origins of the steel guitar, the evolution of early steel guitar style and the context in which the evolution occurred."

[Brad Bechtel]

Already hosted here. The author is Dr. Guy Cundell.

https://b0b.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2 ... acific.pdf

[Mark Helm]

Glad you have it! Do you have the rest of his papers on the steel guitar?

[Brad Bechtel]

These are the articles that Dr. Cundell has hosted on this site:

https://b0b.com/wp/articles/guy-cundell/

* Across the Pacific: The transformation of the steel guitar from Hawaiian folk instrument to popular music mainstay
* Across the South: The origins and development of the steel guitar in western swing
* In Search of the Lost Chord: The Emergence of the Dominant Seventh Steel Guitar Tuning
* Hot and Sweet: The role of the Hawaiian steel guitar in the emergence of western swing
* Steel Guitar Blag: Origins of Leon McAuliffe’s iconic ‘Steel Guitar Rag’ lie in its close similarity to Sylvester Weaver’s ‘Guitar Rag’

Note that these are hosted on b0b's personal site, not the Steel Guitar Forum itself.

[Mark Helm]

Those are all the ones I read. Interesting stuff!!

[Tim Toberer]

Here is a lesser known resource geared more towards pedal steel. https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/0r967514v