Uke Hero #1
Manuel Nunes (1843–1922)
‘INVENTOR OF THE ORIGINAL UKULELE’
It is the moustachioed Madeiran immigrant Manuel Nunes who is credited with transforming the machete into the ukulele. This he did by changing the body shape, and altering the tuning to the ‘re-entrant’ g, C, E, A. He arrived in Honolulu in 1879, when aged 36, with his eighteen-year-old wife and four children from his previous marriage. There the couple produced five more offspring. After fulfilling his contract to work the sugar plantations, Nunes started making ukuleles in 1880, and continued for the next 40 years. In the local business directory he described himself as ‘inventor of the original ukulele’, and his sons followed him into the business. One of his apprentices went on to found his own ukulele company, which bears his name to this day. Nunes died aged 79 and is buried in Honolulu’s King Street cemetery.
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A Ukulele History: 1879–1900
[Hawaiians] are exceptionally fond of the guitar, and they play it as a solo instrument, with a tenderness, a softness which speaks well for the delicacy of their feelings ... of late they have taken to the banjo and to that hideous small Portuguese instrument now called [the] ‘taropatch fiddle’.
Manuel Nunes, prolific creator of ukuleles and babies, traded on his royal patronage – in the case of this 1916 newspaper advertisement, nearly a quarter century after the abolition of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Despite such snobbish comments, the ukulele’s popularity spread with amazing speed, and in 1888, just ten years after its arrival, it was being described as ‘the national instrument of Hawaii’. The origins of the word ‘ukulele’ (pronounced ‘oo-koo-lay-lee’ in the Hawaiian language) are still a little misty. While uku literally means ‘insect’ and lele means ‘to fly’, author Jack London wrote in The Cruise of the Snark (1911) that ‘ukulele is the Hawaiian for “jumping flea”, as it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be likened to a young guitar’. This remains the most popular theory, though Queen Lili’uokalani’s preferred explanation is that the word is derived from the Hawaiian meaning ‘a gift from over there’.
(Above) Hawaiian musicians uked up and ready to hula, c.1900. (Below) ‘All back to mine?’ Iolani Palace, pictured in 1880, was where King David Kalakaua, the ‘Merry Monarch’, held his weekly poker nights, with music performed on the fashionable new ukulele.
A Ukulele History: 1879–1900
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