From the Fall 2013 issue of Fiddler Magazine: "Charley [Kahana] was half Hawaiian and half Native American..., played for dances, busked on a ferryboat, and won several local fiddle contests. But what I found most exciting is that in 1956 he was recorded on what are probably the earliest field recordings of fiddling in the state of Washington. On these tapes he not only talks and plays the fiddle, he also sings “Pop Goes the Weasel” in Chinook Jargon! Charley’s father was John Kahanu, born in Oahu, Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). John worked on a whaling ship, and around 1860 he jumped ship at Esquimault on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He came to the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Northwest Washington, and then moved to Whatcom, on the American mainland, where he went to work in the coal mines. He married Mary Skqualup from the Bellingham Bay area, who was of Clallam and Lummi descent, and had inherited a farm on San Juan Island from her late husband. There were many Hawaiian men, including Hudson’s Bay Company employees, who came to the Northwest in the mid-19th century, and married Native American women. John worked for a sawmill, sold shingles in Victoria, B.C., and also worked on farms in the San Juans. Over the years the name “Kahanu” became “Kahana.” ...In 1877 one of Charley’s neighbors on San Juan Island, named Champeau, held a dance at his house. Charley had never seen or heard a fiddle before; the only musicians he had ever seen played jews harp and banjo... When Charley got home he made a fiddle out of scraps of cedar shakes, with a leather tailpiece, horse tail for the bow, and strings out of thread; eventually his father killed a sheep to make better strings. His first public performance took place in 1878 at Colonel May’s New Year’s ball at East Sound, Orcas Island. In 1879 he played for the Colonel’s dance again. He got his first real fiddle by trading a small canoe to another Indian on Saltspring Island, in British Columbia. (Charley Kahana: Hawaiian/Lummi Fiddler in Washington State, by Vivian T. Williams)
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 02:24:12 +0000
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