Early Hawaiian guitar music and early Jazz followed similar patterns of development.
Until the mid '20s, both were pigeonholed as colourful ethnic novelties, musical curios which were mainly confined to the then-proliferating vaudeville circuits. This was an environment where musicians of both genres, working without amplification before large and often noisy audiences, had to make full use of flashy, attention grabbing tricks and effects.
If you failed to amuse the customers, it was ‘goodnight nurse’ and ‘twenty three skidoo’! The Hawaiian style act often included the sound of the steel scraping along the fret edges, percussive breaks on the body of the instrument, exaggerated left hand glissandi, twirling the ukulele without interrupting the strum pattern, chicken noises etc. Jazz men discovered that ersatz jungle and barnyard effects, over-the-top brass growls, colourful muting, slippery trombonology, slapping of the bass, vulgar tuba solos, banjo breaks and zany scatological vocals could heighten the level of applause and lead to more stable employment.
Many of these items may sound strange to those who love the later, more sophisticated style of the so-called “Golden Years” but it would be impossible to really appreciate the greatness of those later players without an awareness of how it all began. |
