Honolulu Theatre for Youth: Joseph Kekuku and the Voice of the Steel Guitar

It’s the late 1800s, a time of invention. Trains, steamboats, cameras, even electricity are new at the King’s palace in Honolulu. Eleven-year-old Joseph Kekuku accidentally strikes the strings of his guitar with a bolt from a railroad track and unlocks a brand new sound. Hawaiian music—and the music of America—will never the same.

Playwright Moses Goods, one of Hawaiʻi’s most prominent theatre artists, in collaboration with Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings, captures the true story of Joseph Kekuku’s invention of the steel guitar (kīkā kila). The multimedia production features a live Hawaiian slide guitar soundtrack and projections as it celebrates innovation, engineering, and the global exchange of ideas and sound.