(ABOVE) AlyssaBeth Archambault in LA’s Palace Theatre, where her great-grandfather Samuel K. Nainoa once performed. To her right is Nainoa’s lap steel guitar.
On my first visit to Hawaii about twenty-two years ago-a solo endeavor lasting several weeks-I sat next to a young Hawaiian man on the flight from Los Angeles. He was born and raised on Oahu, he said, had attended Brigham Young University and was just coming back from a mission. I told him I was traveling to connect with the Hawaiian side of my family and that I was nervous because not only would I be meeting them for the first time, I was as haole as someone could look. My mom had put me in touch with an uncle who would be my host, I said, and he owned a restaurant on the Windward side. The man looked at this blonde-haired, blue-eyed SoCal girl and asked, "Who's your uncle?"
"Ahi," I said.
"Oh?" he replied skeptically. "Where does he live?"
"Punaluu."
He puffed out a laugh. "That's my dad," he said.
Before long I was riding in a car to Uncle Ahi's house with my newfound cousin, the first of many relatives I would meet.
As a child I'd paid little attention to the old photos and heirlooms hanging in my home in Long Beach. Maybe my elders had been trying to nudge me toward my ancestors all along, but I was more interested in building treehouses and making art. In my early twenties, though, I started asking questions. Before long I was on a plane, meeting relatives I never knew existed on a journey that's taken me to Hawaii and all around North America, following in my ancestors' footsteps.
Among the many fascinating stories in my family history, one especially captivated me. My great-grandfather, Samuel K. Nainoa, was born in Laie, Oahu in 1877. Musically gifted, he learned violin and guitar early on. Nainoa would often play with his older cousin, Joseph Kekuku, also a guitarist. As the story goes, the two were playing together when Kekuku, then 11, leaned over to pick up his guitar. A metal comb fell out of his shirt pocket and hit the strings, which resonated in a most unusual way. Kekuku combined this fortuitous accident with what he heard from Nainoa's violin playing to invent the Hawaiian lap steel guitar.
Kekuku's innovation spread quickly through the kingdom. Later, in the early twentieth century, Kekuku and Nainoa, along with a handful of early adopters of the instrument, traveled to the US continent to play the vaudeville circuit. Thousands were learning Hawaiian lap steel guitar, and audiences would line up around the block to hear it. That first wave of Hawaiian troubadours changed not only American music but influenced various genres around the world. Even today, the silky lap steel guitar is a signature sound in Hawaiian music.
I've made many trips to Hawaii since that first visit. In 2017 I took a break while I was doing an artist residency in Pennsylvania. Then a stranger who'd come across my research online contacted me about a collection of sheet music her neighbor had given her, which turned out to be associated with Kekuku from when he was teaching steel guitar in Chicago during the late 1920s.
The unexpected gift reinvigorated me, and I decided to go "on tour." I compiled a long list of cities where Kekuku and Nainoa had performed and hit the road—solo. Living out of my camper truck for two months, I crisscrossed the continent, visiting dozens of theater sites, historical societies and libraries.
Five years later, in 2022, I began another expedition, this one by train around the United States, with a stop in Washington, DC to attend an event that would honor my family's legacy: Nainoa's Rickenbacker guitar is on display in a twenty-year-long exhibition, Entertainment Nation at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
A few months before my train trip, a woman on the East Coast saw one of my social media posts about my family and messaged me. She said she was on a similar quest, researching her great-grandfather, James Shaw, and his Hawaiian music career. She went on to say that our great-grandfathers were colleagues in Hawaii and played together in the prestigious Kawaihau Glee Club. I added Boston to my itinerary to meet with her, and we discovered that we're related-no surprise really-and we've stayed in touch.
I often imagine how our great-grandfathers would feel knowing that their great-granddaughters would find one another over a century later-because of them.
Follow AlyssaBeth's travels at continentaljourney.com.Opens external link to page that may not meet accessibility guidelines