Have you wondered where the steel guitar comes from and why hearing it is like someone rubbing your back in a way that nothing else can? Well I can answer one of those questions.
Before Hawaii was a state it was a kingdom with a king and stuff and they hired Spaniards and such to do work and those Spaniards and had guitars and one day a Hawaaian guy named Joseph Kekuku figured out a much cooler way to play guitar by changing the tuning and using a metal object to slide on the strings for chord changes. This was in 1889 and in 1916 recordings of indigenous Hawaiian music outsold all other music genres in the US.
Did you know in 1993 the US government formally apologized for its role in overthrowing the Hawaiian government a hundred year prior?
John Prine sang,
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
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