More Hawaiian Mando Mania

[delsbrother]

From John King's NALU website:

The Royal Hawaiian Troubadours, circa 1919

John thinks this is a mandola.. I'm thinking it may be, but it may also be some kind of freaky Portuguese thing. I see neither tailpiece nor bridge pins, which makes me think tied gut strings..

Any of you organologists out there venture a guess?

Darrell

[delsbrother]

Or, OK, here's one that might be slightly easier... Or not.

From harpguitars.net: King Benny Nawahi's Gibson xxxx?

Looks like a uke-y fingering there..

[hokelore]

Hard to tell without enlarging the pic, but the first one looks like a Portuguese guiterra.

tim

[kww]

I'd bet a bandurria. Don't guittaras usually have those weird vertical tuners?

[delsbrother]

John says it's not portuguese.. and he knows a lot about portuguese uke relatives, so I'm inclined to believe him.. But ?? Laud? Octavina?

[hokelore]

Yeah, guiterras do have the strange tuners. I can't see it well enough to tell if it has those or not. Laud is a possiblility, I think bandurrias are smaller.

[delsbrother]

OK, here's another one from the 'bay:



Vega? Regal? Something Portuguese? Latin? Or none of the above?

[Keith Miller]

I would say its not a bandurria, far to big for that more likely a laud
Keith

[Paul Hostetter]

I bet the item in this photo is a banduria (usually spelled with one R in the Philippines), which comes in a variety of sizes there.



I'll also wager the player holding it is Filipino. That's the Royal Hawaiian Troubadors, led by Ernest Ka'ai, who made the first recording of Queen Lidia Kamekeha Liliuokalani's famous Aloha Oe in 1905, covered in 1961 by Elvis Presley. Like Tau Moe, the Royal Hawaiian Troubador's "beat" was the Far East: India - Phillipines - Japan. This photo is from 1919.

Many Filipino bands were working this genre at the time:





The instrument on the Johnny Holiday CD looks to be a Vega mandocello. These came as a five-course instrument.

[Paul Hostetter]

PS: Here's Dave Apollon's "Filipini Boyfriends" band. Bandurias and all kinds of whatnot:



Mostly Lyon and Healy, some impressions thereof.

[delsbrother]

Wow, thanks for the great Apollon photo, Paul! Do you know if any of the band members' names are listed anywhere?

I love that 2 point flat-top (L&H? Laud?) with the big inlaid butterfly pickguard. Were those pickguards common to any known US makers? I think the bandurria on the left has one too. Nowadays I think rondalla players get their instruments from the Pac Rim (or, Spain?). I wonder if back then US makers in Chicago, Boston, etc. provided them with instruments.. But I think that's a different topic!

I don't know about that RHT photo.. John says this is a different group (sans Kaai). You might be right about the player being Filipino, but he looks Hawaiian to me (I'm half Filipino, and both of my parents were from Hawaii - tho I don't know if that makes me more qualified to judge ethnicity in 90 year old photos). It looks like the peghead has those funky Portuguese tuners, so that makes me lean in that direction, but John didn't think so. Filipinos also have an instrument they call a mandola that bears little resemblance to the mandola we know..