Quote:
Originally posted by azasadny
I love the ukulele and the mandolin, very similar sound and very cool, especially when paired with a banjo.
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I should look this up before posting but I heard the Portuguese brought the mandolin to the islands and the ukulele was developed from it.
I had a friend who was a native Hawaiian that had several beautiful Koa wood ukuleles... unfortunately they warped and cracked
possibly he flew them back and forth from the mainland and the islands too many times.
He taught me to play several Hawaiian songs on guitar (wish I knew what happened to the sheet music, hope it's kicking around the house somewhere)
He also turned me on to a lot of the good local Hawaiian music... if your only experience with Hawaiian music is what you see in movies and TV you owe it to yourself to check it out (if you are a music lover)
Edit: Some research shows the Portuguese brought over this instrument that was the inspiration for the ukulele (not the mandolin).
The cavaquinho (pron. /ka.va.'ki.ɲu/ in Portuguese) is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings. It is also called machimbo, machim, machete (in the Portuguese Atlantic islands and Brazil), manchete or marchete, braguinha or braguinho.