The Center for Ethnomusicology Spring Colloquium Series Presents:
Kika Kila: Hawaiian Guitars and Steel Bars in the Era of the OverthrowSoon after the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili'oukalani's
government and U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898, Joe Kekuku and other
Native Hawaiian guitarists embarked upon a series of transcontinental
journeys that continue to ripple and resonate. This presentation will
explore the origins of the Hawaiian (steel) guitar and situate its
development within both the proliferation of a rich guitar culture in
the islands, and within the accompanying political turmoil that led to
and followed the overthrow of Ka?naka Maoli rule in the Hawaiian
islands.
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John W. Troutman is Assistant Profesor of History, University of Louisiana, Lafayette. He received his master’s degree in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, and his doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests include multiple facets of American Indian history as well as studies of race, culture, and music in the United States in the twentieth century. Before his appointment as assistant professor at UL Lafayette, he was the 2006-2007 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Americas in Middletown, Connecticut. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Director of the Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History in Chicago. His first book, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1890-1934, was published in the spring of 2009 by the University of Oklahoma Press. He has published articles and book reviews in numerous journals, including Ethnohistory, Western Historical Quarterly, Louisiana History Journal and Museum Anthropology, and his essays are featured in a number of edited volumes and other works.