Real Life Rock Top 10: April 2023
Special Maui Edition!
Both with touring bands, sheet music, and on cylinders, in the first two decades of the twentieth century the most popular music in America came from Hawaii. Hawaiian steel guitar was the dominant sound—which in turn led to the blues slide guitar that in the hands of Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, and other singular Mississippi and Texas players would emerge as deep and expressive a music as America has ever produced.
That sound is still there in the ambient music on Maui today. What you might hear playing in stores or coming out of storefronts, in restaurants, in hotel lobbies, or for that matter apparently floating in the air, courtesy of some invisible jukebox—is, as if there is some natural island affinity, reggaefied Hawaiian music and Hawaiianized reggae. And “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which has been a feature of the Hawaiian air itself ever since Elvis sang it in Blue Hawaii in 1961. You hear it everywhere, programmed by whatever music service businesses are subscribing to, by Elvis or hotel or restaurant singers, and it always sounds great.