Hawaiian music and they wince, remembering syrupy lounge tunes and strident aloha shirts on the Lawrence Welk Show. Waves of pedal steel make them queasy, restless native drums and grass skirts wear them out. There, working cowboys wear feather leis on their battered hats, and park muddy pickups loaded with cattle dogs and hay bales outside diners that serve chili on rice. The music and the dance are not what you've been led to expect. Grass skirts are from Tahiti.
Hawaiian hula is the slow arc of hands, the soft sweep of homemade cloth.
Slack-key guitar, Ki ho'alu, has been practiced for a long time, though it's only recently being heard outside the Islands. Mexican vaqueros brought guitars when they came to Hawaii in the 1830s to instruct the brand-new beef industry in horsemanship and cattle ranching. The Hawaiian cowboys, newly christened paniolos , loved the guitar. But the Mexicans were there only to teach a crash course. When they went home, they left the instruments, but no instructions.