Kika Kila by John W. Troutman

Author:John W. Troutman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

FIGURE 39. Boys and girls enrolled in Hawaiian guitar schools all over the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This conservatory appears to have been located in Omaha, Nebraska. Courtesy of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

FIGURE 40. The Electone-Settes, an all-girl band active in the mid-1940s, featured two Eddie Alkire students and a nice variety of steel guitars: a Gibson double-necked console on the left, four Epiphone Electars, and a double-necked National console on the right. Courtesy of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

During the Depression, many families were made intimately aware of the Hawaiian guitar through the efforts of door-to-door salespeople. After Eddie Alkire left Oahu and the Honolulu Conservatory of Music in Cleveland to form his own company and compete against them, he distributed to his teachers a guide for selling the instrument (and his lessons) to parents. It provides them with a strategy for getting in the door: “When you start to work in the morning (8:00 to 9:00 A.M.) and make your first call, find out about the next several houses that have children. A successful approach is to say, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Blank. I came to talk with you about your children. Do you folks like music? Are your children interested in music?’ Thus conveying an interest in the mother’s children, which is the easiest way to arouse the mother’s interest in your case.”144 The salesperson is then instructed to find out when the husband will be home, and to schedule an evening appointment when both parents are available. The guide presupposes that women are staying home and men are working, demonstrating not only gendered assumptions about the family but also a targeting of the middle class. At the evening meeting, the guide then instructs the salesperson to

go to work immediately with the child… . Point out to the child the advantages and the pleasure that can be obtained from studying music, the entertainment which the whole family can enjoy, etc. Furthermore, a child has practically no sales resistance. You can sell a child almost anything. You must sell the child first… . After having sold the child, give your attention to the parents. You might open with, “Would you, Mr. and Mrs. Blank, like to see your child have a musical education? Your child is at a good age to begin learning. He (or she) seems very much interested and wants to learn to play. Don’t you, Junior?” And when the child tells the parents, “Yes,” he wants to learn to play, the parent’s [sic] can’t do much else but consent, unless for some reason or another they absolutely cannot afford the lessons. If you think the parents can pay for lessons, continue your sales talk.145

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