Ukulele History: Portuguese Roots and Hawaiian Identity

The ukulele traces its ancestry to small Portuguese instruments that immigrants from Madeira brought to Hawaiʻi in 1879. Hawaiian musicians and makers reshaped those influences during the 1880s, while royal patronage helped establish the new instrument in local music and hula. Its ancestors were Portuguese, but the recognizable ukulele took shape, name, sound, and cultural identity in Hawaiʻi. 

Madeira had a long tradition of small plucked instruments. The machete, also called the braguinha or machete de Braga, was a compact four-string instrument with a guitar-like body. The larger five-string rajão belonged to the same Madeiran musical environment.

The relationship between these instruments and the ukulele is more complex than a simple name change. Early ukuleles closely resembled the machete in size and body shape, while their tuning drew on the rajão’s upper strings. Ukulele Magazine’s history of the instrument notes that the ukulele adopted the G-C-E-A tuning of the rajão’s top four strings, reinforcing the idea that it developed from a combination of Madeiran influences rather than as a direct copy of one instrument. 

This distinction matters because the ukulele was not merely a Portuguese instrument renamed in Hawaiʻi. It was a new local development built with several existing ideas.

The British ship Ravenscrag reached Honolulu Harbor in August 1879 after sailing from Madeira with more than 400 Portuguese contract workers and their families. Among the passengers were cabinetmakers Manuel Nunes, Augusto Dias, and José do Espírito Santo, as well as musician João Fernandes.

Fernandes is connected to the best-known arrival story. After the passengers landed, he reportedly played a borrowed machete in celebration. A Honolulu newspaper soon described the newly arrived Madeiran musicians giving street performances on instruments that sounded sweet in their hands.

The event introduced local audiences to a style of playing that would become part of Hawaiʻi’s musical life. Ukulele Magazine’s account of the Ravenscrag arrival distinguishes Fernandes, the celebrated player, from the craftsmen who later built instruments.

No single person can be identified as the ukulele's proven inventor. Nunes, Dias, and Espírito Santo are widely recognized as pioneering makers because each established a Honolulu workshop and produced small string instruments for the local market. By 1888, all three were making instruments in Hawaiʻi, according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Manuel Nunes later described himself as the instrument’s inventor, but surviving records and instruments do not support a single moment of invention. Historian Jim Tranquada notes that early examples vary considerably in decoration, headstock shape, materials, and construction. Those differences point to gradual development by several makers and musicians rather than one finished design created at once.

The most accurate answer is:

• João Fernandes helped introduce the sound and playing style.

• Manuel Nunes, Augusto Dias, and José do Espírito Santo were central early makers.

• Hawaiian musicians and audiences shaped how the instrument was played, named, and understood.

• No single inventor or first ukulele has been conclusively documented.

Hawaiʻi transformed Portuguese musical material into a distinctly Hawaiian instrument through construction, language, performance, and cultural adoption. This process explains why the ukulele can have Portuguese roots and still be accurately described as Hawaiian.

Early makers did not follow one fixed pattern. Surviving instruments show elements associated with nineteenth-century Madeira alongside new choices made in Hawaiʻi. Some retained light-colored soundboards and ornate Madeiran decoration, while others used local forms, materials, and headstock designs.

One of the most important changes was the use of koa, a hardwood native to Hawaiʻi and closely connected with the Hawaiian monarchy. Koa gave local instruments a visible Hawaiian identity and a distinctive construction material. It also separated Hawaiian-made ukuleles from their Madeiran relatives.

The musical adaptation was equally important. Unlike traditional Hawaiian instruments rooted in older Indigenous musical and ceremonial practices, the ukulele entered Hawaiʻi through nineteenth-century cultural exchange. Hawaiian players did not preserve it as a foreign curiosity. They incorporated it into local vocal music, developed their own rhythmic approaches, and used it alongside the guitar and other Hawaiian instruments. 

The ukulele became Hawaiian through what people did with it, not through geography alone.

King David Kalākaua helped move the ukulele from immigrant workshops into the cultural life of the Hawaiian Kingdom. A musician and supporter of Hawaiian arts, Kalākaua welcomed musical innovation while promoting Hawaiian performance traditions during a period of intense foreign pressure.

The instrument found a place at royal gatherings and in Hula dance performances. It did not replace older instruments such as Pahu Drums but added a new melodic and rhythmic voice to Hawaiian performance. The Met’s historical record describes how royal patronage supported its use in hula accompaniment. Photographs from the period also show members of Kalākaua’s circle with ukuleles and related instruments.

This royal support mattered for two reasons. It gave the instrument prestige and placed the ukulele within a living Hawaiian cultural practice. By the end of the nineteenth century, people no longer viewed it only as a Madeiran import. It had become part of Hawaiian musical identity.

Queen Liliʻuokalani also belonged to this musical world. She was an accomplished composer and the author of “Aloha ʻOe,” although popular histories sometimes overstate her individual role in the ukulele’s adoption. The wider story involves royal patronage, Hawaiian musicians, instrument makers, hula performers, and audiences, not one person alone.

The most familiar translation of ʻukulele is “jumping flea,” usually linked to the rapid movement of a player’s fingers. The exact origin of the name remains unsettled, and historical accounts preserve several explanations.

The Met also notes another proposed connection: the name could have been influenced by ʻukēkē, the Hawaiian mouth bow. These competing accounts show why the safest historical wording is not “this is exactly how the instrument was named,” but “these are the principal explanations preserved in the record.”

The spelling ʻukulele begins with an ʻokina, a Hawaiian consonant that marks a glottal stop. English-language writing commonly omits the mark and uses ukulele. Both forms are recognizable, but ʻukulele more accurately reflects Hawaiian orthography.

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition opened in San Francisco in 1915. The Hawaiian Pavilion featured live music, hula, and ukulele performances that introduced large crowds to Hawaiian popular culture. 

Performers such as the Kailimai Hawaiian Quintet drew crowds, while Honolulu maker Jonah Kumalae sold ukuleles, sheet music, and other goods at the fair. Visitors could hear the music and purchase the means to reproduce it at home. That connection between performance and distribution helped turn interest into a national craze.

The exposition did not create mainland interest from scratch. Americans had already encountered the ukulele at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, while Hawaiian touring groups and recordings also helped build an audience. The 1915 fair concentrated those earlier influences in one highly visible event. 

According to historian Jim Tranquada’s account of the exposition, instrument orders increased, Hawaiian songs entered major stage productions, and the ukulele became closely tied to popular images of the islands.

During the 1920s, the ukulele suited the social and commercial conditions of the Jazz Age. It was portable, comparatively affordable, and easier for casual players to approach than many larger instruments. Publishers printed ukulele chord symbols on popular sheet music, allowing home musicians to accompany current songs.

Mainland manufacturers, including C. F. Martin, Harmony, and Regal, increased production. Vaudeville performers such as Roy Smeck and Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards helped keep the instrument visible on stage and in early film.

The boom also reshaped the market. Hawaiian makers now competed with factories that could produce more instruments more cheaply.

The ukulele was no longer only a symbol of Hawaiʻi. It had become a mainstream tool for home entertainment and popular performance.

Mass media generated another wave after World War II. Inexpensive plastic ukuleles made the instrument accessible to families and beginners, while Arthur Godfrey’s national television shows helped create another wave of ukulele popularity during the 1950s. The instrument also appeared in films and novelty performances.

That visibility came with a trade-off. Cheap instruments and comic associations encouraged some listeners to treat the ukulele as a toy rather than a serious musical instrument. By the late 1960s and 1970s, electric guitars and amplified rock dominated popular music outside Hawaiʻi. The ukulele’s mainland profile declined.

Hawaiian musicians did not stop playing or developing it. Artists including Eddie Kamae and Herb Ohta maintained musical continuity and expanded its possibilities while mainstream attention shifted elsewhere.

This distinction prevents a common mistake: the ukulele experienced a commercial decline in some markets, not a disappearance from Hawaiian music.

The modern revival grew through Hawaiian musical continuity, renewed instrument production, accessible teaching materials, international ensembles, and eventually online video. No single artist brought the ukulele back. Several movements reached different audiences at different times.

Cultural celebrations such as Aloha Festivals also helped keep Hawaiian music, hula, and community performance visible to local and visiting audiences.

The Library of Congress essay on Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s recording documents both the late-night recording session and the song’s gradual international reach. Jazz24’s account of Jake Shimabukuro’s viral performance also traces how online video expanded his audience.

The comeback was larger than any one performer or technology. Three factors helped sustain it:

• Hawaiian musical continuity: Artists and cultural events kept the instrument connected to Hawaiian music, rather than letting it survive only as a nostalgic novelty.

• Accessibility: The ukulele remained portable, approachable, and relatively easy for beginners to start playing.

• New media: Recordings, radio, television, and later the internet repeatedly introduced the instrument to new audiences.

The University of Hawaiʻi’s account of the ukulele comeback highlights similar strengths, including its appealing sound, portability, and the visibility of influential Hawaiian players.

The broader pattern is important: new technologies expanded the ukulele’s audience, but they did not replace its Hawaiian foundation. As University of Hawaiʻi Press describes, the instrument’s history reflects an ongoing synthesis of Western and Pacific cultural influences.

Ukulele history is a story of cultural adaptation rather than a single moment of invention. Portuguese immigrants brought small string instruments and musical traditions to Hawaiʻi in 1879, but Hawaiian makers, musicians, and audiences reshaped those influences into the instrument now recognized as the ukulele.

Royal patronage, hula, local craftsmanship, mainland performances, mass media, and later online video each expanded its reach. Yet even as the ukulele became a global instrument, its identity remained closely tied to Hawaiʻi.

That mix of Portuguese ancestry and Hawaiian transformation makes the ukulele’s history so distinctive.