Charley Kahana
The history between the Lummi people and the Kanaka, or Native Hawaiians, goes way back in the Pacific Northwest. Charley Kahana’s life is one story of this blending. Charley’s father, John Kahanu, arrived in British Columbia in 1860, jumping ship from the whaling vessel he worked on. He eventually traveled to Bellingham Bay where he met and married Mary Skqualup, a woman of Lummi and Clallam heritage. Charley was born in 1865.
Charley played the fiddle at dances for most of his life in cities and towns up and down the Puget Sound and in Sandpoint, Idaho and at the Sunnyside Hotel in Vancouver, B.C. From 1891 to 1911, he played fiddle on the Flyer, a high-speed steamboat that carried passengers between Seattle and Tacoma.
“There was four of us, me and Big Jim, a fella name of Ross, and a fella by the name of Ragtime Jimmy, I think his name was, playing a little mandolin. Tips from the passengers… On a good day you know that boat was loaded. Well, we’d take in money, maybe 20, 30 dollars, you know, that is, four of us. Of course we’d divide that up when the day was over, see. By God, I’ve made the highest 20, 25 dollars a day, we’d take lots of money. The next morning, by gosh, believe it or not, all that money I made, the next morning I wouldn’t have a penny to buy breakfast. When we’d get ashore at Tacoma and tie up… There’s a saloon they called the Last Chance, got a piano in there, we’d go in and play music, you know, and whoo! Lots of beer, lots of girls!” – Charley Kahana
Listen in: his tunes will still get your toes tapping. To hear recordings of “Campbell’s March” and “Buffalo Gals/The Girl I Left Behind Me/Prettiest Girl in the County,” scroll to “Kahana” on Voyager Records Northwest Fiddle Field Recordings: https://www.voyagerrecords.com/nwffrmp3.htm.
Learn more about Charley Kahana in the Fiddler Magazine article, “Charley Kahana: Hawaiian/Lummi Fiddler in Washington State,” by Vivian T. Williams, August 16, 2013: http://www.fiddle.com/articles.page?index=5&articleid=68272.