This pair of photographs shows musician Annie Kerr and other talented entertainers of Hawaii around the late 1920s. Annie Kerr was a singer and steel guitarist in the group, the Annie Kerr Trio. Kerr spearheaded the beginnings of steel guitar music in Hawaii alongside fellow band members, Irmgard and Diana of the Farden Aluli family, Hawaii’s “foremost family” of musicians. While she had many female predecessors, Kerr was the first female professional steel guitarist with a notable recording career.

The black and white photograph shows the trio as well as an unidentified fourth female musician dressed in matching performance attire, standing in front of tropical foliage with their assortment of guitars and double bass. The second image is a beautifully hand colored group photo of notable musicians wearing leis and hula performers in grass skirts on an idyllic hillside. Kerr can be spotted smiling alongside other talents such as Sissy Lake-Farm, a former hula dancer-turned figurehead in the Maui community and the executive director at the Maui Historical Society; as well as Lydia Kamaeokaiani Kealohapauole Mahoe, daughter of High Chiefess and cousin to the royal family. These photographs show the makings of the cultural heritage of Hawaii by female composers and performers at the forefront of their careers.

Born in Honolulu in 1906, Annie Kerr paved the way for female steel guitarists. The steel guitar was developed in Hawaii in 1890 through modifications to the fretboard of the available Spanish guitars, creating their own brighter and twinkling sound. The unique weeping tone and the buoyant glissandos became popular enough that they would be manufactured as their own instrument and be integrated into the popular American genres of blues, country, and gospel. Annie Kerr died in 1967 but her work is invaluable to the sound of Hawaii, and subsequently, American music today.