Instrumental music NARRATOR Today on Spectrum Hawaii, Chinese hand puppets perform fierce battles on horseback and fly through the air.

Then we explore the music and lore of Hawaiʻi's most famous instrument, the ʻukulele, the gift of Portuguese immigrants to the islands.

But first, a visit to the studio of Susan McGovney Hansen who creates beauty and watercolor from a fresh perspective.

(Singing in Hawaiian) E kanoe o kalani Susan McGovney Hansen Artists are attracted to a myriad of subjects and I'm attracted to several in particular, and a lot of it has to do with the way I see things.

I feel like I have these voracious eyes.

I, I gobble things up with my eyes and make mental notes of things all the time.

The leaves of the orchid are just unbelievable to me.

I couldn't make up all the shapes and directions and turns that they take.

So, I just take my cue from nature with them.

And I'm not sure why I like, I like them so much.

I think it's kind of like being in love with somebody sometimes you can't really explain that.

But right now, I'm in love with orchids.

(Singing in Hawaiian) E kanoe o kalani I take a lot of time setting up a still life.

It's, truth though it's kind of fun to do.

I have an idea in my mind and the more problems I solve as I arranged the still life, the less problem I'll have on the painting.

So, I have my composition in mind.

I like to look down on the composition.

I think it makes more interesting patterns and shapes and juxtapositions.

Before I draw, I'm going to use a viewfinder.

It's the same proportion as the, as the paper and it can give me a clue as to where I place things if I look at the still life here.

With a central line.

Creating a painting takes a lot of thought and that's where the little seed of an idea comes in.

And maybe it might noodle around in there for years or maybe you want to get right to it and work at it in a few hours, but it starts in the mind and often when I'm doing something else that idea will be in my mind and I'm kind of forming it and adjusting it and taking things away and adding things to that idea before I even start putting pencil to paper.

I want the paper wet because I'm going to do a wet into wet underpainting and do washes over that.

In other words, the wet into wet the things are going to have soft edges and kind of blend into one another and be more or less a background on which to paint the rest of the painting.

Natural sound When I was about nine, I started painting in oils.

But my teacher at the time had us start out using black and white and tones of gray with still life.

And this was difficult, we were all just, we couldn't wait until we could start painting in color.

But she wanted us to get the values down pat.

And we had to paint in, in black and white until she felt that we knew how to choose the values of a painting, the darks and lights.

And then that exciting day when we could start using color came.

I'm getting the lighter tones in, I can't put lighter over dark.

So, we go from light to dark in this wash.

I don't have to worry about edges because in this still life, the pattern behind the orchids is darker.

And I'll just come in around the edge.

And now I'm gonna let this dry before I start putting any more washes on it.

This is really my second career.

I made the decision not to do my art when I had my family when I was about age 20.

And I'd had a lot of art education.

But I decided that it was important just to raise children and concentrate on that.

So, my artwork was put aside, but I knew it was there waiting for me.

It was like a big Christmas gift just ready to untie.

And sometimes it scares me at my presumptuousness how I just knew it would be there whenever I was ready.

But luckily it was and when my youngest was into school, I started just getting back into my artwork.

I'm sure one reason I'm particularly interested in doing faces, is from my childhood.

My art teacher used to go downstairs, his studio was on the second floor in downtown Santa Barbara.

And she would go down and ask one of the little Mexican-American newsboys to come up and pose for us.

And that's where I really started concentrating on faces and heads.

So, when I came to Hawaiʻi many years ago, of course, I was immediately attracted to the Polynesian faces and the the culture and the dancing.

I'm interested in the movement of the figure and the form and trying to get that motion down on a two-dimensional sheet of paper or canvas.

Ordinarily, I'll do a little, what I call a thumbnail sketch in my sketchbook and see how these ideas that have been rolling around in my mind or come out on paper.

And I may have to do several just to work out the idea.

And then I transfer it to watercolor paper.

(Singing in Hawaiian) I paint in transparent water color, which means I don't use white paint out of the tube.

So, the white is the white of the paper.

And when I plan my painting, I plan it in steps so that I'm a painting around the white areas that I want to keep white or light.

And generally, I'm working light to dark.

Once I've painted one area darker, I can't get it lighter like in an oil painting.

You can see why I put a gray on this beforehand.

It didn't leave it clear white.

Because the pattern is going to stand out against the dark green and I don't want it to jump out and get your attention before other things in the painting.

I heard once that painting you do more painting with the mind than you do with your hands.

And and I believe that because that's where your concept comes from.

So, I think a lot about my idea.

Discard many of them.

I have hundreds in my mind literally that I haven't gotten to yet so I have more than a lifetime of painting NARRATOR 400 years ago, they entertained their audiences with stories of virtue and religious morals.

They performed at celebrations for major events.

More recently, the traditions of Chinese hand puppets continued with a performance at the East West Center in Honolulu in honor of the center's 25th anniversary.

(Band music for puppet performance) NARRATOR This hand puppet troupe from Taiwan performs in the pei quan style.

The pace is fast and the action violent.

The plots are legends of warfare and folklore.

This scene is an excerpt from the Beijing opera, three warring kingdoms.

(Band music for puppet performance) NARRATOR The battle on horseback comes alive under the skilled manipulation of the puppeteer's backstage.

(Band music for puppet performance) Backstage one finds rows of puppets dressed and waiting for their moment in front of the audience.

Their coiffed with wigs and headdresses, equipped with weapons, all appropriate to the roles they play.

Chinese hand puppets mirror in many ways the human theater of Chinese opera.

Like their human counterparts, they too are dressed in stylized costumes depicting status, sex and role.

Their make-up is also characteristic of their qualities, such as the red face of this military warrior symbolizing loyalty.

The head puppeteer is Xu Wang, has studied his craft since the age of six.

His teacher was his father, a leading puppeteer and founder of this troupe.

No puppet performance is complete without a demonstration of window jumping, Chinese acrobatics, puppet style.

(Band music for puppet performance) NARRATOR This week's interlude, we traveled to the sugarcane fields of Kauaʻi where the sugar industry first began 150 years ago.

(Wind blowing through sugar cane) NARRATOR Pick up an ʻukulele and people expect to hear Hawaiian music.

But the instrument is not endemic to our islands.

Originally a gift from the Portuguese, it is now a musical voice of many cultures capable of reflecting many moods.

It can be played simply by a beginner or it can challenge a virtuoso.

Hawaiʻi's King Kalākaua was a great fan of the ʻukulele.

He may have helped to give it the comic nickname.

ʻUku meaning flea and lele to jump.

Nimble fingers crossing its strings still call that image of a jumping flea to mind.

(ʻukulele playing) NARRATOR Small and durable, with a warm, pleasing tone, it makes a perfect traveling companion.

It is no wonder this instrument has met with immediate acceptance on its musical voyage around the world.

Leslie Nunes descends from a Portuguese family that helped pioneer instrument making in the islands.

Leslie Nunes Here we have a ʻukulele.

This is the Hawaiian ʻukulele.

And the reason I'm interested in ʻukulele so much is that my great grandfather is the one that brought it from Madeira to Hawaiʻi and helped build the industry here in Hawaiʻi.

My grandfather, who was the manufacturer, the supervisor of the company here in Hawaiʻi, started me on my collection.

And he told me one day Les would you like to have your own Nunes ʻukulele?

I said, great.

So, he and I went together and I bought my first instrument for $100.

And with that, my instrument collection has grown to over 100 instruments.

Since then, I've been studying the ʻukulele.

I've been collecting them.

I've gone to Portugal, New York, California, Japan, even even Africa, some of my instruments have come from.

And this is what I'd like to show you now.

I'd like to show you some of my collection.

This is a Portuguese cavaquinho.

It's from the mainland of Portugal.

And it's the popular folk instrument of Portugal.

The reason it's popular is because mainly it's inexpensive.

It's easy to play, there's only four strings.

And it's very versatile.

Although it is used mostly as a strumming instrument as part of a string band.

NARRATOR The cavaquinho, translated to mean worthless little piece of wood, seldom cost more than a few dollars.

This cousin to the ʻukulele can be heard accompanying the lively dances of Portuguese harvest festivals.

(cavaquinho playing) Leslie Nunes One of the instruments in the string band is the Portuguese guitarra.

And the reason this is a Portuguese guitarra mostly is because of the shape.

And the way that the instrument is strung.

You notice that it has an unusual peghead here and that the machines are different.

They move up and down rather than the ones that we're familiar with.

It has a violin scroll and a unusual peghead.

The shape is heart-shaped and it is a romantic instrument.

This is the Portuguese guitarra again.

And this is my great grandfather's ʻukulele.

He started making this in 1879, when almost immediately when he came here to Hawaiʻi.

He didn't have Portuguese woods, but he found the koa wood.

And the koa wood is like some of the woods from Madeira and by the way Madeira means wood.

NARRATOR In 1879, Manuel Nunes was among a hearty group of immigrants who left their island home of Madeira for the unfamiliar shores of Hawaiʻi.

Like many of these Portuguese, he was a skilled tradesman.

Many were fishermen, others farmers, all whose talents were easily put to use.

Most came to escape the economic effects of a blight on Madeira's wine industry.

Wine is still important there today.

Unlike Nunes, who paid for his family's passage, contract laborers were not brought to the islands for several more years.

Nunes was one of three craftsmen who were soon producing elegant instruments from native hardwoods particularly koa.

Leslie Nunes This is a Jonah Kumalae ʻukulele.

And Jonah Kumalae was the first one that actually started mass producing the ʻukulele and he made about 300 of them in one month.

He was very successful in making instruments.

He made them for quite a few years.

He also made, had singing teams and musicians that went in the Waikīkī area.

He almost monopolized the musical industry.

NARRATOR In 1915, Kumalae ʻukulele's and Hawaiian music were in great demand.

That was the year of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

The fair provided mass exposure of Hawaiian bands, many of which featured the ʻukulele.

The fledgling recording and radio industry's fanned the flames of popularity and soon Hawaiian labels were outselling all others.

The world couldn't get enough of the Hawaiian ʻukulele strumming along to hapa haole melodies.

(Instrumental music) Harry Soria, Jr.

The curious thing about those earliest recordings is that you truly couldn't hear the ʻukulele because the recording techniques at the time.

It wasn't until the 1930s that the ʻukulele emerged with better recording techniques.

Now in the teens and 20s, Ernest Kaʻai was the acknowledged virtuoso and he also came up with the very first ʻukulele instructional booklets.

In the 30s it was Jesse Kalima with his rousing rendition of this Stars and Stripes Forever when he won the Territorial amateur hour contest.

(ʻukelele playing) This song then became an instant classic, and every kid on every corner had to know Stars and Stripes Forever.

Now in the 40s, it was Randy Oness taking his ʻukulele and performing the horn licks of the big band swing arrangements.

Then the ʻukulele fully emerged as a solo instrument.

In the 50s, we had people like Nelson Waikiki and Eddie Kamae.

In the 60s Likelike Weisbarth and Mo Keale.

In the 70s Peter Moon on his tiple.

And now today, we have the ʻukulele festival and each year you can appreciate some of the best ʻukulele players of all ages in Hawaiʻi.

NARRATOR From Portuguese music to Hawaiian to hapa haole, even the instruments shape has undergone dramatic evolution at times.

Leslie Nunes This is a standard ʻukulele like my great grandfather would make them.

Here we have other instruments that would actually make my great grandfather turn over in his grave.

This is a camp banjolele.

It's got a wooden sound box.

Here we have another banjolele with animal skin and a metal box of banjo.

And with the ʻukelele fretboard.

This is instrument here, it's a triangle ʻukulele and this is very interesting.

This is a cigar box ʻukulele, and this is one of Sam Kamaka's instruments.

Notice that the date on the ʻukulele is 1886.

This is an actual cigar box ʻukulele.

Even the pegs here are a little bit different and it is stylized.

Sam Kamaka's father also made the pineapple ʻukulele and he started a craze that is still popular today.

This is the first of the pineapple ʻukulele's.

This is a painted model.

Sam has it in his storeroom there on South Street and you can see that just by coming into his store there.

NARRATOR Manufacturing ʻukulele's has long been a specialty of the Kamaka family.

One that started with Sam Kamaka, Sr. in 1916.

Today, Sam Jr. adds another generation of expertise to the shop's tradition of creating the finest koa ʻukulele's available.

Sam Kamaka, Jr. As a young man I was fascinated by all of the belts running in every direction.

And all of these belts were hooked up to a pulley which activated a certain machine which did had a certain function for that on the assembly line.

And my father had four or five workers that I remember and they'd go from one machine to another back and forth, putting on belts and taking off belts.

And so, it was really a noisy and interesting place to visit.

NARRATOR Despite modern equipment Kamaka ʻukulele's are still fashioned by discriminating craftsmen and each instrument requires three to four weeks to complete, three to four years if you count the drying of the wood.

All of Kamaka's workers bring with them specialized talents and Sam knows they have all contributed to his success.

Kamaka now ships over 300 ʻukulele's per month to retailers as distant as Japan, Sweden and Norway.

All are manufactured for a consistently high quality.

But occasionally, just the right amounts of fine wood and patient craftsmanship will fashion a superior sounding instrument.

Veteran ʻukulele players are always in search of these qualities.

So, you'll never know who will drop into the South Street showroom.

(Jonah Nuuhiwa singing) Hono kāʻua wikiwiki A little brown maiden sang to me As she sang oh the sweet song on the beach at Waikīkī ʻukelele instrumental Hono kāʻua wikiwiki A little brown maiden sang to me As she sang oh the sweet song on the beach at Waikīkī ʻukulele instrumental NARRATOR Far from being a worthless piece of wood as its Portuguese name implies, the cavaquinho and its Hawaiian cousin the ʻukulele continue to circle the globe encouraging the sharing of cultures through the gift of music.

Sharing the music of Portugal with us this week are Pedro Cabral and Francesco Andion.

Instrumental music NARRATOR Until next week on Spectrum, bom dia.

If you like ʻukulele lady, ʻukulele lady like you If you like to linger where it's shady, ʻukulele lady linger too.

If you kiss ʻukulele lady and you promise ever to be true, and she finds another ʻukulele lady fool around with you.

Now maybe she'll sigh, maybe she'll cry and maybe not.

Maybe she'll find somebody else, by and by to sing to where it's cool and shady where the tricky wicky wacky woo.

If you like ʻukulele lady, ʻukulele lady like you.