03/13/2026
A stolen ukulele started all of it.
Not stolen from a person. Found abandoned on a bus. Eddie Kamae's brother was a bus driver in Honolulu. A passenger left it behind. The brother brought it home. Eddie was 15 years old. He wasn't supposed to touch anyone else's property.
He waited until his brother left for work. Then he picked it up.
He sat next to the radio and played along to anything that came on - Spanish music, Italian songs, jazz, Latin rhythms. ANYTHING but Hawaiian. He thought Hawaiian music was too simple. His grandmother had literally danced for King Kalakaua's royal court. And Eddie Kamae was in the corner playing jazz.
Then in 1959, he met Gabby Pahinui. Gabby showed him how the ukulele could "talk story." Something cracked open inside Eddie. He stopped playing jazz. He started chasing something MUCH older.
His teacher Mary Kawena Pukui - the greatest living authority on the Hawaiian language - told him about a man named Sam Li'a. An old poet. Living alone near Waipi'o Valley on the Big Island. She told Eddie: "He is the last. He writes in the old way. No one knows how many songs, or where they all are. He writes in Hawaiian and he gives it away, with his aloha. In our time, there is no one else like him."
Eddie watched her eyes fill with moisture as she said it.
He drove from Hilo along the Hamakua Coast. All the way to a little wooden house by the old social hall in Kukuihaele. He didn't know Pukui had secretly called ahead. He found Sam Li'a sitting on his porch. Dressed up. Waiting. The man was nearly 90 years old. He had been writing songs in Hawaiian his whole life - giving them away for free. No recordings. No royalties. Just aloha.
In 1975, Eddie traveled back with the Sons of Hawaii. They had written a song just to honor Sam Li'a. They wanted to perform it for him in person. Sam Li'a had developed diabetes by then. Doctors told him they needed to amputate his foot to save his life.
He refused.
He said he had lived long enough. He died not long after.
Eddie never forgot. He spent the next 18 YEARS turning Sam Li'a's story into a documentary. Then nine more films after that. Preserving the elders who were disappearing one by one. His teacher Pilahi P**i had once grabbed his shoulder and said in a voice he never forgot: "Do it now. For there will be no more."
On January 7, 2017, Eddie Kamae died in Honolulu at age 89. Surrounded by family. His most beloved song, E Ku'u Morning Dew, played softly in the background. Jake Shimabukuro said it best: "Eddie inspired all the people who inspired all the people who inspired me."
The instrument that saved Hawaiian music was found abandoned on a bus.
Some things get left behind so the right person can find them.