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A group of men from Madeira arrived in Hawaii in 1879 and brought with them their instruments,
among them the braguinha, also known as the machete or
cavaquinho, a small four-stringed guitar, which gained the name ukelele, meaning
"jumping flea" in Hawaiian. It was manufactured by Augusto Dias, Manuel Nunes, and
José de Espírito Santo, also known as Zé Santos. It was either Nunes or
his son who later manufactured ukeleles in California, thus spreading their popularity in the
continental United States. The steel guitar was also the result of these men's importation:
according to Pap, the Portuguese six-stringed guitar, called the viola, strummed by a
boy with a pocketknife, was the origin of the steel guitar. The five-stringed
rajão also became popular in Hawaii, where it would be played by workers in
taro patches when they were allowed breaks from work. Thus it became known as the taro patch
fiddle.
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