In remembrance · The ʻUkulele Archive
Jonah Kumalae
Jonah Kumalae carried the Hawaiian ʻukulele from a Honolulu factory floor to an international audience, joining craft, performance, entrepreneurship, and public life.
What endures
The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition became the defining public chapter: Kumalae instruments won a gold award and helped meet an extraordinary new demand for Hawaiian music and ʻukuleles.
Surviving catalogs, headstock medals, family testimony, exposition records, and museum instruments make Kumalae unusually visible among early twentieth-century makers.
Chronology
A life in the record
1911
The documented manufacturing period begins in Honolulu.
1914
The Liliha Street factory expanded ahead of the mainland surge in demand.
1915
Exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and received a gold award.
1920s
Cataloged koa models circulated through dealers beyond Hawaiʻi.
1940
Production ended with Kumalae’s death.
Evidence, not decoration
Follow the record.
Every source is shown so family knowledge, instrument evidence, and later research can strengthen—or correct—this page.
Continue the story