You’re listening to the Hawaiian steel guitar of Sam Koki. He was one of the many Hawaiian music greats broadcast all over the islands, and indeed the world, by a show called “Hawai’i Calls”. First broadcast in 1935, its early transmissions would only reach the Western US states by shortwave radio.
Over the next forty years, though, “Hawai’i Calls” would become the most popular radio show in the world. At its height, over 750 stations carried the weekly show, brought to listeners from the courtyard of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki.