Biography:

Lena Machado (October 16, 1903 – January 23, 1974)^[1] was a Native Hawaiian singer, composer, and ukulele player, known as “Hawaii’s Songbird”. She was among the first group of musical artists honored by the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 1995. Noted for her use of the Hawaiian vocal technique of “ha’i,” which emphasizes the transition between a singer’s lower and falsetto vocal ranges, and her use of “kaona” (hidden meaning) when writing song lyrics, she entertained primarily in Hawaii and the mainland United States. She sold leis on the Honolulu piers as a child, and aspired to become a singer like the women she saw greeting incoming passengers. KGU radio manager Marion A. Mulroney discovered her as she sang in a mango tree next door to his home. She performed regularly on KGU, where Royal Hawaiian Band conductor Mekia Kealakaʻi heard her and hired her as a featured soloist in 1925. Her association with the Royal Hawaiian Band would last five decades. During World War II, she had her own radio show on KGU.

Early life

Lena Kaulumau Wai‘ale‘ale was born October 16, 1903, in the Pauoa Valley. The youngest of five children, her Native Hawaiian birth parents were Louise Makakoa Poepoe, a musician, and Robert Wai‘ale‘ale, a Hawaiian composer and vocalist. Lena was hānai (informally adopted) at birth by Mary Davis Pan and her husband Loon Pan. The practice of hānai-ing a birth child to an adoptive family was an accepted cultural practice among Hawaiians. As a result of hearing the Hawaiian language in her birth home, Chinese spoken in the Pan family, and English spoken throughout Hawaii, Lena grew up multilingual.^[2]

The Loo Pan family were not musical, and discouraged her interest in singing. Nevertheless, Lena learned to play the ukulele and won first prize singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” in a contest her birth family entered her into. Many images of her over the decades would show her accompanying herself on the ukulele. Her hānai family put her to work selling leis on the Honolulu piers before she reached the age of 10. In later years, she reflected on Julia K. Chilton and Lizzie Alohikea being her role models when she watched them sing for incoming passengers at the piers. After attending Kauluwela Elementary School, she then attended Sacred Hearts Academy.^[3]

Discovery and early career

Her singing style has been described as a yodel, female falsetto, or “ha’i”. The “ha’i” is the sound of the voice break as it moves to the upper range. She was part of the vanguard of Hawaiian women who sang in this style.^[4][5] Historian George Kanahele described how Lena sang with the “Hawaiian style reminiscent of Nani Alapai, Juliana Walanika, and Helen Desha Beamer.”^[6][7]

The story of her discovery by KGU radio manager Marion A. Mulroney hearing her singing in a mango tree is often told as having happened at the YWCA in Honolulu, which had not been built at the time. In Machado’s own recollections, she was indeed singing in the mango tree in that spot, but in that era the property was her aunt’s home. Mulroney lived next door. Her initial booking on KGU was meant to be a 10-minute set. Listeners phoned in such large numbers that she ended up singing for an hour.^[3]

At age 22, she married her first husband, police officer Luciano K. Machado, with whom she formed The Machado Troupe consisting of their combined family members. The troupe performed regularly on KGU, entertained at military installations in Hawaii, and by 1927 had already toured the mainland United States.^[8] That same year, Lena took first prize at a singing contest in Honolulu.^[9] She was hired by George Paele Mossman as a Hawaiian dance and singing instructor at his newly opened Bell Tone Studio of Music.^[10] Lena was being referred to in the news media as “The Song – Bird of Hawaii”, and was working with the Johnny Noble orchestra. With variations on the nickname, Lena would become known in Hawaiian music history as “Hawaii’s Songbird”^[11]

In March 1928, Brunswick Records sent a team to Honolulu to record local singers. Lena was featured on a number of the records, with a variety of different other singers.^[12]

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