Lena Machado

Biography

Lena Machado (October 16, 1903 – January 23, 1974) 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.

Bio from Wikipedia

Discography

Records they worked on — most-collected first.

Credited work

296 releases · 83 albums · active 1950–2021

  • Performance · 396
  • Other credits · 8

Studios: Sounds Of Hawaii · Audio Resource Honolulu · Commercial Recording · Studio Hawaii

Frequent collaborators

Around the web