Tau Moe

The influential career of Hawaiian steel guitarist Tau Moe and his wife and vocalist, Rose spanned more than six decades. While their early recordings with Madame Riviere's Hawaiians represent some of the oldest examples of { raditional Hawaiian} music on disc, they were brought out of retirement in the 1980s to record two albums with stringed-instrument player and musicologist Bob Brozeman. Tau and Rose Moe were teenagers when they left Hawaii in 1928 to work for Madame Riviere, a woman who had been sent by the French government to study Tahiti, then a French colony. Leaving Riviere in the early '30s to pursue a career of their own, the Moes settled temporarily in Germany. With the beginning of World War Two in 1939, the couple was encouraged by the American embassy to leave Germany. Taking the warning seriously, the Moes embarked on the first of a series of war-induced moves. Shortly after relocating to Lebanon, they were forced to return to Hawaii after Italy declared war on the Middle Eastern country. Their stay was brief, however, as they continued on to India when war was declared in the Pacific. They remained in Bombay throughout the remainder of the war, performing with a {jazz} {ig band}.

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