Steel guitar music started on the island of Oahu — and teachers there are working with the next generation of students to continue the tradition. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS) KAILUA, Hawaii — Quincy Cortez plucks at a slim black box laid across his legs, his fingers flashing silver. Steel strings twang with each pull from the metal rings — wearable guitar picks — adorning his right thumb, index and middle finger.
His left hand hovers over the strings along the neck, a cylindrical tube held between his thumb and middle finger drawing the metallic tones into a smooth glissando when it touches steel.Next to him, 67-year-old teacher and musician Alan Akaka swivels his desk chair from his computer screen to face Cortez with a pop quiz: “Have you been practicing with the music?” Cortez lifts his hands from the strings. “Kind of,” he says. With school work and sports, sometimes it’s hard to find the time. By 1916, records of Hawaiian steel guitar were outselling every other music genre in the nation. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS) The Hawaiian steel guitar became a cultural force in America at the turn of the century, popularized by troupes of traveling musicians from Hawaii. It evolved beyond its association with a tropical paradise to influence new genres of music, from bluegrass to jazz to rock and rol