Rose Moe

Rose Moe, wife of Hawaiian steel guitar legend, Tau Moe, died on Friday, December 18, 1998. "Mother is at rest now," her daughter Dorian said, when Alan Akaka and I attended the Visitation, prior to Rose's funeral. Rose, who won the Hawai`i Musicians Award as a Living Legend in her own right, was 90 years old.

George Lake says it well: "The Tau Moe family are a part of Hawai`i's Living Treasures. About seventy years ago, Rose actually did play the steel guitar herself, although never professionally like her husband, whom she met about this same time."

As teenagers, Rose and Tau began their Hawaiian music adventures touring the colonial outposts of Europe, with "Madame Riviere's Hawaiians". In the 1930's, they went independent, finding many fans of Hawaiian music in Egypt, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Russia, Denmark, Great Britain, Sweden and Finland.

Rose gave birth to Lani in India, where she and Tau met Gandhi. They met Adolf Hitler in Germany at a fund-raiser for orphans, fearful for their lives because they smuggled many Jewish musician friends out of the country. Prior to their retirement in the 1980's, Rose and Tau and their growing children, had been playing Hawaiian music and steel guitar from Paris to Rangoon.

"Rose Moe had a voice unlike any other," George Lake remembers. "So pure and joyful. Even in old age, she never lost her beautiful voice, and could remember Hawaiian lyrics to many old hulas seldom heard today." During her last years, Rose suffered from Alzheimer's. "She could no longer recall who I was," George says, "but she remembered those old songs!"

HSGA members, over their years of traveling to Hawai`i, have made it a point to drive to the North Shore to visit the Moes in Lä'ie, where Tau still lives. When Alan and I visited with Tau, in December, he invited us -- as he does to every HSGA member he sees -- to "come up, and we'll eat and play and talk story." Two very long, double-blossom red carnation leis, from Alan for HSGA, and from the Ruymars, went down into the grave with Rose's coffin. It's the Hawaiian way.

HSGA * HAWAIIAN STEEL GUITAR ASSOCIATION
KAMAKA TOM, President
45-600 KAMEHAMEHA HWY * KANEOHE, HI * 96744
PHONE/FAX (808) 235-4742
EMAIL: hsga@lava.net

Homepage URL: www.hsga.org (hsga@lava.net)
Last updated: 07/23/02 by Gerald Ross (gbross@umich.edu)