Hawaiian slack key guitar is a finger picking style that stands with the world’s great guitar traditions like flamenco and blues. Its resonant sound often associated with Hawaii is alive, evolving and Hawaiian slack key legends will be proving this at the Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival.
Hilo’s slack key guitar event has some of the biggest names in the art form. The excitement begins with Ledward Kaapana and Mike Kaawa who headline a Sept. 18 Palace Theater concert.
On Sept. 20, from noon to 6 p.m., the festival’s main stage at the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium features Kaapana, Cyril Pahinui, Jeff Peterson, Keoki Kahumoku, Ken Emerson, Meleuhane, Bulla Kailiwai, The Kalapana Awa Band, Makana and Christy Leinaala Lassiter.
“The festival lineup is all top name recording artists and we are fortunate to have them,” said Gay Tolar, festival director. “These are not the guys you get at birthday parties and backyards. I talked to KAPA radio. They said to me ‘these are all the guys we have here on the radio.’ Yeah, I know.”
This year’s event is co-sponsored by the Hawaii County Department of Parks and Recreation. The festival built a reputation in the community for quality music when it ran annually from 1989 to 2003. Since then, slack key has gotten more popular worldwide.
“I’ve been working on this for five months,” Tolar said. “I have to. These guys all tour now. I had to laugh. Jeff Peterson just got back from a festival in Zimbabwe.”
One reason for the popularity surge was that between 2005 and 2011 the music business’ highest honor, the Grammy Awards, were given for “Best Hawaiian Music Album.” Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival players Peterson and Emerson won it in 2005 for “Slack Key Guitar: Volume 2.” Grammys were also bestowed on Pahinui and Kaapana.
Another reason for the growth is Dancing Cat Records, a music label dedicated to slack key. It was founded in 1983 by mega-successful pianist, George Winston, who also plays slack key guitar. His melodic piano style, which evokes natural landscapes and seasonal moods, formed a natural affinity with slack key, because music flowing with nature is what Hawaiian slack key has done since the 1800s.
Festival performers Keikilani and Leokani Lindsey are Meleuhane, the Hawaii Island father and son duo from Kona. Keikilani said the Lindsey family is “five generations of storytellers.” A major influence for him was great-aunt Helen Lindsey Parker who he describes as a “prolific songwriter in Hawaiian music rendering the essence of beauty in melody.” The Lindseys share a family heritage of being Hawaiian ranchers and cowboys and through these paniolo came slack key.
In the 1830s, King Kamehameha III brought Spanish paniolos to Hawaii to teach Hawaiians how to herd cattle on horseback. “The Spanish brought the guitar and totally blew Hawaiian minds,” 21-year old Leokani Lindsey explains. “When they left the island, they left guitars. Hawaiians didn’t know how to tune. They used the ear and created a natural chord which was pleasing. That’s how it happened. One in a million chance. It happened. Glad it happened. Now it’s heard and accepted in jazz, blues, Japan, New York and Nashville.”
Hilo guitar virtuoso Wes Matsuda, who graduated first in his class at the prestigious Los Angeles Guitar Institute of Technology, embellishes on the appeal and folk roots of slack key:
“These guys (1800s paniolos) were talented guys and really it was a matter of time. They tuned open chord tuning usually in a Major key, so the sound was warm, how the islands are warm and friendly. They had the sound in their heads and were trying to recreate the sound of Hawaii. People hear slack key and they think Hawaii.”
Ki hoalu is the Hawaiian word for the discipline and it literally means to “slack the key.” The tunings over the years became codified and popular tunings remain like the “taro patch tuning,” Leonard C tuning, or Mauna Loa tuning. The tunings are like spices for a luau of sound and some musician families guard secret tunings like chefs guard recipes.
“Hawaiians stumbled on 40 or 50 tunings pleasing to the ear. It lets the sound of the instrument ring out that’s why it’s appealing to people,” Keikilani Lindsey said.
Leokani had played drums since he was 7 but taught himself to play guitar when his Connections charter high school glee club was short-handed. “I found I have a passion for it,” he said, and that passion was rock, heavy metal, Jimi Hendricks and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
When he joined the family lineage of storytellers playing slack key it was uncharacteristically with a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. To slack key purists this classic rock “ax” is kapu.
When confronted by traditionalists he says “I let my hands do the talking. I love playing my Stratocaster. Although I got stink eye. Show up at a Hawaiian music festival and you’re going to get stink eye. I love it. It’s flexible. It’s versatile. It can spank or you can round it off into interesting textures.” On his Stratocaster he muses “I did whale calls on our song ‘Kohola.’”
Leokani’s evolution is wrapped in the natural selection of Hawaii’s music. His great-grandfather and late slack key pillar Sonny Chillingworth were cousins. When he took a steel guitar workshop with Cyril Pahinui, son of another pillar, the legendary Gabby Pahinui, “I told him I was a Lindsey. And he said he played with my Uncle Leabert Lindsey. And he knew the Lindsey family really well.”
“We were invited as guest artists to Cyril’s Annual Seattle Slack Key Festival,” said Leokani. “Next thing I know I had three or foyr days jamming in the green room with Cyril, Jeff Au Hoy and Peter Moon Jr. I learned a lot by listening.”
While in Seattle, Leokani was taught jazz theory and improvisation by Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival performer, Jeff Peterson. “Used my jazz improv to complement what I was playing. Slack key on electric is more Hawaiian music evolving. But at its root its still Hawaiian music. Got my own thing going,” said Leokani.
Again proving slack key’s small world, at Cyril’s Seattle festival, Meleuhane