Recordings
Hawai'ian Slack Key Guitar -- KiHo'alu - Seattle Style

Every once in a while, if you're real lucky, you walk through a door that opens up a whole new world. Three years ago, I bought a ticket to a Hawai'ian slack key guitar concert at an unassuming high school auditorium just south of Seattle, called the Highline Performing Arts Center. The show featured Ledward Ka'apana, the late Sonny Chillingworth, Cyril Pahinui, Ozzie Kotani, and George Kuo. A lot of interest was brewing locally in slack key, and I wondered if we could present a taste of the real stuff at the Northwest Folklife Festival. Little did I know that I was discovering what would lead to the focus for the following year's Folklife Festival, as well as the amazing performances that comprise this live recording.

The slack key show at Highline was an eye-opener. The house was packed -- this for a show that was advertised almost exclusively by word of mouth -- and the feeling of community warmth in the crowd was extraordinary. After each song came shouts of "hana hou!" (encore!). At one point, the entire crowd -- about one third ethnic Hawai'ian, one third Japanese Hawai'ian, and one third "haole" (white Hawai'ian, pronounced "howly") -- spontaneously sang what I presume was the Hawai'ian national anthem. Individuals shouted from their seats for requests or made friendly overtures like "Your cousin in Burien says, 'Hi,' Sonny!" A relative danced a hula.

After the concert, I introduced myself to the producer, Moodette "Moody" Ka'apana, who runs the Pula Mahia Hula Academy. Moody in turn introduced me to Milton Lau, the Honolulu promoter who had made all this happen. Did he think it might possible to bring some slack key to Folklife? Lau, a slight, soft-spoken man who plays bass and has been producing slack key festivals on Hawaii's beaches for thirteen years because he loves the music, said he'd been wanting to do exactly that for several years.

Then a bit of serendipity came into play. Folklife's development director, Dana Giddings, was about to go home to Honolulu for a visit. Dana wrote a proposal to Hawaii's Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT), where Milton had a contact. A few weeks later, she came back to Seattle with a sponsorship from DBEDT not only for a slack key show, but for Chinky Mahoe's Halau Hula 'O Kawaili'ula, plus exhibits of photographs, artifacts, and musical instruments from the world-renownd Bishop Museum. With that momentum, Folklife was soon speaking with Hawaiian Airlines, which generously came forward as a sponsor. The result was "We Are Polynesia," a music and arts program at the 1993 Folklife Festival that included the performances at the Opera House and the Arena, on the campus of Seattle Center, that you hear on on this recording.

As you can tell from the sound of the crowd, there was an enthusiastic and receptive contigent of Hawai'ians and others ready to welcome this roster of slack key guitarists. Program Directors don't usually get to see much of their own shows, but one of the most gratifying moments at the 1993 Festival was peeking in through side curtain at the Opera House, just as Gary Haleamau was finishing one of his intense, falsetto ballads, and seeing that entire audience rapt and attentive. That, and the enthusiastic cries of "Hana Hou!" at the end, let me know for sure that we had chosen well to bring slack key to Seattle.

Unbeknownst to most people, even Seattleities, Hawai'ians have a long history in the Northwest. One of the many gifts Hawai'ians brought to the Northwest is their sweet and soulful style of finger picking the solo guitar - ki ho'alu, or "slack key." Ki ho'alu means, literally, "to loosen the key," and refers to the practice of adjusting selected strings up or down -- or "slacking" them -- to achieve various tunings, many of which become idiosyncratic to particular performers. Ki ho'alu technique also includes "chiming," i.e., sounding harmonics, quickly "hammering on," and "pulling off" the strings, to imitate vocal sounds in the Hawai'ian language. Slack key songs often speak reverently about the land, or a particular lake, mountain or spring where something of importance has occurred, and in that sense it is a vessel of oral tradition and history. Sometimes, as in the blues, sexual double entendres are invoked.

Slack key guitar originated in Hawai'i in the 19th century, when Mexican and Spanish cowboys were imported by King Kamehameha III to manage cattle herds on the islands. The island cowboys, or "paniolo," who learned from these guests, took in cowboy repertoire and techniques -- hence, on this recording, the "western" tunes such as "The Yodel Song," or a chestnut such as Stephen Foster's "There's No Place Like Home" -- as well as the resonant romanticism of Spanish guitar. When the cowboys left Hawaii after a few years, Hawai'ians blended what they had learned with their own sense of the beautiful, applying a home-made tuning technique that became uniquely Hawai'ian.

Slack key and Hawai'ian music culture in general took a leap in the 1880s and 1890s, when King David Kalakaua officially sponsored the revival of traditinoal music, dance, and chant. But while Hawai'ian steel guitar enjoyed a huge flowering in the 20th century, and a long and fruitful symbiosis with country and western music developed on the mainland, slack key, by the 1940s, was in decline. Enter Gabby Pahinui, known as the "father of modern slack key." Pahinui's 1947 record "Hi'ilawe" ushered in a renaissance of slack key. Gabby Pahinui was soon followed by other ki ho-alu artists, most immediately by Raymond Kane, who here pays tribute to Gabby's early recording, "Wai O Keaniani."

There are several strains of slack key, one of the most most important being "slack key jazz." Ledward Ka'apana, with his nimble and accurate fingers and lickety-split improvisations, plays solidly in this tradition. As Krash Kealoha points out in his introduction at the concert, slack key is generally associated with male performers. Haunani Apoliona came to tell us that the stereotype wasn't true.

In recent times, slack key has become part of a widespread ethnic cultural renaissance with multiplie social resonances. At Folklife, we soon discovered, for example, that 1993 was the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of Queen Lili-uokalani, Hawaii's last monarch, a coup effected by a 19th century American government bent on extending its influence to the Pacific. Over the past 15 or 20 years, as this dark centennial approached, a slow but sure movement grew in Hawaii addressing questions of identity and history and the legal issues surrounding the transfer of land after the Queen's overthrow. This awareness today is called the sovereignty movement, and includes a wide spectrum of political views, from esthetes interested in preserving Hawai'ian heritage to politicos who would actually secede from the United States and return Hawaii to its pre-contact virginity.

As in other countries where a vital movement for change has arisen -- Brazil in the 70s, the U.S. in the 60s -- music has preceded politics. The force of the music -- its sweet reverence for the land, it respect for native language, its concern for historical accuracy -- has been the main catalyst in reviving a sense of yearning for identity among ethnic Hawai'ians. That was the spirit I was feeling in that crowd at Highline that night three years ago, without knowing what it was. That was what made the concert there -- and this one at the Northwest Folklife Festival -- so special. That was the door that had opened. Please accept our invitation to walk through it, too.

-- Paul de Barros

Reprinted in part from the Ethnic Heritage News, May 1993

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