Join us tonight for the incredible Led Kaapana, Hawaii’s Premier Slack Key guitarist along with Fran Guidry opening the evening.
Led Kaapana with his inventiveness and fluidity, his versatility in multiple tunings, and his playfulness on stage, make him the leading master of this art, now recognized nationally by America’s most prestigious award for the arts.
Led has been a professional musician for over 40 years. His mastery of stringed instruments and extraordinary baritone and leo ki`eki`e (falsetto) voice have made him a musical legend. His easy-going style and charm have made him a favorite of audiences throughout the world.
Led grew up in a musical family in the tiny village of Kalapana, there were few distractions and everyone played music. It was at the frequent family gatherings that Led learned to play in the old style, watching, listening, then imitating. Chief among his teachers were his mother, Mama Tina Kaapana, and his uncle Fred Punahoa.
As teenagers, Led and his twin brother Ned and cousin Dennis Pavao formed the Hui `Ohana, one of the hottest groups of the 70s and 80s and now legendary among Hawaiian musicians. The 70s saw the blossoming of the Hawaiian Renaissance, and Hui `Ohana was a key part of that return to traditional Hawaiian culture and music. Young Hawaii Sings Old Hawaii, the title of their first recording, was also their statement of purpose. The group produced 14 best-selling albums and made countless hundreds of live appearances, proudly sharing Kalapana’s musical traditions.
Led later formed another trio, I Kona, releasing 6 albums with that group, including Na Hoku Hanohano Award winner, Jus’ Press. He has also released solo albums, including two Na Hoku Hanohano Instrumental Album of the Year winners, Lima Wela and Black Sand, the latter of which was recorded on George Winston’s Dancing Cat Records. Led also recorded Led Live, Waltz of the Wind, Kila Kila Meets Kihoalu, and others on Dancing Cat..
In 2006, Led’s Kiho’alu-Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar was nominated for the 48th GRAMMY Award for Best Hawaiian Music Album and won the 2006 Na Hoku Hanohano Award for Instrumental Album of the Year. Led was featured on three compilation CDs winning Grammy Awards for Best Hawaiian Music. His solo Grandmaster Slack Key and Force of Nature (with Mike Kaawa) received Grammy nominations and Force of Nature also earned Led & Mike the Favorite Entertainer Award at the 2009 Na Hoku Hanohano Awards. His newest recording is The Legend.
Led tours the US extensively. When home in Hawaii, he can be found on Sunday evenings at Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii Kai or once a month on Maui playing at George Kahumoku’s Slack Key Show.
ORIGINS OF SLACK KEY Music is one of the most mobile art forms. Several events led to the import of the guitar to Hawai`i. European sailors around the beginning of the 19th century possibly introduced Hawaiians to the gut string guitar, the ancestor of the modern nylon string guitar. Or, the instrument may have made its way to the Islands around 1818 with the return of Hawaiians whom King Kamehameha l had sent to Monterey, California, to assist the Argentine Navy.
A gift of cattle from England to Hawai`i in the late 1700s, and a subsequent kapu (taboo) on harming them, resulted in an overpopulation of the steers. King Kamehameha III, around 1832, hired Mexican and Spanish vaqueros (cowboys) from North America to teach Hawaiians how to handle the growing herds. In the evenings around the campfire, the vaqueros — many of whom worked on the Big Island, especially around the Waimea region — probably played their guitars, often two or more together, with one playing the melody, and the other guitarist(s) playing the bass and chords (occasionally a gifted guitarist would have played solo). In general, the guitarists played mainly to accompany singing.
This new instrument would have intrigued the Hawaiian cowboys, or paniolo, who had their own music traditions. Given the long work hours, however, the Hawaiians probably did not have time to learn a lot about this new music. When the vaqueros returned to their homelands a few years later, some gave their guitars to the paniolo. The Hawaiians retuned the guitar from the Standard Spanish Tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E, from the lowest to the highest pitched string), usually by loosening, or slacking,1 the strings: very often to tunings with a Major chord, called “Major Tunings” (such as the most popular G Major “Taro Patch” Tuning – D-G-D-G-B-D – from the lowest pitched string to the highest); or to tunings with a major seventh note in them, called “Wahine Tunings” (such as the popular G Wahine Tuning – D-G-D-F# -B-D, and the popular C Wahine “Dropped C” or “Leonard’s C” Tuning – C-G-D-G-B-D); and sometimes to tunings with the two highest pitched strings tuned a fifth interval apart, called “Mauna Loa Tunings” (such as the popular C Mauna Loa Tuning, “Gabby’s C” – C-G-E-G-A-E).
(These four tunings listed just above are the four most popular tunings in the slack key tradition).
The result was guitar tunings with the open (unfretted) strings having the sweet sound that so characterizes ki ho`alu. Also, the G Major and D seventh chords in the G Wahine Tuning (D-G-D-F# -B-D – from the lowest pitched string to the highest) are the exact same voicings as the A Major chord and a commonly used E seventh chord in the Standard Tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E), showing that this was an early slack key tuning influenced by the Mexican and Spanish cowboys that brought their guitars and their music to Hawai’i.
Geniuses of incorporating new elements, Hawaiians wove what they had learned of Mexican and Spanish music into their traditional chants, songs, and rhythms, and created a new form of music that was completely their own. Hawaiian musical traditions were the dominant force in their guitar music, as they have always been each time other musical influences have come to Hawai’i from the rest of the world.2
Hawaiian music never stops evolving, and yet it always remains in touch with its deep roots and inspiration. Slack key guitarist James “Bla” Pahinui remembers his father Gabby Pahinui telling him, “Play whatever you feel, whatever makes you happy, but always keep Hawaiian music in your heart.”
While there are different theories about the beginnings of slack key guitar in the Islands, ki ho`alu soon became a significant part of the music that the paniolo would play after work or with families and friends at gatherings, and this tradition continues today, especially on the Big Island and Maui.
Many guitarists choose to play just for family and friends rather than playing professionally or recording. George Kuo, reflecting on his slack key mentors, points out, “Sometimes the older players would lock into a groove [keep the same tempo and feeling] and stay there all night.” This can sometimes be heard in the playing of Ray Kane and Ni’ihau guitarist Malaki Kanahele.
At first there may not have been many guitars or people who knew how to play, so Hawaiians developed a way to get a full sound on one guitar. They picked the bass and rhythm chords on three or four of the lower pitched strings with the thumb, while using their fingers to play the melody or improvised melodic fills on three or four of the higher pitched strings.
The gut string guitar introduced by the Mexican and Spanish vaqueros had a very different sound than the steel string guitar, which arrived later, probably brought in by the Portuguese around the 1860s. By the late 1880s, the steel string sound became very popular with the Hawaiians, and slack key had spread to all of the Hawaiian Islands. To this day the steel string guitar predominates, although slack key artists Keola Beamer, Ozzie Kotani, Moses Kahumoku and Bla Pahinui have also prominently used the nylon string guitar.
Until the mid-20th century, vocals were probably the most important element of Hawaiian music. The guitar was probably relegated mainly to a backup role, and was often grouped with other instruments. Played in a natural, finger-picked style with a steady rhythm, guitar was used as an accompaniment to hula and singing. The guitar usually did not play the exact melody of the song, but did play a repeated fragment with improvised variations, often using ornaments such as the hammer-on, pull-off, and harmonics. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, slack key guitarists have increasingly played the instrumental breaks between some of the vocal verses, often called pa’ani, meaning “to answer a vocal verse (or verses) with an instrumental verse (or verses).” The instrumental verse is also often called the pane. Previously the instrumental breaks were almost always played by steel guitarists.
Since the 1960s, and especially in the 1990s, Hawaiian slack key guitar has evolved into a highly developed instrumental art form, in both solo and group formats. When it is played solo, the beautiful and unique intricacies of the slack key guitar can be most fully appreciated, as the music of each master has great depth and individuality. Two of the most notable examples of this are Sonny Chillingworth and Cyril Pahinui, both of whom used extensive backup musicians on their past recordings, and whose artistry can now be heard more clearly on their entirely solo Dancing Cat releases. When Sonny was first recording for Dancing Cat, he would say things like, “Don’t you want my boys?” (his band), and “I’ve never recorded like this!”
For slack key player Ozzie Kotani, who studied with the legendary Sonny Chillingworth and whose original works are conceived as instrumentals, there may be times when words just are not enough: “I listen to many vocalists, but I see myself as mostly an instrumentalist. Words are important to communicate ideas, but you can communicate emotions by playing a certain way. Sometimes it’s hard to express something verbally, but music frees you of that.”
From the Dancing Cat Records website www.dancingcat.com
