The 25th annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival took place Sept. 18 at the Outrigger Kona Resort featuring a line-up of the state’s most talented players.
The bill included Ben Kaili, Patrick Landenza, Stephen Inglis, Ian O’Sullivan, Danny and Nani Carvalho, Dwight Kanae, George Kuo, Namaka Cosma, Bobby Moderow Jr., Ledward Kaapana, Kamuela Kahoano, and headliner Brother Noland.
Billy V was the MC for the nearly five-hour event, interacting with roughly 400 audience members giving out T-shirts, CDs, and a ukulele. He explained that the origins of the slack key genre (ki hoʻalu) date back to 1832 when Mexican cowboys left behind their Spanish guitars but didn’t teach the Hawaiians how to play them.
Milton Lau, the festival’s founder, has been organizing the event for 40 years, with 25 of those in Kona. In 1982, Lau created the first Slack Key Festival on Waimanalo Beach in honor of his late friend slack key master Gabby Pahinui.
“We were flabbergasted by the turnout of several thousand people, and many told me that this can’t be a one-time deal,” recalled Lau.
After 10 years of hosting the festival on Oahu, Lau branched out to other islands.
“This would be our 30th year of having it on the Big Island, but with the pandemic and other challenges, there was a five-year lapse. So, in 1991 we took it to the mainland in California, Oregon, Japan, and Europe.”
In 2000, Lau set up the non-profit Ki-Ho’alu Foundation, whose mission is to promote, preserve and perpetuate the art form.
“Any money generated goes towards scholarships for young people and school workshops. We do it for the passion for continuing this legacy,” said Lau.
Guitarist Stephen Inglis noted how the festival benefits the community. “For locals and even out-of-towners, this festival allows them to see a wide range of practitioners. If you spend the whole day here, you get to soak up all the niches and styles from some of the best.”
“It’s important to have an audience that understands why music matters and the music we’re playing today takes it a step further by sharing the musical DNa of musicians like Uncle Raymond Kane, in my case, so they can internalize it and share it with others,” noted Bobby Moderow.
There was a wide variety of players both in age and style. Some performed seated, traditional style, hat on, head down, not singing but with their focus on playing. Others from the next generation of musicians like Moderow and Kamuela Kahoano added high-energy stage theatrics to their performance with dramatic early Elvis Presley-like stances, rocking the guitar back and forth while sustaining and draining the instrument of its decaying note.
Namaka Cosma was the only woman slack key player on the bill and was joined by her boyfriend, guitarist Sean Parks. “almost every gig I’ve gone to, people will tell me, ‘Oh my God, wow.’ There aren’t that many female Hawaiian musicians nowadays, especially my age,” said the twenty-one-year-old Na Hoku Hanohano Award-nominee. Cosma is a graduate of the Institute of Hawaiian Music program at the University of Hawaii, Maui and is one of only a handful of women in the state pursuing the art of slack key guitar.
One of the true godfathers of the genre, Ledward Kaapana, took a different approach by playing a ukulele slack key style on such pop classics as “Love is Blue” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song.”
The festival concluded kanikapila style with Big Island’s Brother Noland, joined by Stephen Inglis, Kamuela Kahono, and Dwight Kanae, who all played Kona-themed songs.
