Kaleponi News

May 15, 2008

Summer Music

With the burst of warm weather more people are inviting me to play a little slack key background music. Last weekend I had a great time playing at the Judd's Hill Mother's Day Pickup Party. Judd and Holly are big fans of Hawaiian music, we met them through Mike Kaawa.

Coming up this Saturday I'll be performing at the Peasant and the Pear, a lovely restaurant in Danville. If you're thinking of dining out on Saturday, you might enjoy some slack key with your dinner.

Feb 28, 2008

The Passing of Hawaiian Music Legends

This has been a sad week in the Hawaiian music community. Two legendary artists, Auntie Genoa Keawe and Uncle Raymond Kane, left us. Auntie Genoa, with her lively falsetto and classic hula repertoire, performed regularly until very near the end. Uncle Ray had been less active in the last few years but still shared his knowledge and love of the music with eager students from around the world. This sad circumstance reminds me that there are a number of other great artists performing today who won't be with us forever, so we should cherish our opportunities to see them when we can.

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Let's get together and play music in California

Welcome to Kaleponi Records, musical home of Fran Guidry. I'm a convert to the joys of Hawaiian music, and play kika ki ho`alu or slack key guitar.

Kaleponi is the Hawaiian word for California, where I live. There are many connections between Hawai`i and California in history and today. There are vibrant Hawaiian and Polynesian communities throughout the Golden State. There are also many of us who cherish our visits to Hawai`i, and who love the music, dance, food, and attitudes that spring from those islands.

Ki ho`alu, or slack key, has a direct link to California history. The guitar was carried to the Big Island of Hawai`i by vaqueros from California. Of course, this all happened in the 1830s, when California was still a state of Mexico. You can read more about the history of slack key guitar on the Dancing Cat Records web site.

Slack key guitar is named for the retuning that characterizes the style. Most of these new tunings feature loosened, or slackened, strings which give a deep rich sound. The retuning leads to new chord shapes and melodic contours which add to the distinctive slack key sound. The strings are usually played by plucking or brushing with thumb and fingers, rather than using a flatpick, or plectrum, and this fingerstyle technique allows a slack key player to produce a bass line, chordal accompaniment, and melody line simultaneously.

My personal slack key history goes back to 1999 and my first visit to Hawai`i. I had played rock'n'roll for years, then given up music in the mid 90s, but when we turned on the TV in our Waikiki hotel room I was captivated by the playing of Keola Beamer. I knew in an instant that I had to learn to play this beautiful music. This new style of playing proved very difficult for me, and it was over a year later that I found a wonderful resource - Ozzie Kotani's "Guitar Playing Hawaiian Style." This book gave me the insight I needed to learn to play fingerstyle, and also provided a vocabulary of slack key motifs that started me on my way.

The second phase of my slack key began when I met Patrick Landeza, a California native born of island parents. Patrick is one of the leading Hawaiian music artists in the San Francisco Bay Area (and beyond) and at that time he shared his knowledge by teaching and also arranging artist workshops. In 2002 I began taking lessons from Patrick, and my playing immediately went to a new level. I attended workshops with other slack key artists when they visited our area and learned new facets of the style each time. Eventually Patrick invited me to perform with him and with visiting artists, and that generous gesture inspired me to work even harder at developing my own personal slack key style.

My goal in playing slack key is to share the pleasure I've found in this music, to expand the audience for slack key and all Hawaiian music, and to introduce the many talented slack key artists to as many new fans as possible. I'm convinced that the world will be a better place when Hawaiian music, and especially slack key guitar, reaches more people.