Steel Guitar and Slack Key from Kailua

Welcome to Kaleponi Records, my musical home on the web. My name is Fran Guidry, and I play kika ki hoʻalu or Hawaiian slack key guitar.

Kaleponi is the Hawaiian word for California, where I live. Ki hoʻalu, or slack key, has a direct link to California history. The guitar was carried to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi by vaqueros from California. 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.

My personal slack key history goes back to 1999 and my first visit to Hawaiʻi. 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. Over the years I've learned from great players and teachers like Ozzie Kotani, Keola himself, Patrick Landeza, Kevin Brown, Cyril Pahinui, Kawika Kahiapo, Raymond Kane, Dennis Kamakahi, and Ledward Kaapana.

Saturday, May 24th, 2014

The history of steel guitar as I understand it goes back to Joseph Kekuku, a slack key guitarist who picked up a metal bolt and used it to stop the strings in lieu of pressing the strings to the fretboard. This new technique allowed a very pronounced and vocal vibrato along with smooth transitions from note to note, and the kika kila or steel guitar became one of the most recognized voices in Hawaiian music.

Although I’ve played with lots of other musicians, I’ve only rarely jammed with a steel player, so I gave a shout to Jack Aldrich when I learned that he was visiting from Seattle and staying just a few blocks away in Kailua. I brought a few cameras over to his neighborhood, rigged some cabling to get his steel guitar into my recorder and his amp at the same time, and we ambled through a few tunes that we both knew.

I chose Puamana for the keeper, largely because we were only a block away from the home of Mihana Aluli Souza, daughter of Auntie Irmgard Aluli and current leader of the family band, also called Puamana.

It was lots of fun trying to fit my slack key in and around Jack’s steel guitar stylings, I hope I’ll have a chance to play with some other practitioners of kika kila some day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2014 at 1:58 am and is filed under Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.