Led Kaapana

For Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Led Kaapana, music has always had a strong family connection, which he celebrates on his nostalgic new album, Black Sand (Dancing Cat).

"My mom sang, and my dad played. I had a lot of aunties and uncles who played slack-key, and they all had their own styles," he explained. "My Uncle Fred would play about two in the morning and get everybody up to listen to him."

"Slack-key was always kept behind doors when I was growing up.You wouldn't hear it."

Kaapana, 51, grew up in the isolated village of Kalapana. With no electricity, the family made its own entertainment, so it was no surprise when he began playing the guitar when he was 8, learning "by watching and remembering all the keys and fingerings."

Playing professionally by the time he was 15, in 1977 he formed Hui ‘Ohana, a trio with his twin brother and cousin that recorded 14 albums. Although no longer officially extant, they "get together once in a great while, for concerts and things like that," Kaapana said.

Following that, he put together another trio, I Kona, whose six recordings have paralleled Kaapana's solo career. As well as slack-key, he also plays autoharp, ukelele, bass, and steel guitar: "It sounds nice, playing slack-key on the steel. I've got an old Hilo Hawaiian steel, it's got a beautiful sound. You can just hear the notes just singing."

The guitar first arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1830s with Mexican and Spanish cowboys. The natives later began loosening (‘slackening') the strings to give different tunings. While some great players of the past, like the late Gabby Pahinui, were acknowledged, it's only in recent years that the relaxed, sunny music has become a fully accepted art form.

"Slack-key was always kept behind doors when I was growing up," Kaapana reminisced. "You wouldn't hear it unless you went to a luau or party. Then each family would come out and for the night they'd play their own secret style."

While it's most widely associated with Hawaii, slack-key guitar exists all over the Pacific, as Kaapaana discovered when he visited Tahiti, and highlights on "Nui Papa." But he's a man who likes to make connections in his music, having recorded his last album in Nashville with the likes of dobro player Jerry Douglas and celebrated bluegrass fiddler Alison Krauss. To Kaapana it seemed a natural fit, given the "similar flavor because of the steel, and the way they slide it."

Black Sand returns him to Hawaii, and specifically the music he heard in Kalapana, the village with its black sand beach where he grew up. Destroyed in a 1992 volcanic eruption, the place lives on inside him as "the music I was brought up with. These are the memories I have."

Although the younger generation doesn't seem to show much interest in the slack-key tradition, Kaapana is proud of the changes he's helped to forge, even though he can no longer make a living at it - he has a day job as a mechanic.

"Today they teach slack-key at the University of Hawaii, and they're also teaching the Hawaiian language. It's good for the culture. All the great old-time players are dead now, so it's good they're finally teaching it after all these years. It will live on."

This article first appeared on Sonicnet.com

Led Kaapana

"Slack-key was always kept behind doors when I was growing up.You wouldn't hear it."

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