A `Oia – Slack Key Style | Slack Key Guitar in Kaleponi

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.

A `Oia – Slack Key Style

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

The first time I saw Kimo Hussey perform was at the ampitheatre space at Ward Warehouse in Honolulu, where he conducted a kanikapila based on the He Mele Aloha songbook. I was just beginning my exposure to Hawaiian music and I still remember his wonderful performance of his jazzy `ukulele instrumental of A `Oia. It turned out that Kimo had been part of the team that published He Mele Aloha and John Almeida’s A `Oia was the very first song in the book. I remember gazing at the parade of chords that accompanied the song and feeling sure that I would never find them all on the slack key guitar.

But things have a way of changing, progressing even, and I managed to piece together a note here, a chord there over the years. So when my buddy Marie Espaniola began singing A `Oia when we jammed together I managed to pull together an accompaniment and even a pa`ani here and there. When I started looking around for a song to do in front of my new music camera this is the one that popped into my head.

So here it is, a slack key version of A `Oia just as it was captured on my latest camera gadget, the Sony HDR-MV1 music camera:

If you’re interested in more details about the camera, please pay a visit to my Homebrewed Music blog where I’ve done a feature comparison and clip comparison to another music camera, the Zoom Q4.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2015 at 5:22 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.