An Easter Sunday on Kailua Beach

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.

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

We’ve been visiting Kailua for quite a few years now and we’ve made some wonderful friends. This year some of those friends invited us to a celebration of Easter Sunday at Kailua Beach, and it turned out to be one of those special days. Local folks are known for their hospitality and it was certainly on display this day. Combined with the dramatic scenery and perfect weather, this one will be hard to top.

Ledward Kaapana brought along his trusty Martin 000-16 and I have a lovely Martin OM-18V for my Hawai`i guitar. I put some cameras around and we plugged into my trusty Zoom H6 recorder to capture some of the fun of slack key at the beach.

Here’s one that includes some shots of the beach, the food, and the kids and grown ups enjoying the day. It’s Led’s interpretation of the Leonard Kwan classic “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”

Another piece that shows the Leonard Kwan influence started off as “My Yellow Ginger Lei” but of course got medleyed with “E Huli Huli Ho`i Mai” and then finished off with Ledward’s family version of “Radio Hula.”

We’ll be playing a lot more music in the coming days and I hope to capture some more video, but it will be a challenge to find a place as inspiring as our day at the beach.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2016 at 7:27 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.