Some Clips from Led-ruary

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.

Monday, June 1st, 2020

I’ve been either too busy or too lazy to update the site since Led left back in February which is a shame because we captured four pretty nice video clips while he was here. They’ve been up on YouTube for a while and I’m finally getting around to adding them to this site.

These are all indoor recordings and I tried moving around the living room looking for new angles. The selections as usual are classic Hawaiian compositions that Led and I love. First up is the sweet old song for Queen Lili`uokalani, Lili`u E. After Leonard Kwan released his instrumental version of the song his arrangement became the template for the rest of us to follow and you can hear the influence both in the melodic lines and in the medley structure:

We fight hard to keep our energy bills down, which means we keep the heater just barely going in the winter, so when the temperatures go down poor Ledward keeps his heavy jacket on nearly all the time.

Ninipo is a song by Queen Lili`uokalani but in a sense it’s about her as well, since it’s quite possibly autobiographical. Kihei de Silva published an essay putting forward this interpretation and it added a lot of poignancy to my enjoyment of the song. Led included an instrumental recording of Ninipo on his Black Sand CD and that track inspired me to learn the piece many years ago.

Led has recorded He Aloha No O Honolulu a number of times, it appears on his Led Live – Solo CD, on Ki Ho`alu, and on his autoharp CD, Jus’ Cruisin’. He and I have done video clips of the song several times, and we will probably do many more, it’s such a fun song to play.

My arrangement of Nanea Ko Maka I Ka Le`ale`a is based very closely on Uncle Raymond Kane’s version. I learned it from Mark Hanson‘s wonderful book, Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar which seems to be out of print these days. The prototype for the instrumental version of the song is probably the arrangement on the Maile Serenaders Hawai`i’s Favorite Slack Key & Steel Guitar Instrumentals, Vol. II with Gabby Pahinui on slack key guitar.

Our current pandemic situation is keeping us close to home so we won’t be connecting with Led and the gang for quite a while. It’s great fun to go back through these clips and hear the magic Led conjures up on these wonderful old songs.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2020 at 2:41 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.