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 A Unique Hawaiian Tradition Makes Its Way To The Old Pueblo. By Mari Wadsworth ON HIS STEEL-string Martin guitar, Cyril Pahinui's playing is bright and lyrical. If you didn't know better, you'd swear those 12 strings belonged to more than just one instrument, as the master guitarist nimbly glides through the octaves of a slack-key tuning he learned from the late Leland Isaacs. The song, "Panini Pua Kea," is an instrumental description of "the effects on the heart of tasting the honey of the white cactus flower," for which the song is named.
Gabby died in 1980; but his legacy continues, in no small part due to the impact he made on pianist George Winston, who fell in love with the slack-key sound after hearing recordings back in the early 1970s. Not only did Winston become a student of slack-key himself, but he launched the most comprehensive effort to document the history and evolution of this unique Hawaiian style on his own Dancing Cat label. To date, Dancing Cat has produced 18 albums, some by artists who've since died, and others by the islands' most popular contemporary composers and players. Three of those players open a rare U.S. tour on Wednesday, January 21, here in Tucson. Joining Cyril Pahinui for the first time on an Arizona stage are George Kahumoku, Jr., and the Rev. Dennis Kamakahi, one of Hawaii's most prolific contemporary songwriters. The concert promises to be a mini-luau: The guitarist/vocalists are touring with traditional Hawaiian dancers, and at last word they'd even shipped a boxful of leis to greet Tucson concert goers.
Hawaiians are geniuses of assimilation. From the guitar's introduction by Spanish vaqueros and Portuguese sailors back in the 1800s, the islanders have continued to invent new ways to transform and modify its sound. The practice of laying the guitar flat and playing it with a metal bar, which dates back to the 1880s, was a predecessor to the lap steel and pedal steel guitar immortalized in American country and western music. In turn, the hot jazz of the 1920s and '30s, especially that of trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, influenced the Hawaiian steel guitar players. In more recent years, Ry Cooder and the Kingston Trio's Dave Guard (who grew up in Hawaii in the 1940s) rank among mainland musicians inspired by the slack-key players, Gabby Pahinui in particular. Each recorded a tribute album to the late master. Other big names who cite slack-key as an influence include dobro player Jerry Douglas, and blues guitarists Taj Mahal and John Lee Hooker.
Cyril Pahinui, George Kahumoku, Jr. and the Rev.
Dennis Kamakahi perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 21,
at the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway. All seating
is reserved. Advance tickets are $15 and $17, available at Hear's
Music and Antigone Books. Call 881-3947 or 327-4809
for reservations and information.
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His fingers skip between triple and single pluckings, improvising
on a repeated melody line with an almost magical sense of rhythm.
It's unlike any guitar playing you've ever heard...unless by some
chance you happened across an old vinyl recording, perhaps from
the '70s, by his father Gabby Pahinui. The elder Pahinui was the
most influential of the slack-key masters, responsible not only
for inspiring the next generation of players, but also for expanding
the technical boundaries of this rich, improvisational form and
its recorded history.
While the move from back porch to mainland is relatively new,
the slack-key tradition dates back to the 1830s; its "modern
period" began around 1946. What started at the turn of the
century as the campfire music of the paniolo, or Hawaiian
cowboys, became the focal point of revitalizing traditional Hawaiian
culture during the last monarchy (in the 1890s). Queen Lili'uokalani
was the greatest composer of the period, her songs of love and
the land remaining a vibrant part of Hawaiian music today.
So if you think you've heard everything the guitar can do, you're
in for a treat. Slack-key is possibly the most beautiful sound
an acoustic guitar has ever achieved--a bold claim for an instrument
that's been played to death in popular music. Unique open-string
tunings, a variety of fingering and harmonic techniques, and soulful
songwriting create the kind of excitement and novelty in the listener
one imagines early jazz audiences must have felt. You'd have to
hear it to believe it.
