Hawaiian slack key guitar is a finger picking style that stands with the world’s great guitar traditions like flamenco and blues. Its resonant sound often associated with Hawaii is alive, evolving and ...

The best musicians are usually the most versatile, such as Jim “Kimo” West. Van Nuys resident West is the guitarist for “Weird Al” Yankovic, whose latest effort, the chart-topping “Mandatory Fun” (RCA ...

One of the greatest acoustic guitar traditions in the world is a fingerstyle guitar unique to Hawaii. Slack key guitar or “ki ho’alu,” which translates to “loosen the tuning key,” starts with standard ...

Keola Beamer is the Andres Segovia of the slack key guitar. In fact, if you listen to his album “Coming of the Snow,” you’ll hear pieces that Segovia performed, although they sound different because, ...

For more than 150 years, slack key guitar, or ki ho’alu, has been the “house music” of Hawaii. Islanders were introduced to guitars by Spanish and Mexican vaqueros and quickly adapted the sound and ...

When I think of Hawaiian music, I first think of the ukulele, but slack-key guitar is just as uniquely Hawaiian. Ledward “Led” Kaapana is a ukulele virtuoso, but to my ear, he shines brightest when ...