Grammy winner George Kahumoku Jr.
lights a fire

The Doing many of the things that Hawaiians have traditionally done, including fish, farm and play music, three-time Grammy Award winner George Kahumoku Jr. has had a life full of choices. He could have been a successful artist or a prolific farmer, or a teacher who could use his skills in art to boost the confidence of troubled high school students, or an itinerant player of music, or a big name entertainer. As a matter of fact, he now is all of these, all the time.

Always reinventing himself between struggles to make ends meet, after a bout with cancer at age 27, the energetic and genial Kahumoku, 58, normally gets only three hours of sleep each 24 hours – a good thing, considering his many interests.

Growing up with a large ’ohana (family group) near Kona, amid 26 cousins, this mostly Hawaiian (and amazingly one-eighth Mongolian) was constantly exposed to music.

“My great-grandmother used to make a drink called white lightening. That was our opportunity. They would pass out, and we would grab their instruments, go into the forest with a kerosene lantern and we would play music for hours,” he explained.

Taking numerous detours after graduation from Kamehameha Schools in Oahu, Uncle George finally figured out the best way to make a living was to play music at the venues along Kaanapali, including an early gig at my personal favorite, the gorgeous but short-lived Peacock restaurant atop Kekaa Drive.

In 1992, George began playing at The Westin Maui, with one memorable, funny result that had nothing to do with music.

Living at the hotel, in an ultimate clash of cultures, Kahumoku and Hawaiian friends one afternoon decided they had enough of restaurant food. They would revert to their Hawaiian ways, grab nets and go fishing at Pu’u Keka’a, known to legions of visiting snorkelers as Black Rock.

Bringing along handfuls of peas, like those used by visitors to attract fish, Kahumoku and friends cast their nets and pulled in a mother lode of uhu, manini, kala. aholehole, u’u and others. Figuring they should avoid cleaning their catch at The Westin’s spacious pool, they returned to their room, filled up the bathtub with fish for cleaning and flushed the entrails down a single toilet until it clogged up.

The fish would have to be dried. They strung up ropes, lined them with fish and turned on the air conditioning. Odors of drying fish wafted through the entire floor – the fishermen didn’t realize the AC vents circulated air from one room to another.

Time to cook: gather dried kiawe wood stacked outside the Villa Restaurant. Find some rocks around the waterfall. Group the rocks into a small roasting pit on the fourth floor lanai, and lay a wire shelf from the mini-bar across the rocks. Fire it up – barbecue a huge kala fish on the open fire. Then walk down the beach before a Hawaiian supper.

The sirens of fire engines are not often heard along Kaanapali Parkway, but they were that day.

Yellow-coated firemen strung up a long ladder to the room to put out the tiny flames amid the rocks, blasting a big hole in the sliding glass door with the powerful stream. Another day in paradise. The story is told in “A Hawaiian Life,” the self-published book George sells at his slack key performances.

Such mischief has been a way of life for a man whose infectious laugh is duplicated only by his wife, Nancy, the sister of his first music publisher.

In 1990, at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, management insisted George play with a partner. To keep it in the family, he picked his son, Keoki. Hands shaking, playing poorly, Keoki barely made it through the first set, supplementing his poor playing with an even worse voice. No worries.

“At the break,” George wrote, “I grabbed Keoki’s ukulele, used my wire cutters and clipped each of the strings on his instrument. From a distance, you couldn’t see they were not connected.” The two “played” like that for months, musician and pantomime in perfect harmony. (Despite the rough start, Keoki today is a slack key master and Grammy winner).

Then a flash of insight. Why not duplicate on Maui the successful concerts George appeared in on the Mainland? Stage your own weekly concert series and charge admission.

Paul Konwiser, a retired computer whiz with NASA and big fan, put together the first show. Clifford Nae’ole, the able cultural practitioner at the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, offered an auditorium. The Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Concert Series was born.

Five years later, George and as many as 20 guest artists a year are still going strong, recently completing their 244th performance at a new venue, Napili Kai Beach Resort.

Dancing Cat Records came calling a few years ago. Impresario George Winston regarded George’s “melodies and his voice as a gentle Hawaiian breeze.”

That breeze, plus the slack key music of a dozen others the last few years, has brought three Grammies and a recent nomination for a possible fourth. George plays on, when he is not planting taro or fashioning a ceramic. But that is another story...