The Key to Life

Renaissance Man and Slack Key King George Kahumoku Jr. Brings the Aloha Spirit to the Mainland

The waves at Steamer Lane are breaking a big January swell. A lone surfer braves the middle peak, but keeps getting mowed over by the outside sets that send mountains of white water over him. It draws George Kahumoku Jr., one of Hawaii’s preeminent slack key guitarists, to the edge of the salty rail. The soon-to-be setting sun positively glows on his big round face and, thrilled, he points to the surfer and says he used to surf waves like this in Hawaii. Kahumoku is on sabbatical from the islands as he works toward attaining his graduate degree in education. But he’s also playing gigs, teaching guitar, and a host of other activities that would make even the very industrious blush.

For six months now, Kahumoku has been a displaced Hawaiian living in Santa Cruz. He’s tireless. He often works 20-hour days without stopping and is an extremely difficult man to pin down. Called a bonafide Hawaiian renaissance man by all that know him, Kahumoku manifests symptoms of an incipient career/identity crisis simply because his life is rather nine lives-like, spreading unstoppably throughout his 52 years. He’s been an organic farmer, an accomplished cook who once had his own TV cooking show, a guitar teacher, a sculptor, a hunter, an author, a fisherman, an at-risk kids teacher, a graduate student, a grant writer, a rancher, a carpenter, a mason, a surfer and a father of nine adopted children—he’s also pop to three biological kids. Then there’s his survival stories—he won a battle with cancer and a shark attack. And that’s just in the non-music world. On the music side of things, Kahumoku excels as a producer, arranger, composer and world-class guitar player, somebody who is highly respected on the mainland, the islands or the world. In short, the guy is infinitely boundless.

In the process of taking off his bulky jacket and long pants to reveal a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and thongs—he positively sheds the clothes with glee (without prodding) for a GT photo shoot—Kahumoku reveals two of his scars. One is where a chainsaw hit him in the thigh. Another is his missing toe, which was torn off by a jack hammer. “I sewed ’em up myself—with dental floss,” he says, punctuated by an incongruous, almost girlish giggle.

Add do-it-yourself surgeon to his list of credos.

Then, from a well-stickered hard case, Kahumoku pulls out his custom graphite Rainsong 12-string guitar. Gracing every two or three frets is an inlaid shark (a shark saved his grandmother but that’s a whole different story found in his book, “A Hawaiian Life”). With thick calluse-tipped fingers, he starts to play an instrumental song that uses a simple, yet beautiful melody from Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch in Hawaii and prolific slack key composer. The very surf rock strums of “Pipeline,” by the Chantays, forms the opening riff that gives way to the Queen’s stunning interlude and then succumbs back to the surfier lead on the bass string. His hands work all over the frets. Hammer-ons, trills, pull-offs, harmonics, and strange bar chords—a whole repertoire of slack key tricks up his sleeveless black tank-top.

In simple terms, slack key is an open-tuned guitar that, when played, the strings are slacked (or loosened) to create a melodious chord. The slack key player then can play the bass and treble parts of the music, which makes it sound as if numerous guitars are playing at once. And here, Kahumoku certainly makes it look easy. But when I turn away to look at the ocean that seems so perfect for this kind of music, it sounds difficult and complex again, like three guitars having a deep discussion about the meaning of life.

Drawn by the music, joggers and walkers slow down and gather by the railing to listen. Other adults in the area are visibly interested but cautiously standing back. Two children play behind Kahumoku to get closer to the music. He plays a song written by Keliirei Chiel, one of the at-risk youths he taught at the Lihaina High School on Maui, and who, he says, turned his life around because of music. It’s a song about the fog coming in, he explains before beginning. In a deep vibrato-laden voice he sings the song in Hawaiian, the song rising above the sound of breaking surf. “The fog searches out and seeks. Like love,” he says after the song is over.

And the Rest … is History

Slack key’s beginnings, like most cultural exchanges, of course, has less to do with exchange and everything to do with change. On the one side is an independent, self-governing island nation, literally out of range and radar of European imperialism, in the vast center of the Pacific Ocean until it was “discovered” and eventually subjugated. On the other, without the Spanish leaving some guitars behind, slack key would have never been the tradition it came to be.

And much like parallel conquest narratives on the mainland, our story begins with some cows. In 1793, intrepid explorer Captain George Vancouver brought 20 longhorn heifers and one bull as a gift to King Kamehameha I. Cows will be cows—in less than 50 years the herd grew to 2,000 and began to stampede crops of banana, tileaf and taro, not to mention the native flora and fauna. But historical coincidental wonders never cease to amaze. There was a gold rush going on in California that resulted in a beef shortage. Suddenly there was a design for the cattle. A Massachusetts sailor named John Palmer Parker, who had jumped ship and married the King’s granddaughter, was promised two acres of land if he could control the cattle. Presumably, the seafaring Parker didn’t know about ranching so he brought over some Mexican and Spanish vaqueros (cowboys) to teach the Hawaiians how to control the swelling cattle population with the lucrative prospect of sending the beef to the hungry miners back east. It worked, and the Hawaiians were natural-born cowboys who quickly assimilated the skills of roping cattle, riding horses and all that ranching entails.

The Hawaiians also picked up the guitar as readily as they had with the ropes and saddles. Kahumoko’s great, great, great grandfather was one of these first Hawaiian cowboys, or paniolo as they called themselves, and got his first guitar from a Mexican vaquero. “We owe a lot to the Spanish and the Mexicans,” Kahumoku says in his typical “with adversity comes opportunity” optimism; a favorite phrase of his.

Prior to the Spanish and Mexican cowboys’ arrival the Hawaiian musical mainstay subsisted of drums, chants and dancing. The guitar changed all that. The difference was Hawaiian cowboys couldn’t remember, or, more likely chose to forget, the Spanish E-A-D-G-B-E tunings. Always inventive, they made up their own. Thousands upon thousands of distinct tunings; each region of Hawaii a slack key genealogy built on geographical pride and passed on through the generations. Sometimes, a family would even de-tune their guitars before they left the house, lest someone steal it from them.

Kahumoku says his father mastered 20 or more tunings and over 40 on the ukulele which he passed on to his children as the custom was. It is through this rich unassuming heritage that slack key becomes really impressive, even more daunting when 20 different tunings had to be learned. Even more impressive, mastered.

In Kahumoko’s Santa Cruz house, where he lives with an affable women named Nancy Sweeney, he demonstrates some of this mastery. But first he tells a story, quintessential modus operandi of many Hawaiian slack key players who often first explain the songs in English when they sing in the Hawaiian language to Haole (Anglo) audiences.

“It is a song that was used to calm the cattle,” Kahumoku begins, ever present guitar resting his broad knee. “In the olden days, when they (the cowboys) were taking the cattle to the boats they would sing and play their songs. If you’re a cowboy and you’ve got to get your herd from 6,000 feet in elevation down to the ocean, you don’t want your cattle to lose weight along the way. You take ’em down slow if you can. Mosey down. You want your cattle to be as mellow as possible. A guy would be playing slack key all the way down with those cattle.”

Kahumoku plays the cow-calming number, a beautiful little ditty that has him lumbering back and forth in the chair like the cows in the story stepping down towards the ocean, towards their eventual slaughter. This thought adds a certain barbarous juxtaposition with the soothing music, and Kahumoko’s sensitive voice and guitar playing cedes to it. He finishes with an exquisite slide up the neck on the bass strings and adds a very soft flourishy end, plucking each string from the top down in an high open bar chord that ends on a high note.

With a grin, he says, “The same thing it does for us today—makes us feel mellow and at one—(it) did the same thing for the damn cattle. I’m not kidding.”

Slack Key Comeback

By the ’70s, slack key’s popularity in Hawaii had all but waned, replaced by an adulterated pop version of Caribbean and reggae aptly called jahawaiian. Even today, radio stations in Hawaii or on the mainland for that matter, rarely play slack key music. But that is changing. Oddly enough, it is a Santa Cruz record label that has rejuvenated the slack key art form. Dancing Cat Records, a subsidiary of Windam Hill and RCA Records, and the creative brainchild of renowned pianist George Winston, Dancing Cat has gradually brought the music back to old fans and introduced a legion of new ones.

In a very un-Hawaiian metal-blue stucco building on Seabright Avenue sits the Dancing Cat headquarters. Ben Churchill, vice president of marketing and promotions, gives a rundown on the company philosophy.

“George Winston fell in love with slack key in the ’70s,” Churchill says. “At that time there was a lot of Hawaiian music but it was mostly orchestras—really schlocky touristy ‘Little Grass Shack’ stuff. So he thought, ‘Wow, what a shame because this (slack key) is such beautiful music, and it seems like from the heart.’ And it was a style of music that really filled a void for him. Something that he was always looking for being that he is also an accomplished guitarist himself.”

Winston originally hails from Montana, and evidently found a deep connection with the cowboy music of Hawaii that set him off on a quest to archive and record as much of the music as he could find. Thus far Dancing Cat carries 35 artists in their Slack Key Master Series and puts out four to five slack key CDs a year including three of Kahumoku’s latest discs.

“These are world-class guitarists,” Churchill says. “When people see them they ultimately fall in love with the music. There really is such a thing as Aloha spirit. These musicians still have it, and it really comes across in their music. It speaks to the heart and comes from the land. The weather, the plants, the birds. Even though we don’t always understand the language, it comes across.”

Bob Brozman, ethnomusicologist and prominent musician in his own right, started collecting vintage ’78 rpm slack key records.

“Since that time, I went on to absorb jazz, Caribbean, African, Indian, Okinawan, South American and other music that occurred as an accidental byproduct of colonial oppression,” Brozman says from Australia where he is currently on tour. “Having played with musicians of every race and religion, I can attest that nationality, race and religion goes right out the window when the music is flowing.”

Brozman has played with many of Hawaii’s greats including Led Kaapana, Cyril Pahinui and George Kahumoku Jr. “These three guys are the kings of slack key,” Brozman continues. “I am always honored to work with them. George likes to jam, talk story and enjoy life, just like all the other musicians I’ve met around the world. Plus, he’s a great cook, so you never go hungry when you work with him.”

Back at the Ranch

Kahumoku is fresh back from a taping on Garrison Keillor’s popular radio show “Prairie Home Companion.” He’s happy about the experience because he got to play with one of his sons, also an accomplished musician. The crowd, he says, ate them up. But Kahumoku is also nonchalant, even nonplused about celebrity, especially his own. He’s played for Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. For 15 years, Henry “the Fonz” Winkler requested his presence at his New Year’s Eve parties; and in a historical twist of fate, he even played for the Queen of England.

After Kahumoku launches into a giddy song called “Moloka’i Slide,” an island he plans to move to someday to do some more farming, he says, “This music gives you a sense of balance, completeness, even to the guy that’s playing it as well as the listener, yeah … you feel that one, almost with the universe.”

It echoes something he said earlier about Ghandi—“‘You are your life. Your life is what you are.”