Grass-Roots Renaissance

Each time I set out for the islands, I hear them coming toward me long before I arrive. Last September when I called Hawaiian Airlines to confirm my reservation and was put on hold, I didn’t mind the wait. Behind swinging guitars a sweet falsetto voice sang “The Green Rose Hula,” and I was halfway there.

In flight the next day over the Pacific, I plugged in my headphones and got the all-Hawaiian audio track. It was Gabby Pahinui, the late slack key guitar virtuoso whose heartful voice led the Hawaiian cultural renaissance that started 30 years ago. A few songs later it was his son, Cyril, now carrying on the legacy of his father as a composer, singer and acclaimed guitarist.

In the airline magazine, next to the list of songs, Cyril Pahinui’s bearded face had rugged Polynesian lines. From the look of this picture, you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him at a party. Yet he was singing about a tiny and indigenous forest bird. So many Hawaiian songs are like this, speaking to some feature or creature of the natural world, the wind, the rain, a mountain, a waterfall, a bird that dips its pointed beak into the flower. Cyril’s voice tells you something in advance about the islands you are bound for. It is a vulnerable voice, like his father’s, with echoes of the chant and the pulse of hula rhythms, and from time to time a note that floats between celebration and lament, like the captivating notes in flamenco singing.

I have heard Hawaiian music most of my life, thanks to my father. During three years with a submarine crew at Pearl Harbor in the 1920s, he developed a passion for the steel guitar. Later he settled in San Francisco, where I grew up hearing his songs long before I knew where they’d come from.

I went to Hawaii for the first time in the late ‘50s, and the music I heard was familiar and welcoming, but I didn’t really start listening to it until many years later, when I taught at the University of Hawaii. Musically, something had shifted. There was a new pride in the dancing, a new vigor in the voices. I was gripped by the sounds of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance.

Among the bands who rose to prominence then were the Sons of Hawaii, led by Gabby Pahinui and Eddie Kamae. Their influence is still being felt, as witnessed by a recently re-released classic 1971 album, “Sons of Hawaii,” featuring Kamae and Moe Keale on ukuleles and Gabby on guitar. They brought to perfection the ingredients of a good Hawaiian band--careful harmonies, superb musicianship, a blend of stringed instruments and the lyrics of a traditional and contemporary repertoire.

The multitude of love songs, place songs, ballads and hula tunes we now think of as “Hawaiian” began to take shape in the 19th century, when islanders were living at the crossroads of the Pacific. Old Hawaiian voice and rhythm patterns, made of chants and drums and percussion sticks, encountered new instruments and voices arriving from far-flung ports. From this fusion something new began to form. The chords and melodies were Western. The poetry of the words, and the pulse behind the words, came from deep within Polynesian tradition.

Hawaiians have shown a rare gift for absorbing each musical influence that has floated toward them and somehow making it their own. And there is no better example of this than the style of guitar playing called ki ho’alu, or slack key, regarded by many as the quintessential Hawaiian sound. Ki ho’alu means to slacken or loosen strings as a way to change the tuning. It usually involves lowering bass strings and arranging the treble strings so that most chords can be played with two or three open strings plucked by a roving thumb. This open chording, in turn, can make a bigger sound, with an uninterrupted harmonic aura that hums around the melody line like the murmur of surf around the islands.

Several years ago Dancing Cat Records launched its Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters series, including Keola Beamer, George and Moses Kahumoku, the Rev. Dennis Kamakahi and Ray Kane. Slack key performers all pay homage to Gabby Pahinui, who moved the music from back-porch family gatherings into the public domain.

For a century or so, slack key had been used primarily to accompany singing. By the ‘50s Gabby was the best known of a small vanguard of musicians developing a more elaborate and innovative solo style. Mainland listeners first began to take notice when Ry Cooder joined Gabby and his band for some recording sessions in the mid-’70s.

Slack key guitar playing is an exacting art, technically and musically unique, and is now celebrated each year in various Hawaiian festivals. The most celebrated will be on Aug. 15, the 17th annual Bankoh Ki ho’alu “Gabby Style” Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival, to be held at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu.

For travelers to the islands there is an abundance of good Hawaiian music to be heard. Here’s just a sampling of what is available in the coming weeks and months: Moe Keale often plays poolside at the Sheraton Waikiki on Sunday and Thursday evenings, while angel-voiced Jerry Santos and Olomana perform weekends at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu. And the sweet, Big Island harmonies of the Lim Family can be heard at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel on Hawaii. The most active new venue in Waikiki for good Hawaiian music is the Hawaiian Regent hotel in Honolulu, where Sunday evening is slack key night.

One Thursday last September at the Regent I caught a set by the legendary Auntie Genoa Keawe. She turned 80 last fall and can still stop the show with breath-defying notes that can last half a minute or more.

Last September I also happened to be on the island of Kauai and drove out to the town of Kekaha for their 15th annual Mokihana Festival. It was an all-day hula and music party on a grassy plaza one block from the beach. Under a long canopy, tables had been set up with barbecued ribs for sale and chicken luau. Vendors displayed aloha shirts, koa carvings and strings of shell leis from the island of Niihau, visible across the channel. Bands were there from other towns around the island, along with hula groups that performed one after the other. Sometimes young women in the audience, moved by a certain song, would step out across the grass to do a spontaneous hula, to loud cheers from the crowd.

Chanting and hula are at the center of Hawaii’s musical tradition. On May 15 the Molokai Ka

Hula Piko festival, a daylong celebration of the birth of hula, will be held at Papohaku Beach Park.

There may be no better place to experience hula than at the annual Merrie Monarch Festival, to be held this year from April 4 to 10 in Hilo. Bands and dance troupes will fly in from all the islands. The festival is named for David Kalakaua, the last Hawaiian king, called “the Merrie Monarch” because of his enormous zest for life.

Kalakaua was also known for using the influence of his reign (1874-1891) to help keep alive some of the traditional arts, in particular the hula, then under heavy attack from missionary leaders who perceived it to be lewd.

In its original form hula was a narrative movement designed to enhance the meanings of the songs and chants that contained the legends and collective memory of a people. Kalakaua knew that if the hula died, the chants would die, and if the chants died, then history itself might disappear.

At the Merrie Monarch, the two main styles of hula are featured. Auwana, the more undulating style, is usually accompanied by a small band. In the older hula form, kahiko, each dance opens with an invocation, sometimes to Pele, the volcano goddess.

In a typical kahiko costume, the women wear knee-length skirts of flat green leaves and leis of fern. Their moves can be soft or as startling as a thunderclap: Knees pop and arms jut skyward while hands tell timeless stories.

They dance to the rhythm of a single drum and the chanting of a single voice, sometimes male, sometimes female. It can be a haunting sound that seems to rise from within the island, catching something that permeates the luminous air. It is the same note heard in the voice of Cyril Pahinui, Eddie Kamae, Genoa Keawe and other performers for whom these ancient chants continue to be a source and a foundation. It is the ongoing story of Hawaii.

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GUIDEBOOK

Island Melodies

Where to hear traditional music: Talented Hawaiian musicians regularly perform at the Hawaiian Regent hotel, 2552 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu; telephone (808) 921-5444.

Merrie Monarch Festival, April 4 to 10 in Hilo, a key hula festival with ancient and modern dance, with various bands; tel. (808) 935-9168.

Molokai Ka Hula Piko festival, May 15, at Papohaku Beach Park, tel. (808) 553-3876.

Bankoh Ki ho’alu “Gabby Style” Hawaiian Slack Key Festival, Aug. 15, in Honolulu; tel. (808) 239-4336.

For more information: A terrific source for Hawaiian music concerts, in Hawaii and on the mainland, is on the Internet at https://www .mele.com.

The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, tel. (808) 923-1811, with performance listings on the Internet at https://www.gohawaii.com.