Slack key guitar is the sound of Hawaiian camaraderie, protest, and love for the motherland. Most scholars attribute the fact that in the 1830s, when Mexican cowboys were hired by King Kamehameha to bring guitars to Hawaii, the strings were tuned to “slack,” allowing them to play chords openly without fretting. Traces the origins of the indigenous fingerstyle technique, named after it. III. Teach Hawaiian cowboys how to properly herd cattle. When the Mexicans returned home many years later, some left their guitars behind. But they probably didn’t teach the Hawaiians how to play. Instead, Hawaiians experimented with the instrument and retuned it to the established repertoire of traditional Hawaiian songs known as mele. This is a distinctly Hawaiian sound with intricate patterns of rhythm, bass, and lead his melody all handled by his one player on acoustic guitar. It would become synonymous with island identity.
Although slack key has been around for over a century, it was not recorded until 1946, decades after other styles of Hawaiian music had already crossed the Pacific and reached the mainland United States. It never happened. Yet its commercial appeal remained limited.in the meantime hula When steel guitar Slack key has been woven into the fabric of American popular music, and since its humble beginnings on the ranch, as an oral tradition, through strict relationships between masters and students, slack key has been stuck close to home. . Many players have developed their own tunings to suit their performance needs and playing style.
The details of Slack Key remain a closely guarded secret, with fingering techniques, tuning, history, mythology, and song meaning sometimes only known to one family. One player and flag bearer, Gaby Pahinui, famously refused to teach his sons, arguing that they only learned through careful observation and developed a unique voice. If they want to see what I do, fine, if not, fine,” he said when asked about his philosophy on education.
It wasn’t until the Second Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, a period of renewed interest in aspects of Hawaiian culture that had been repressed by nearly 80 years of American colonization, that the slack key guitar entered the mainstream. There was not. Native Hawaiian youth wanted to learn the rapidly disappearing Hawaiian language and hear stories of how the natives once lived. Slack key songs, by their very nature, have been frozen over time and acquired new value as educational tools. Playing slack key became an act of protest, an assertion of what it meant to be Hawaiian, and the holders of this knowledge assumed new roles as elder politicians. Selected below. Nine releases tell the story of how little-known indigenous folk music was transformed into an empowering voice for an endangered culture.