by Garrick Rawlings
Redondo Beach will once again host the biggest Hawaiian music concert event on mainland USA this Sunday, January 14 at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. Celebrating their 17\year, the Southern California Slack Key Festival, presented by Kala Koa Entertainment, brings the most respected slack-key guitarists in the world from Hawaii and elsewhere, along with Hula dancers of the same caliber. Along with the music and Hula, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. there is free admission to the Island Marketplace where vendors provide food, apparel, and gifts.
“Slack-key” refers to certain strings being tuned down (flattened in pitch), resulting in literally more slack in those strings. Tuning variations such as this are commonly called “open tuning” in non-Hawaiian applications. The varieties of different tunings on the guitar are as endless as the songs in the air. Many of the tunings were traditional to individual families and were guarded with fervent secrecy. Some still are. In the early 20th century there was a “Hawaiian music craze,” as well as another Polynesian Tiki infatuation post WWII. Mainland blues and country pickers made slide and steel guitars popular, as we know them today. But the sliding steel guitar itself was invented by Joseph Kekuku on Oahu in 1885. There is wax cylinder recorded proof! What is called steel guitar today was originally called the Hawaiian guitar for many years.
The mastermind behind this great South Bay festival is Mitch Chang, whose Kala Koa Entertainment company also produces the LA International Flamenco Festival and the LA International Ukulele Festival. These endeavors are a huge financial risk to an individual promotor and that’s how Chang got it off the ground, financing things at times by emptying his 401k to make them blossom.
“This year’s show has a good range of old and young performers, some new faces that have never been in the festival before,” Chang said. “Some from the younger generation are keeping this style going, and they play in the old style too. We have a lot of singers and instrumentalists, ukulele and steel guitar. It’s a good representation of Hawaiian music and how slack-key, Ki Ho Alu [Hawaiian] guitar fits into the grand scheme of things. Many people think of the ukulele as the Hawaiian instrument but I guarantee you that even if they don’t know what slack-key is, once they hear it, it’s instantly identifiable with Hawaii, in my opinion way more than ukulele. For beginners, the most accessible slack-key guitar tuning is Taro Patch Tuning [Hawaiian] which is open G (strings tuned to a G Major chord, string pitches low to high D-G-D-G-B-D). It’s the tuning Keith Richards uses. There are a lot of slack-key players who play in standard tuning, but they kind of trick you and still sound like they are in a slack-key, like Sean Parks who is on the show.
Last year Chang played a solo piece with a singer and a dancer. “This year I’m not sure there’s enough time. I may be there in the background” he said.
This year’s performers include Parks, Kula’iwi, Hi’ikua, Jeff Peterson, Jim “Kimo” West, Namaka Cosma, Leokane Pryor, and Ken Emerson. Chang has high praise for the most accomplished artist in this year’s lineup, former Olomana group member, Jerry Santos.
“Jerry is the most senior musician and I think everyone on this list has been influenced by him. He was part of the big Hawaiian Renaissance in the seventies. The first thing I learned on his guitar is his song “Ku’u Home O Kahalu’u,”” Chang said.
Most of the performers are from Hawaii but one of today’s most esteemed slack-key guitarists is LA’s own, Grammy award winning Jim “Kimo” West, who just returned from his new-year’s gig in St Croix. He’s been part of the SoCal Slack-Key fest since the beginning.
“Yeah, I have been part of every one except for 2020 when I was on the International Guitar Night Tour. In 2019, I was presented with a perfect attendance award, so yeah. I’ve played all the Hawaiian Slack-Key festivals. This festival in Redondo Beach is far above and beyond – the production value and the amount of talent, the Hula, it’s always a top-notch show.”
One of West’s ‘side gigs’ is playing guitar & multi-instrumentalist with “Weird Al” Yankovic, who just scored a couple of Emmys for the film “The Al Yankovic Story.” West serves as Yankovic’s long-time bandmate, “Oh only about 40 years. I met Al in the early ‘80s, he just got his record deal. When I came to LA I didn’t really know who he was, a guy who played an accordion, but he had some gigs and I thought well that’s good.”
“I started learning his songs and even back then I realized that his songs were so well-crafted, his lyrics are so good – bullet proof – really well done, so I’ve always had a big respect for his work. I think he’s got about five or six Grammy’s for records that I played on. We’ve done a bunch of tours. We had a Billboard #1 album Mandatory Fun in 2014.”
The Southern California Slack Key Festival is Sunday, January 14, at 2 p.m. at Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, on Manhattan Beach Boulevard, at the intersection of Aviation Boulevard. Tickets are $25 to $150, and available at Slackkeyfest.com. ER
