Slack key master Makana to go back, and forward in time at Slack Key Festival in Redondo Beach
by Laila Freeman
Celebrated slack key guitarist Makana plans to do more than perform at the 18th Annual Southern California Slack Key Festival, on January 19 at 2 p.m at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.
He will also teach the audience what’s behind the music.
“Do the listeners know what the song means? Do they understand kaona (hidden meanings)? Why were the songs written in a style that veiled the meaning?”
Makana said these questions come up in academia, but he thinks they should also be part of Hawaiian music performances.
He’ll appear at the festival in white loafers, and wearing a 1960s style, triple-strand carnation lei.
“I’m, as usual, going back in time to go forward,” he said.
Born Matthew Swalinkavich, Makana grew up on Oahu and has been playing slack-key guitar since he was a child. The name Makana comes from Hawaiian tradition.”‘A gift given freely,’ as a practical and philosophical orientation to life, is how the kūpuna (elders) translated ‘makana,’” he explained. “I was given the name as a reminder of my responsibility and commitment to share my gifts freely with others.
“In slack-key, we tune to a chord,” he said. “Since the guitar’s already holding the chord, the fretting hand is free, and we can use it to actually change the melody.
“We use the picking hand to do alternating baselines, while we do occasional drums and chords and melody leads. It’s very complicated. There are three parts going on at once, and it’s not just a bunch of picking. It also has general stylistic rules.”
Makana will give festival goers a “sampling session” of legendary slack-key masters Sonny Chillingworth, Raymond Kāne, Alice Nāmakelua, Leonard Ke’ala Kwan, Gabby Pahinui and others.
“When you see some of the different legacy ohana (family) styles back to back, you start to hear the nuance and the diversity of approaches. It can easily get homogenized because it’s complex and it requires a commitment to be able to do.”
By spotlighting these nearly lost styles, Makana aims to “give context and a foundation for appreciation of a lot of the subtlety that’s almost gone now.”
His goal is to “bring back that deeply romanticized era with the songs and the sounds and the crooning and the aesthetics, and then use that to parlay into issues of relevance.”
Although he loves sugar, “I don’t try to satisfy a sweet tooth,” Makana said. “What I’m trying to do is build an appetite for truth.” The appetite he speaks of is for the deeper layers of Hawaii’s society, music and culture.
“It’s not just a matter of making more Hawaiian music — we’re always going to do that — but how does Hawaiian music play into the actual erasure of real Hawaii? That’s a tough question. Where does this all go?
“If I can use art to trigger someone into a moment where they feel connected to something in their past experience, I can use that like a Trojan horse to bring in a new perspective,” he said.
“Imagine you’re looking at a Pan Am or Aloha Airlines ad from 1960 or even 1950, and then there’s all this small print that’s just marketing dribble. What if you replace that with something educational?
“Now, it’s Cheesecake Factory and luxury condos. But what if you take people back and then they start scrolling and they go, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t see tourism as a front for the military industrial complex. I never thought about it like that.’ And so that’s just a slice of what I’m playing with starting this year.”
Makana said that slack-key guitar is an art form that is always close to extinction. He is grateful for his “dedicated, beautiful, inspired fan base” and plans on showing his Redondo audience slack-key is still very much alive.
“We need more artists to become impassioned with the kaleidoscopic nature of creativity and the legacy of Hawaiian music,” Makana said. “And slack-key is a part of that.”
18th Annual So. California Slack Key Festival
Jan. 19 at 2 p.m., Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach. Tickets $28-$153 (the top price includes a VIP luau/meet-and-greet with the festival performers on Jan. 18 from 5 to 8 pm. at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center). Tickets are available at tix.com/ticket-sales/kalakoa/1723/event/1367811, or 800-595-4849. For information, go to SlackKeyFest.com.
Laila Freeman is an Orange County freelance writer with a BA in journalism from Cal State Long Beach. She is working on a master of fine arts in creative writing at Chapman University. This feature is underwritten by Journalism Arts Initiative.