Grammy winners share music, Hawaiian style

	George Kahumoku Jr. and Masters of Hawaiian Music WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 16 WHERE: South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway SE HOW MUCH: $27 in advance at www.ampconcerts.org and at Hold My Ticket, 210 Second SW; by calling 886-1251 or at the door

Kahumoku, his son Keiko Kahumoku and Uncle Richard Ho’opi’i will be in concert Saturday, Feb. 16 at the South Broadway Cultural Center.

All three play slack-key guitar and Ho’opi’i also plays ukulele and sings in traditional Hawaiian falsetto known as leo ki’eki’e.

“We are one of the few people keeping the slack-key guitar tradition going,” George Kahumoku Jr. said in a phone interview from his farm on Maui.

Slack-key is a traditional finger style that Hawaiians learned from Mexican cowboys in the late 19th century.

Kahumoku also is busy as the director of the University of Hawaii’s Maui Center’s Institute of Hawaiian Music.

“It’s a mentorship program that’s been going for two years,” he said.

“Three thousand people try to get in but we only take 25 each year. There are people who come to the institute from Japan, Germany, Australia, and they have to learn the Hawaiian language.

“It’s huge outside of Hawaii but I don’t know why,” Kahumoku added.

Part of the reason may be the interest of pianist-composer George Winston. In the 1970s, his label recorded slack-key guitarists and brought attention to the tradition.

Kahumoku and his son have each won multiple Grammys for Best Hawaiian Music albums and Ho’opi’i has been recognized as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts for his falsetto singing.

The trio of Hawaiian musicians will be in concert at 7:30 tonight at the Taos Center for the Arts, 133 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos, and at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 17 at Marshall Auditorium, 417 Schepps Blvd., Clovis.

Tickets for the Taos concert are $20 general public, $17 Taos Center for the Arts members, $10 students at the door. Tickets for the Clovis concert are $17 and $12.