The music of Hawaii includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Styles like slack-key guitar are well known worldwide, while Hawaiian-tinged music is a frequent part of Hollywood soundtracks. Hawaii also made a contribution to country music with the introduction of the steel guitar. In addition, the music which began to be played by Puerto Ricans in Hawaii in the early 1900s is called cachi cachi music, on the islands of Hawaii.
Keola Beamer is a Hawaiian slack-key guitar player, best known as the composer of "Honolulu City Lights" and an innovative musician who fused Hawaiian roots and contemporary music. Keola Beamer descends from one of Hawaii's most respected musical families.
Edwin Bradfield Liloa Chillingworth, Jr., known as Sonny Chillingworth, was an American guitarist and singer. Widely influential in Hawaiian music, he played slack-key guitar and is widely regarded as one of the most influential slack-key guitarists in history.
Philip Kunia Pahinui, known as Gabby Pahinui, was a slack-key guitarist and singer of Hawaiian music.
Slack-key guitar is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii. This style of guitar playing involves altering the standard tuning on a guitar from E-A-D-G-B-E, which has been used for centuries, so that strumming across the open strings will then sound a harmonious chord, typically an open major. This requires altering or "slacking" certain strings, which is the origin of the term "slack key". The style typically features an alternating-bass pattern, played by the thumb on the lower two or three strings of the guitar, while the melody is played by the fingers on the three or four highest strings. There are as many as fifty tunings that have been used in this style of playing, and tunings were once guarded fiercely and passed down as family secrets. In the early 20th century, the steel guitar and the ukulele gained wide popularity in America, but the slack-key style remained a folk tradition of family entertainment for Hawaiians until about the 1960s and 1970s during the second Hawaiian renaissance.
Ledward Kaapana is a Hawaiian musician, best known for playing in the slack key guitar style. In 2011, he received a National Heritage Fellowship, the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. He also plays steel guitar, ukulele, autoharp, and bass guitar, and is a baritone and falsetto vocalist. He received Na Hoku Hanohano Awards from the Hawai'i Academy of Recording Arts (HARA), and has been nominated for Grammy Awards.
The Grammy Award for Best Hawaiian Music Album was an honor presented to recording artists from 2005 to 2011 for quality Hawaiian music albums. The Grammy Awards, an annual ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, are presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency, and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position".
James West, also known as Kimo, is a Canadian guitarist best known for working with "Weird Al" Yankovic.
Dennis David Kahekilimamaoikalanikeha Kamakahi was a Hawaiian slack key guitarist, recording artist, music composer, and Christian minister. He was a three-time Grammy Award winner, and in 2009 he was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame.
Leonard Keala Kwan Sr (1931–2000) was one of the most influential Hawaiian slack-key guitarists to emerge in the period immediately preceding the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance of the 1970s. He made the first LP of slack key instrumentals, co-wrote the second slack key instruction book, and composed a number of pieces that have become part of the standard repertory. Most players will include Kwan, along with Gabby Pahinui, Sonny Chillingworth, and Atta Isaacs, on a list of the most significant players of the older generation.
The Whiskeyhill Singers were an American folk revival group formed in early 1961 by Dave Guard after he left The Kingston Trio. Guard formed the Singers as an attempt to return to the Trio's earlier roots in folk music. The Singers lasted about six months before disbanding. During that short period the group released one album, Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers, and recorded a number of songs for the soundtrack of How the West Was Won, but only four of these were used in the movie.
Elmer "Sonny" Lim is a Hawaiian musician and slack key guitar player from Waimea (Kamuela) on the Big Island of Hawaii. Sonny is part of the musical Lim Family of North Kohala.
Jeff Peterson is an American slack key guitar player from Maui, Hawaii. The son of a paniolo at Haleakala Ranch, Peterson was exposed to the sounds of slack key at an early age.
George Kahumoku Jr. is a Grammy Award-winning Hawaiian musician specializing in slack-key guitar.
Owana Kaʻōhelelani Mahealani-Rose Salazar is an American musician and activist. She is thought to be the only female steel guitar player in Hawaiʻi trained by Jerry Byrd.
John Kameaaloha Almeida was a blind musician and songwriter from Oahu, Hawaii.
Makana, born Matthew Swalinkavich, is a slack-key guitar player, singer, and composer.
Cyril Pahinui was a slack-key guitarist and singer of Hawaiian music.
Alan Akaka is a Hawaiian steel guitarist and educator. The son of former congressman and senator Daniel Akaka, he has taught at several schools and is in charge of the Hawaiian music school Ke Kula Mele. In 2014 he successfully led a petition to prevent the ukulele from being named the official state musical instrument, arguing that the steel guitar was more reflective of Hawaiian tradition.
David "Feet" Rogers was a Hawaiian lap steel guitar player and inductee into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 2019.
