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Keola Beamer (born Keolamaikalani Breckenridge Beamer February 18, 1951) [1] 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. [2]
Keola was born in Hawaii on February 18, 1951. [1] His mother, Winona Beamer ("Auntie Nona") was one of the most important figures in the revival of Hawaiian culture. She was a composer, dancer and educator. [3] His ancestors were musicians for the previous five generations. [4] He can trace his roots to the House of Kamehameha and Ahiakumai, 15th century rulers of Hawaii. [5] [3] His great-grandmother was Helen Desha Beamer, an influential songwriter and hula dancer. [6] His father is Odell Steppe. [4] Beamer is also a cancer survivor. [7]
Beamer's [8] career began in the early 1970s. [9] His debut recording in 1972 was headlined "Jack de Mello presents Keola Beamer" and titled "Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar in the Real Old Style", [10] followed in the same year by an album with his brother Kapono in 1972. This second album was headlined "Jack de Mello presents Keola and Kapono Beamer" and titled "This Is Our Island Home - We Are Her Sons," and subtitled "Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar in the Real Old Style". The album featured traditional songs as well as songs composed by Keola, Kapono, and Winona. Keola and Kapono performed as a duo, mixing traditional materials and styles with mainland pop influences. In their seven albums over the next decade, they played an important part in establishing the style that came to be called "Hawaiian contemporary," rooted in Hawaiian language and tradition but open to influences from elsewhere, incorporating rock, pop, Latin, folk-revival singer-songwriter, Hollywood soundtrack, and more. Their ' 1978 LP Honolulu City Lights title song was a popular single in Hawaii, and in 2004 Honolulu Magazine placed the album first on a list of the fifty most important Hawaiian albums. In the 1980s, the brothers separated professionally, each producing award-winning records. After several pop-oriented albums, Keola connected with George Winston's Dancing Cat recording project for five releases between 1994 and 2002, emphasizing slack key guitar and Hawaiian lyrics, but without abandoning "contemporary" influences.
Beamer is influential as a teacher. He started offering lessons in the early 1970s, at a time when most players would only play for family members. About 1972, Keola and Kapono provided slack key guitar lessons at the Guitar and Lute Workshop, a custom guitar manufacturer and recording studio located near Ala Moana Shopping Center on Piikoi Street. "In my early twenties, I was making guitars with George Gilmore and Donald Marienthal. We had the wild idea we could make nice guitars out of koa and mango wood so we took out a loan from the Small Business Administration and started the Guitar and Lute Workshop on Waimanu Street in Honolulu. People started coming in to ask about slack key. There were very few teachers back then, so I agreed to try it." [11] Keola published an instruction manual entitled "Hawaiian Slack Key". Teaching became his occupation for several years until he turned to full-time performing and composing.
In 1973 he published First Method for the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar (the first instruction book for the form), and in the 1990s he produced several more instruction books and videos and started offering lessons on-line via his website. Since 2001, he has run a series of "cultural immersion" workshops dedicated not only to slack key but other aspects of Hawaiiana. Meanwhile, he has continued to tour and to release CDs on his own 'Ohe Records label. In 2014, he was honored with a NACF Artist Fellowship for Music. [12] He lives in Lahaina, Hawaii.
Beamer was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 under the Best Regional Roots Music Album category, which includes Hawaiian music. The same year the musical soundtrack for the motion picture movie Descendants was nominated for the Grammy Awards. Beamer played on and contributed to the work. [13]
Beamer has influenced many guitar players. [14]
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.
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.
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".
The Hawaiian Renaissance was the Hawaiian resurgence of a distinct cultural identity that draws upon traditional kānaka maoli culture, with a significant divergence from the tourism-based culture which Hawaiʻi was previously known for worldwide. The Hawaiian Renaissance has been pointed to as a global model for biocultural restoration and sustainability.
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.
Ozzie Kotani is a slack-key guitar player and a well-respected teacher, arranger, solo performer and accompanist.
The Mountain Apple Company is a record label based in Honolulu, Hawaii, that specializes in traditional and contemporary music of Hawaii as well as other artists with a connection to Hawaii. It is known for popularizing the career of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.
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.
The Brothers Cazimero were a Hawaiian musical duo made up of Robert Cazimero on bass and Roland Cazimero on twelve string guitar. Robert also played piano as a solo musician. The Cazimeros got their start during the Hawaiian Renaissance with ukulele and slack-key guitarist Peter Moon's band, The Sunday Manoa, on their first recording, Guava Jam. Since that time, The Brothers Cazimero have released at least 36 recordings and three DVDs. For three decades, the group performed at the annual Lei Day Concert. They made their Carnegie Hall debut in 1989.
Haili Church Choir was established in 1902, and is affiliated with Haili Church in Hilo, on the island of Hawaii, in the U.S. state of Hawaii. In 2001, the choir was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in recognition of its promoting and developing music endemic to the Hawaiian culture. Several members of the choir have gone on to achieve commercial and cultural success in the genre of Hawaiian music.
Helen Kapuailohia Desha Beamer was a musician, composer of songs in the Hawaiian language, hula dancer and coloratura soprano of Hawaiian ancestry. Her descendants have also become accomplished artists in the U.S. state of Hawaii. In 1928, her duet of "Ke Kali Nei Au" with Sam Kapu Sr. on Columbia Records was the first commercial recording of the Charles E. King composition. She was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 1995.
Edwin Mahiʻai (Mahi) Copp Beamer was a tenor falsetto singer, composer and hula dancer of Hawaiian ancestry. He was born in Honolulu in the Territory of Hawaii and is the grandson of Helen Desha Beamer. His father, Milton Hoʻolulu Desha Beamer Sr. was her son. Mahi's mother was Mildred Kaaloehukaiopuaena Copp Beamer. In 2006, Mahi Beamer was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame. He was named a "Living Treasure of Hawaii" in 2008 by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, which has been recognizing Hawaii's treasures since 1976. He received the 1992 State of Hawaii Recognition Award for his musical contributions to the state and for perpetuating his grandmother's music. Beamer was the 1993 recipient of the David Malo award presented by Rotary International for his cultural contributions.
Winona Kapuailohiamanonokalani Desha Beamer was a champion of authentic and ancient Hawaiian culture, publishing many books, musical scores, as well as audio and video recordings on the subject. In her home state, she was known as Auntie Nona. She was an early proponent of the ancient form of the hula being perpetuated through teaching and public performances. Beamer was the granddaughter of Helen Desha Beamer. A cousin to Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame inductee Mahi Beamer, she teamed with him and her cousin Keola to form a touring North American troupe performing ancient hula and the Hawaiian art of storytelling. She was a teacher at Kamehameha Schools for almost 40 years, but had been expelled from that same school as a student in 1937 for dancing the standing hula. Beamer's sons Keola and Kapono are established performers in the Hawaiian music scene. Her grandson Kamanamaikalani Beamer is a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and CEO of the Kohala Center. She ran a Waikiki hula studio for three decades. In 1997—indignant at proposals to cut Hawaiian curriculum from Kamehameha Schools—Beamer became the catalyst for public protest and legal investigation into Bishop Estate management, which eventually led to the removal or resignation of the trustees.
The Guitar and Lute Workshop (GLW) was a manufacturer of custom guitars, ukuleles, and period stringed instruments based in Honolulu, Hawaii between 1970 and 1976. The workshop was known primarily for the talented luthiers employed in either construction of guitars, or the musicians that taught at the workshop or that used guitars made at the workshop. Additionally, an independent piano restoration and tuning business operated above the workshop floor and studios for at least two years. The GLW was notable as a nexus of activity supporting native Hawaiian musical cultural discovery during the Second Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, with key Hawaiian musicians such as Keola Beamer and Kapono Beamer gaining starts in their careers at the GLW, as well as musical instrument restoration for instruments of Hawaiian royalty, now curated by ʻIolani Palace. Additionally, the GLW's focus on traditional period stringed instruments was, in part, responsible for the resurgent interest in the viol and traditional luthierie methods within the western United States in the early 1970s.
Isabella Haleʻala Kaʻili Desha was a highly regarded Hawaiian composer, musician and kumu hula during the Kingdom of Hawaii and throughout her life. She is descended from notable chiefly lines.
Raiatea Mokihana Maile Helm is a Hawaiian music vocalist from Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi. She has earned four Na Hoku Hanohano awards, as well as two Grammy nominations for Best Hawaiian Music Album.
Brother Noland is an American musician and author, known chiefly as a performer of Hawaiian music and slack-key guitar.
The Descendants (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack to the film The Descendants, released, three days before the film on November 15, 2011 by Sony Classical Records. The film uses Hawaiian music, featuring artists including Gabby Pahinui, Ray Kane, Keola Beamer, Lena Machado, Sonny Chillingworth, Jeff Peterson, Makana, Dennis Kamakahi, and Danny Carvalho. The soundtrack was acclaimed by music critics for its use of Hawaiian music and received a nomination for Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.
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