ARTS & EVENTS

Hawaiian Punch: Slack Key Guitar Showcase

Express contributor Russell Carlson previews Wolf Trap's two-day Slack Key Guitar showcase.

2007-02-22_Keoki.jpgPLEASE DON'T LET a few bad Elvis movies, Don Ho and/or those misspent nights at the local tiki bar cement in you a false impression of Hawaiian music. For years mainlanders have been fed a narrow slice of what the islands have to offer. Listening beyond the kitsch, however, might lead you to discover Hawaii's own cowboy music: slack-key guitar, a sound equally warm and hypnotic as familiar ukulele fare — but one you can't quite shake a grass skirt to. Nonetheless, slack-key guitar has lately been enjoying increased attention here on the continent, thanks in part to a Grammy-winning compilation CD by 10 of the genre's — ahem — key contemporary players. Four of the artists featured on "Slack Key Guitar Volume 2" will brave metro D.C.'s current cold spell to play Wednesday and Thursday at Wolf Trap.

While its exact origin remains somewhat of a mystery, slack-key guitar is an indigenous Hawaiian art form and gets it name from the guitars it's played on — or rather, their strings. Just like Southern bluesmen who detuned their guitars from classical tuning, slack-key guitarists always pitch their open strings in creative ways to achieve a more exotic sound — and the tunings often get exotic names like Samoan C Mauna Loa, Gabby's Hi'ilawe and Taro Patch. The meditative, finger-picked sound that results is so soothing that its actual complexity remains largely unnoticed.

The four guitarists playing this week at Wolf Trap are as noteworthy a crew of slack-key artists as we're likely ever to receive on this coast. Keoki Kahumoku (shown at left) and Sonny Lim are the progeny of famous Hawaiian musical families. Jeff Peterson is a distinguished guitarist in multiple genres (he's performed with Eric Clapton and jazz man Rufus Reid), but he gets his cred by blood, too: His pop was a Hawaiian cowboy, or paniolo. Finally there's Charles Michael Brotman, a sort of slack-key Berry Gordy.

Brotman, a master slack-key guitarist in his own right, corralled these artists and others to produce the award-winning CD and open more mainland ears to the slack-key sound. Whether or not slack-key will ever eclipse a lei-draped Elvis in popularity — well, that's a tall order. But perhaps the warmth of Brotman and Co.'s music will do its part this week to help melt away the winter weather.

» The Barns at Wolf Trap, 1645 Trap Road, Vienna; Wed. & Thu., 8 p.m. doors, $22; 703-255-1868.

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