George Kahumoku Jr. explains the history and healing power of Hawaiian slack-key guitar

George Kahumoku Jr. hails from a place very different from the Sonoran Desert: Hawaii.

Kahumoku Jr. is a master of Hawaiian music, known for his work on slack key guitar and ukulele.

Known as “Uncle George,” he’s won multiple Grammy Awards and traveled the world performing this music, which goes back generations.

On top of all of that, he’s also a farmer, artist and author. And he’s in Phoenix this weekend to perform and teach at the Musical Instrument Museum’s Experience Polynesia event.

He sat down with The Show this week to tune his 12-string guitar and talk about his music.

Full conversation

GEORGE KAHUMOKU: This tuning been in our family since 1820.

LAUREN GILGER: This tuning in particular, this kind of tuning?

Sitting down to hear George Kahumoku Jr. play his guitar feels something like floating in the ocean for me, looking up at the sky.

So yeah, tell me what you're doing while you're tuning there. It's not traditional. Like you don't tune this A, B, C, D, E like a normal guitar.

KAHUMOKU: I tune C, F, C, F, A, C.

GILGER: How many strings?

KAHUMOKU: My grandfather actually tuned his to E flat tuning. So, you know, we would tune to our voices. We don't care what the heck. But the problem is when you go play with other people, they can't play with you. Because it's only within our family. So when I started playing, you know, with other people, I had to find the tuning.

GILGER: As he tuned up his guitar to play a little slack key for me, it quickly became clear that everything he does with his guitar is rooted way back in his family lore.

KAHUMOKU: My great grandfather was also one of the first to learn the guitar from the Spanish cowboys who came over to Hawaii.

GILGER: That history, in which Mexican vaqueros came to Hawaii to tame a mass of roaming cattle, is family history to Uncle George.

KAHUMOKU: You're going to even laugh at this. I live on the street where the first cowboys came from in Santa Cruz.

GILGER: He told me the whole story and played me a few songs.

Let me start with a little bit about, like, show us a little bit about what slack key means. It's about the way you were tuning it here, right?

KAHUMOKU: Yeah. What happens in 1793, this guy by the name of George Vancouver comes to Hawaii and he drops off a bunch of cattle and ended up going through the mountains. And in less than, you know, a couple, maybe 30, 40, 50 years, the herd goes into the millions. I'm not kidding. Millions.

GILGER: Wow.

KAHUMOKU: So along comes another sea captain by the name of John Parker. Then what he does is he talks the king at the time to selling some land for 30 bucks or something. He gets like 300,000 acres of land.

GILGER: Wow.

KAHUMOKU: And all the cattle is over there. So what he does is he actually goes over to California. It was Mexico at the time.

GILGER: Right.

KAHUMOKU: You know, this is like 1830s. So he finds out this Castro family, they're in charge of all these lands. So they go to the Castro family, and he asked, can you guys send us some cowboys? So they sent three cowboys over.

GILGER: Just three?

KAHUMOKU: Only three.

GILGER: Wow.

KAHUMOKU: Yeah. But they bring their horses and everything. My great grandfather is one of the cowboys they first taught how to rope and work cattle. So that's during the day. But at night, they busted out the guitars. It had something — you can even find this out in mariachi bands.

You got three guys to make one sound. One guy plays the bass. Then another guy plays a rhythm. Then another guy plays the lead.

GILGER: Wow.

KAHUMOKU: So it takes three guys to make that Spanish sound.

GILGER: Yeah.

KAHUMOKU: So the two years go by, the contract is ended, they send back the cowboys. But what they did, and they leave a few guitars behind. My great grandfather is one of those who got the guitar. But what they forgot to do is teach us how to tune these things.

GILGER: So he had the Spanish guitar, but he didn't know how to tune?

KAHUMOKU: Yeah. And so what we did is we combined three guitars into one, where we play bass, rhythm and lead.

This is my grandfather, slack key. By slacking the strings. Slack key was born.

GILGER: There it is. Yeah. I mean, you can hear all three of those parts in one there. That's amazing.

KAHUMOKU: So that's what we do just by slacking the strings.

GILGER: So a lot of history there. But, I mean, to me, what's so interesting about that is it sounds so distinctly Hawaiian to me in a way that I didn't even really realize I knew.

KAHUMOKU: Yeah. But then the thing is, we were really influenced by the vaqueros who came to Hawaii, you know, and then a lot of the tunes, Hawaiians, actually, we didn't have any melody lines. It was all chant.

GILGER: So it goes from that kind of traditional chanting. The vaqueros come teach you this guitar, and it turns into this kind of meld of both.

KAHUMOKU: Yeah. So let me show you the. This other chant. It's called "He'eia." This chant goes back thousands of years.

[CHANTING PLAYS]

You know, it goes. So that's basically a chat about going surfing. You catch, you know, he's zigzagging and he flying across the wave like a like a bird. Now take the same sound. Now we're adding slack key.

GILGER: OK.

KAHUMOKU: Bass, rhythm, lead.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

Same chant, but now set to Hawaiian slack key: bass, rhythm and lead.

GILGER: That's really cool. So, I mean, your great grandfather taught you how to play this guitar, and you now travel all over the world, it sounds like, playing it for folks and teaching them about this.

What do you think about your community and kind of where it stands today as you kind of spread it around the globe with this music? Do you think about it as something that people could learn something from?

KAHUMOKU: I think the person who really helped me expand our world, this guy by the name of George Winston. He started recording us in the '90s. You know, we're playing it on the beach for the tourists in Mauna Kea or whatever. Nobody's paying attention to our music. They're just, you know, they're swimming, they're dancing.

All of a sudden, here comes this guy who records. He heard my music and my brother's music on the radio. So he comes to Hawaii. Then he starts recording my brother first. Then he recorded me as a soloist. He took away all the voices. He just made it all instrumental. But he sold, you know, my first.

You know, I had my own recording company. We'd sell like maybe 10, 15, 30,000 a year, you know, very local. My first album with him sold over 4 million because he reached a different audience. You see what I mean? All of a sudden we played from Great American Hall in San Francisco all the way to Carnegie Hall.

GILGER: That's wild. So, I mean, what do you think it was about the music that seemed to strike a chord?

KAHUMOKU: I think what it was about the music is that I think the music was very healing for a lot of people. And then they connected to the music. And it was the vibration, this idea of this vibration that you have.

Our music is really, when we play, it's about the land, it's about the ocean, it's about our environment, it's about our family, it's about things we love like flowers or plants, a loved one. So the music became an expression of our way to connect with each other. You know what I mean?

GILGER: Has this music been healing to you throughout your life?

KAHUMOKU: Definitely. When I played music, I played at a hotel. I played like six, seven days a week for five to six hours. So all day long I'm struggling with stuff, anxiety, working with at-risk kids farming all of this stuff, roping cattle.

But when I go play music six, seven hours a day after doing all of that this vibration is coming from my guitar. My voice is singing. It's just like going to church. Imagine going to church six, seven days a week.

The guitar is right next to my body. It's vibrating. It's healing me. I didn't know that at the time. This is me like 50 years later, looking back at how the vibrations and that we interact with each other can be healing. Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: That's beautiful. George, you think you can take us out on a song today?

KAHUMOKU: OK. Here's a song that I called "Peace and Harmony."

[MUSIC PLAYS]