Makana

Open Space for Arts & Community presents slack key guitar master, singer, composer, and pioneer of the SLACK ROCK guitar style -- Makana.

Voted one of America’s Top 3 guitarists by Guitar Player Magazine in 2008, Makana’s music transcends category and trend by integrating elements of folk, rock, ethnic, classical, bluegrass, jazz, traditional, ambient, electronic and Hawaiian slack key.

Makana’s music can be heard in the Academy Award winning movie ‘The Descendants’. He’s toured with a wide array of internationally recognized artists, including Jason Mraz, Santana, Elvis Costello, Sting, No Doubt, Jack Johnson, and John Legend.

Makana is also recognized for the occupy/protest song "We Are The Many" he wrote and performed at the APEC summit in Honolulu on November 12, 2011 in front of President Obama and 20 world leaders.

The National Geographic Society recorded Makana in concert for their "Geo Sessions" series and stated, "With five albums to his credit, he has taken this centuries-old tradition and blasted it into the 21st century."

"Slack key guitar music, indigenous to Hawai’i, has been around longer than the blues, and Makana is considered the greatest living player."

- Esquire Magazine

Makana was born and raised on the island of O’ahu. He began singing at the age of seven and at nine, took up the ‘ukulele. At 11 he began his journey into slack key guitar, learning with Bobby Moderow, protégé of master Raymond Kane, and then received a grant from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts to study under Hawaiian slack key legend Sonny Chillingworth. By the age of 14, he had already turned professional, gigging 4 nights a week in various establishments throughout Honolulu.

His debut album "Makana" was released in 1999; it won the Best World Music Album Award at the Hawaii Music Awards. It was followed by "Koi Au" in 2002 ("A landmark musical statement" – Star Bulletin) and "Ki Ho’alu: Journey of Hawaiian Slack Key" in 2003. Soon thereafter Makana contributed to the Grammy-nominated albums "Hawaiian Slack Key Kings I & II". In 2008, his first all-original release "Different Game" came out and in 2009 he released a 20th anniversary slack key guitar instrumental compilation, "Venus and the Sky Turns to Clay".

Makana’s music transcends category and trend by integrating elements of folk, rock, ethnic, classical, bluegrass, jazz, traditional, ambient, electronic and Hawaiian slack key in gentle to commanding arrangements. The result is innovation and the charting of new sonic frontiers with deep ties to tradition. The roots of his music are deeply cultural: Ki Ho’alu, or "slacked key", is the indigenous Hawaiian art form that is the foundation upon which Makana creates ground-breaking original music and reanimates classics. Playing both rhythm and melody simultaneously while using intricate right-hand techniques in a myriad of open tunings, slack key players (there are but a handful alive today) are versatile and evocative. Makana sings in multiple languages; his voice is instantly recognizable, yet he employs a broad flexibility of style and approach according to the material and lyrical expression of each song.

Thursday, June 7th, 7pm
Tickets: $15 /$17
Available at Vashon Bookshop and http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/249765

Open Space is located:
18870 103rd Avenue SW,
Vashon Island.
www.openspacevashon.com