Slack Key's The Way To Be!

When thinking about Hawaii and its indigenous music, most people's minds jump right to hula music, which was wildly popular in the early and mid-1900s throughout the United States. However, at some point, it became almost too popular, and now many people find it cheesy or trite. While I personally love hula music a great deal, I also love Hawaii's other main genre, slack key guitar. Slack key guitar is a Hawaiian style of highly ornamented, fingerpicked guitar which is currently experiencing a major resurgence in popularity. It's called slack key guitar because the guitar is crosstuned, with some of the strings being tuned one or more notes lower than they'd normally be tuned - this process is sometimes known as "slacking" the strings. The resulting sound is a bittersweet combination of bluesy melodies with warm island rhythms, and it surely ain't your momma's hula music.