Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters

Various Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters CD

The Dancing Cat label has been the chief vehicle for exposure of Hawaiian roots music on the mainland, particularly of the slack-key guitar style, a virtuosic fingerpicking genre that nonetheless is far more tranquil than frenetic. This acts as a label sampler, with cuts from 11 different albums in the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters Series. With songs by the leading slack-key performers -- including Cyril Pahinui, Keola Beamer, Ray Kane, and Sonny Chillingworth -- it's a good introduction to the style, or a good collection for those who just want one representation of the form. It's surprisingly homogenous for a sampler, but then its serene washes of strings are very characteristic of the slack-key sound.