May 2, 2008

Slack key gets rock treatment

By Paul Freeman / Entertainment Writer

With his aptly named new album "Different Game," Hawaiian singer-songwriter-musician Makana takes slack key guitar into a new realm. With rock, folk, blues and bluegrass flavors, he expands the parameters of the islands' favorite instrument.

Complemented by a keyboardist, Makana will play several Bay Area shows, including dates at Biscuit & Blues in San Francisco, the Attic in Santa Cruz and the Little Fox Theatre in Redwood City.

Of the stylistic shift on his latest release, Makana said, "My third album had been full-on Hawaiian. After that, I was ready to do something completely different. When I create music, it's like watering plants - they all grow at their own rate. Some of these songs had been growing over a long period of time.

"My music's highly diverse. So this is very much a different direction, but also very much me."

Makana has invented slack rock and been blessed to learn slack key from some of the greatest players on Earth. "In perpetuating the tradition, part of it was going backwards in time. But tradition is a living thing and I'm adding to that community project by creating my own version of it," he said, adding, "I'm young and I like to rock out, too. So I get crazy on the guitar. I used over 50 tunings on the record."

One guitar sounds like several - not the result of overdubbing, just the open tunings. They allow him to establish bass, lead and rhythm parts simultaneously. His dexterity has been praised by such guitar luminaries as Metallica's Kirk Hammett.

"It's like a mini-symphony. Using 50 different tunings allowed me to create sounds that I could not have done otherwise," he said. "I'm not mastered in 50 tunings. That's the whole point. I'm taking myself out of what I know. It forces out this creative expression, which sounds unique.

"If you're playing an instrument that you're so proficient at, the tendency, especially the muscular tendency, is to return to the activity that it's done a hundred times over. You want to put yourself in a situation where you can't do that. That's why sometimes I'll write on a piano or turn to a weird guitar tuning. That leads to discovering things."

Makana, who now divides his time between Honolulu and Los Angeles, discovered music early, playing ukulele and singing in choir. At age 11, he began studying slack key. "It was so beautiful and so cultural that my parents were like, 'Let's check that out.' And I was like, 'Yeah, that looks cool.'

"The irony is, I've learned the traditional so well, it's allowed me to stray so far. You need to have the roots. The funny thing is that we tend to categorize everything, but when we hear it, we just hear it as music. It either inspires us or it doesn't."

His songwriting for the new album required different approaches, which were founded in natural inspiration. "Some of the songs just pour right through like water. With other songs like 'Mars Declares,' which is about something that happened in the war, telling a detailed story and bringing an emotional impact to the listener, I've got to go with both my left brain and right brain."

He said it was an intuitive process. "I didn't go in with a concept. When I finished, realizing I had a concept record kind of shocked me." Makana titled the album "Different Game" because he said "it's a suggestion for a different way of relating to each other in the world."

"It's the soundtrack for letting go," he said. "There's interpersonal relationship and then there's social relationship, more on a macro scale. With both of those things, being able to see the other person or people as yourself, that's a big concept in the record."

Music can be a messenger. "You hear a song and it affects your chemistry, your thought process and, in turn, influences your choices. It's really an internal movement," he said. "Can music create a climate? Maybe it can. But I know it can create an inner climate. I have decided to use my music to influence people, such as I can, by expressing my feelings and my perceptions."

On songs like "Reflections," which Makana says is very influenced by Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and the poet Rumi, "I'm just putting to music what a lot of people already know," he said. "A lot of music reinforces mythology. It's important to create music that helps emotion to move through you and not become stuck in you. A song can also inspire new ways of seeing. Look at what Pink Floyd did for people."

Makana feels songs can make people see their life more objectively. "What more powerful experience than that is there?" he said.

With his innate showmanship, Makana's live shows are dynamic experiences. "I'm kind of a ham," he said. "All I do is get up there and open my heart. My thing's not about Hawaiian music. It's about music. When I do pull out something Hawaiian, it's so real, because I'm not just hitting 'repeat.'"

Makana is a huge star in Hawaii and in Japan, where he has his own signature line of Levi's. But he rejects major label bids, wanting to remain independent.

"I value my music over whatever they could offer me financially," he said. "It's awesome to take the long path to maturing your art. I'm just now really finding myself musically. That's a great feeling.

"I want my music to become more and more honest. I want to sift all the ego out of my music, so it can be something that everybody can connect with. I really just enjoy the journey, the exploration. I love every point on the wave form."