Slack key guitar masters will gather on the oceanfront lawn of the Waikīkī Aquarium next Saturday, Aug. 29, for the 44th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival Waikiki Style, a free-flowing evening of music running from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. that traces its roots back more than four decades to a tribute concert for one of the genre's founding fathers.
The festival is presented by the Ki-hoʻalu Foundation, Outrigger Hotels and Resorts, and the Waikīkī Aquarium itself, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Headliners include Ledward Kaapana, Jeff Peterson, George Kuo, and Bobby Moderow, joined by a lineup of performers that includes Walt Keale, Dwight Kanae, Kamuela Kahoano, Darrell Aquino, Kahiau Lam Ho, Kawika Kahiapo, and Lt Smooth.
Festival founder Milton Lau created the event in 1982 as a tribute concert, and the same report notes that slack key was largely a grassroots tradition outside the mainstream at the time. Lau, who still presents the Waikiki edition today, has since expanded the festival to other parts of Oahu, the neighbor islands, and the U.S. mainland, per the newspaper's account.
A Tribute That Became a Movement
According to historical background on the tradition, Lau organized that first 1982 concert to honor his late friend Gabby Pahinui, the slack key master who helped popularize the style during the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance. The style itself, known as kī hōʻalu, dates back to around 1832, when Mexican and Spanish paniolo brought in by King Kamehameha III to manage cattle on Hawaiʻi Island introduced acoustic guitars, which local musicians later retuned into open tunings around campfires.
That paniolo lineage runs directly through this year's lineup. Headliner Jeff Peterson grew up on Maui's Haleakala Ranch as the son of a paniolo before going on to contribute as a featured artist on two Grammy-winning recordings, according to background compiled by Kamaka Hawaii. Ledward Kaapana, another headliner, grew up without electricity or television in the rural black sand village of Kalapana and learned slack key from his mother and uncle, a path that led to a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship and induction into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 2024.
Fresh Hardware for a Rising Star
Also on the bill is Anthony Pfluke, a 2026 Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winner who took home Contemporary Acoustic Album of the Year for Kuʻu Lei Lokelani and co-won Hawaiian Music Video of the Year at the 49th Annual Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards on July 11, according to Outrigger Resorts. Pfluke was an eight-time finalist at this year's awards after previously winning the Kani Ka Pila Grille Talent Search in 2022.
The Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards, established in 1978 by the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts, function as Hawaiʻi's regional equivalent of the Grammys, per Maui Now's coverage of this year's ceremony. Fellow headliner George Kuo carries his own pedigree, having joined the legendary group The Sons of Hawaii in 1982 after studying under traditional masters Ray Kāne and Sonny Chillingworth during the 1970s; he later won a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for Instrumental Album of the Year for his solo record Aloha No Nā Kūpuna.
National Recognition, Then a Reshuffle
Slack key guitar briefly had its own dedicated category at the national Grammy Awards, with the Recording Academy presenting a Best Hawaiian Music Album award from 2005 until it was eliminated in a broader restructuring in 2011, according to Ukulele Magazine. Compilation albums featuring the genre's top players dominated that category throughout its six-year run, underscoring how far the once-guarded family tradition had traveled from campfire origins to the national stage.
Tickets and Venue
Tickets cost $25 at the door, with Hawaii residents and military personnel paying $15 upon providing identification; children 12 and younger get in free. Festival proceeds benefit the Waikīkī Aquarium, which opened on March 19, 1904, and has been administered by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa since 1919, making it the second-oldest operating public aquarium in the United States. The aquarium, which now houses more than 3,000 marine specimens, was originally built by the Honolulu Rapid Transit and Land Company to encourage trolley rides out to Kapiʻolani Park — a detail Hoodline noted in its own coverage of the venue's seal's Waikīkī return last year.
