When music meets ʻohana: In tune with the Lau family

Ryder Briley is playing slack key guitar in the airport. To his left are cousins and to his right is his girlfriend, more cousins and his grandparents, Milton and Anne Lau, the founders of the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festivals.

A flight attendant for Hawaiian Airlines walks by and smiles.

In less than 26 hours, this group of 10, which includes six grandkids and two of their girlfriends, will be putting on the 29th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival - Kona Style on Hawaiʻi Island. The festival, organized by the Kī-hōʻalu Foundation, Inc., took place Sunday, Oct. 18. Celebrating almost 30 years of music, it is older than most of the ʻohana making it happen.

Over 44 years, Milton and Anne Lau, who live in Kāneʻohe, have put on more than 140 festivals across the state. That number doesn’t count slack key guitar festivals held on the Mainland and in Japan. This year, they have already orchestrated festivals on Oʻahu, Maui and Hawaiʻi Island, with Kauaʻi just a few weeks away. Next year will mark 45 years of festivals on Oʻahu, 36 on Maui, 35 on Kauaʻi, and 29 on Hawaiʻi Island.

Anne is 70. Milton won’t disclose his age on the record.

At the moment, as the family waits for their plane at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, laptops and tablets are open. Coffee is in hand. Milton explains that two grandsons will be continuing a three-generation family legacy by playing this weekend: Micah at the start of the festival and Ryder in the middle of it.

For this festival, many of the artists won’t arrive in Kona until Sunday, but the Lau family is heading over a day earlier.

“Aloha, Flight 1108 will now begin boarding...” a voice drones over the loudspeaker.

Suddenly, Ryder zips his guitar into its bag. It’s about 20 minutes to take-off and the ʻohana is on the move.

As the family boards the plane, the sound of slack key guitar music fills the cabin over the speakers. The melodic chords of “Radio Hula” drift across the aircraft, and soon the plane is airborne.

The flight between Honolulu and Kona is less than an hour. As the aircraft begins its descent, the captain announces it is 84 degrees.

“Winds are west today,” he adds.

We’re in Kona.

ʻPriorities’ : First stop, cookies!

The grandkids collect the luggage, while Milton and Anne head to the car rental to grab rides. Normally, they drive vans, but today they have a Nissan Armada and a Wagoneer. Milton arrives in one, and Anne, who normally drives a Prius, is in the other.

This is Anne’s second trip to Hawaiʻi Island in the past six months. She was last here in April to watch her granddaughter, Kala Lau, perform at the Merrie Monarch Festival.

It’s hot and humid. The first year of the Kona festival, the event was held outdoors, Milton explains. They quickly decided not to do that again.

“Since then, we’ve been indoors and air-conditioned,” he adds.

In the car, the air conditioning is on and pop music is playing. The vehicles pull into a parking lot about four miles from the airport and the family is making its first stop: Mrs. Barry’s Kona Cookies. The ʻohana fills the store, where a sign on the wall inside reads: “Happy Birthday Mrs. Barry 90, loved and blessed.”

Milton and Anne begin ordering cookies for the entire family. Haukea, who is the youngest Lau on the trip, is especially excited.

“Yay!” she says.

After, Milton, Anne, Haukea, and her sister, Olena, head to Costco to get canned food for The Salvation Army, which will collect cans at the festival.

But, cookies had to come first.

“Priorities,” says Anne.

Bike crash turned love story

As the car follows the ocean toward Outrigger Kona Resort & Spa, the Laus share how they met. Anne grew up on the West Coast in Washington. She moved to Oʻahu to attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and never left. More specifically, she met Milton.

They met by accident — literally. The young surfer ran into her while riding his bicycle. He was single, so after making sure she was OK, he decided to invite her to a party.

“And the rest is history!” adds Anne, with a laugh.

They have been married more than 50 years. Together, they share 14 grandkids, six of whom are on this trip.

Milton and their son, Chris, have won a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award and been nominated for three Grammy Awards as producers. As a musician, Milton started his career playing top 40 music in clubs and has played bass guitar, guitar and piano. Chris plays bass.

“I play the radio,” Anne tells Aloha State Daily later.

In the back seat, Haukea practices the multiplication table of 12. The full-size SUV veers toward a road with an entrance lined in palm trees, and suddenly the sign for the Outrigger Kona Resort & Spa is in sight.

As Anne pulls into the valet, she rolls down the window to say hello to Ron, who has worked here for many years.

“We’re back!” she says.

Slack key guitar: A Hawaiian tradition

Slack key guitar predates the ʻukulele in Hawaiʻi. When the Brittish gifted cattle to King Kamehameha I in the early 1800s, they ran wild. Eventually, King Kamehameha III brought in vaqueros, or Spanish-Mexican cowboys, to teach the Hawaiians how to handle the cattle. And the vaqueros brought guitars.

“Hawaiians never even saw that kind of instrument before,” Milton said. “I guess at the end of the day, they would play the guitars around the campfire and whatever. And the Hawaiians were fascinated.”

When the contract ended, the vaqueros headed back to California and left their instruments.

“But they didn't give them any lessons,” he said. “That meant they had to figure out how to play this stuff.”

The paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboy, did not know how to tune a guitar and simply adjusted the strings until it sounded pleasant.

“It ended up being an open tuning,” Milton said. “The different cowboys and their families came up with their own tunings, and they wouldn't tell the other guys what their tunings were.”

Today, there are fewer secrets.

“Really, it's kind of a great story about how the Hawaiians had great ears and a love of music,” he said.

Gabby Pahinui and early festivals

Milton started the slack key guitar festivals in honor of his friend, Gabby Pahinui, a legendary slack key master who used to hold kani ka pila sessions where musicians played music at his home in Waimānalo. When asked to pick just a few words to describe Pahinui, Milton selected inspirational and charismatic.

“And kolohe,” adds Anne, using the Hawaiian word for mischevious.

After Pahinui died in 1980, the City and County of Honolulu dedicated the pavilion at Waimānalo Beach Park in his name. Milton helped organize a festival in Waimānalo to celebrate Pahinui’s contributions to music, and about 5,000 people showed up, he said. It was so popular, they brought it back the next year, moving it to the Lester McCoy Pavilion at Ala Moana Regional Park.

Eventually, Milton approached the Bank of Hawaiʻi, which was the event’s title sponsor for about 15 years. Soon, the festivals were being televised.

“Then, we went three years, five years, seven years, eight years, 10 years,” Milton said. “What happened was after the 10th year, I realized that if people are interested with this in Honolulu, maybe other Neighbor Islands, they would be interested. I expanded to the Neighbor Islands and I started with Maui.”

At one point, there were festivals on Molokai and in Japan, as well as across the Mainland, including in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. But eventually, it became hard to live in so many hotels, Milton said. Today, the festivals on Oʻahu, Maui, Hawaiʻi Island and Kauaʻi remain.

Now, the events are funded with grants from the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, which has sponsored the festivals for about 25 years.

The festivals are also run with a whole lot of family support.

“I gotta tell you that if I didn't marry her, probably the festival wouldn’t continue,” Milton said, as he sits next to his wife.

“In the early days, we would do a whole lūʻau for the musicians,” Anne adds.

She and Milton’s parents would be backstage preparing the food.

“It’s kept our family really close,” she said.

Showtime in Kona

The first musician to take the stage for the 29th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival - Kona Style is Milton and Anne’s grandson, Micah Lau. He jumps on stage about a half hour before the festival starts to play a set for the growing audience inside the Kaleiopapa Convention Center.

After playing a few songs, Micah tells the audience he is trying to learn “Radio Hula” and “Yellow Ginger Lei” from Uncle Led Kaapana.

“I’ll play until I don’t remember the rest,” he says.

He starts the first chorus, and the crowd erupts in applause.

As the official program starts, entertainers of all ages take the stage and share the many sounds of slack key guitar. One of them yodels. Another adds the sound of a train.

The musical line-up for this festival features 15 musicians from across the state, including the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Brother Noland, who was born and raised on Oʻahu; Anthony Pfluke, who recently won the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for Contemporary Accoustic Album of the Year and grew up on Maui; and Sonny Lim, who recently won the Nā Hoku Hanohano Award for Hawaiian Slack Key Album of the Year and was born and raised on Hawaiʻi Island.

In the middle of the festival, Milton and Anne's grandson, Ryder, takes the stage. The first time he performed at a slack key festival was three years ago on Kauaʻi, his grandfather explains. Milton gave him six months to learn the song.

“And all the musician uncles came up in the front row,” adds Anne, as she remembers that first performance at a festival. “No pressure.” 

Sometimes musicians request that one of their granddaughters dance hula, as recently happened in Waikīkī, when Kala performed under the stars. Today, she is taking pictures.

After the festival, Milton and Anne return the sound system and take the entire family out to get hamburgers to celebrate.

Next stop, Kauaʻi — and 50 years!

In just three weeks, the family will bring another festival to the state. The 34th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival - Kauaʻi Style will take place from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Outrigger Kauaʻi Beach Resort & Spa. Kamaʻāina can buy tickets at the door to see a line-up of at least a dozen artists, including multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winning musicians, for $15.

Milton plans to run the festivals for at least 50 years.

“I know that one day I’m not going to be able to do it,” he said. “The good thing is the family has been involved a long time. All the musicians have been involved. And they all tell me: ʻHey don’t worry because when you're not able to do it, we're going to work with your kids or sons and whatnot to keep it going.’ ”

As he speaks, Ryder plays slack key guitar quietly in a lounge at Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport, surrounded by his cousins.

34th Annual Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Festival – Kauaʻi Style

Sunday, Nov. 8

1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Outrigger Kauaʻi Beach Resort & Spa

Kamaʻāina tickets are $15 at the door. Tourists tickets are $25.

Get tickets.

Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.

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