When I was a youngster growing up, one of the many good things that soothed my soul was falling asleep to the beautiful sweet music of Hawaii.  And, the melodic swaying of the slack key guitar imitating the soft swaying of palm trees and the story-telling body movements of the pretty Hawaiian girls.
  In all those years of listening to the music of Hawaii recorded by the famous Webley Edwards and his shows from the beach of Waikiki, with Arthur Lyman and many other recording artists from the Hawaiian Islands. I never realized until recently how the Hawaiians came to the style of slack key guitar music, including the Hawaiian steel guitar. It took many years for them to improve and develop from many styles of ancient music of the Islands and the talents of cowboys, or "Panyollos" from the area of San Diego, El Cajon and Lakeside.
  Let's go back to the early 1800s and to a problem with cattle on the Island of Hawaii. Cattle were dropped off to the Islands to re-supply trading ships visiting the Islands. Cattle, along with sugar and pineapple eventually became a strong trading item from Hawaii, but there developed a problem with the cattle.
  Cattle were everywhere. Disturbing the school children, roving in and out of the towns, villages and shops, gardens and eating food crops. Some were even born in the volcanic lava tubes, eating the moss within the tubes, never seeing daylight, that's another story!  The elders complained to King Kahmehameha about the cattle problem. A ship captain overheard the complaint to the king and mentioned to the king that he had recently returned from a trip from San Diego and they had men there "Vaquero's, or Panyollo's," that knew how to work the cattle. Immediately the King sent the captain back to San Diego to contract about 150 of these Mexican Cowboys from the El Cajon, Lakeside area. They sailed for the Islands, a couple of them with their guitars strapped to their backs. 
  It didn't take long for them to teach the Hawaiian fellows how to deal with their stray cattle. At the same time the Hawaiian's fell in love with the sound of their guitar music and listened to their many songs night after night.
  Eventually the Vaquero's returned home to the San Diego area, and they left a couple of their guitars for the Hawaiians to play with. The only problem was they didn't teach them how to tune the guitars properly. After many trials and errors tuning the strings high and low they came up with the "E string above middle C" de-tuned to a harmony and referred to it as "slack key." The guitars were laid across their laps and they used a metal bar, and in some cases a glass bottle to slide up and down the neck. 50 years later they eventually came up with the

Hawaiian steel guitar.
  Some of the early Hawaiian masters of slack key were Gabby Pahinui, Sonny Chillingsworth, Raymond Kane, Leonard Quan, Kiola Beamer, Ledward Kaapana, Peter Moon, Cyril Pahinui and many others. In 1987 for his life long commitment to slack key style guitar Raymond Kane received America's highest folk arts award, a folk heritage full fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts from the President of the United States.
  Since then Raymond has shared his talent with all those who love the old style of slack key guitar. All of the artist's adding to the Manna of the people, their culture and religion. The slack key tradition moves on in these modern times that expresses a universal good feeling through the expression of their slack key style of music. Aloha!

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