Keola Beamer and Henry Kapono

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Keola Beamer:

The quintessential Hawaiian slack-key guitar master.

—New York Times

He’s an exceptional musician, a very good player, and beautiful singer. He’ll bring the spirit of the island to the concert.

—Paul Simon

Henry Kapono:

Kapono is one of the great island songwriters of his generation.

—Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Keola Beamer’s contributions to Hawaiian slack-key guitar (kī-hō‘alu) during the 1970s sparked public interest the style and launched a statewide revival of the tradition. His 1978 release Honolulu City Lights is the best-selling recording in the history of Hawaiian music. Today, Beamer remains one of Hawaii’s premier singer-songwriters, arrangers, composers, and masters of Hawaiian slack-key guitar.

Henry Kapono helped forge the sound of ’70s Hawaiian music as part of the wildly popular Cecilio and Kapono, the laid-back contemporary rock duo he formed with Cecilio Rodriguez, which voiced the feelings of an entire generation of Hawaiians. Today, as a solo artist, Kapono is a Grammy-nominated and award-winning singer and songwriter.

Despite their common history, Beamer and Kapono only performed together for the first time in 2014, when Kapono invited Keola and Moanalani Beamer to be part of Back in the Day, an annual show featuring musical greats who shaped Hawaiian music from the ’70s onward. As tourmates, Beamer and Kapono, with Moanalani Beamer performing hula, have been greeted by enthusiastic audiences, celebrating original songs that have become contemporary Hawaiian classics.