I’ve decided to turn my love of world music into a regular Friday feature, with Ledward Ka’apana being my first. In general, I’ll be featuring a few videos or songs from each performer, and, for vocals, I’ll emphasize performers who do not sing primarily in English. The other aspect is that this will be popular music in various genres.
I remember back when I worked at Classic Vacations on the Hawai’i desk being thrilled that I finally was able to use my love of Hawai’i in my day job. I went to a local Hawai’ian store, Sun Jose Hawaii (sadly now closed), and went to their music room.

“I learned all my slack key in Kalapana because in Kalapana, we never had any electricity. Yeah, everything was run by kerosene.” (dramatic pause) “First guitar I had was run by kerosene.” —Ledward Ka’apana

Even though most of the wording was in English, and I knew some Hawai’ian, I might as well have stepped into a music shop on another planet. I had no idea who any of these people were, and no idea how to find what I was looking for.
There was an instrumental section, and in that section, there was an album of Slack Key Guitar Masters, offering a smorgasboard of amazing artists. I picked up both volume 1 and 2. Out of all of those songs, I really fell for “Radio Hula” by Ledward Ka’apana. The following is a medley of it with another song (“Yellow Ginger Lei”): [Read more…]