What's New

You've heard the music - did you ever think about creating it yourself? The Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar is a wonderful platform for expression. And guess what? It's easy to learn to play! It's a rewarding and relaxing hobby that could give you years of meaningful interaction with a whole world of rich, beautiful, and somehow still mysterious music. It can take you places that you never imagined.

Teaching the Slack Key Guitar has been one of the greatest joys of my life and through the years I've helped many aspiring musicians.

It's an exciting time in distance learning technology and thanks to some wonderful innovations on the 'net, we can share the resources and knowledge of our culture like never before. I've given considerable thought to using the net as a teaching tool which has resulted in the some wonderful innovations. My web-lessons are new teaching methods, enabling you to work faster & smarter. These powerful techniques really work. This wonderful style of music will come alive from beneath your own hands, as you create it from the story of your own life.

Keola has both beginning and intermediate level lessons available, and has post a free lesson to demonstrate how the lessons work.

For the past several years, Keola and the Beamer 'ohana have immersed hundreds of students in the art of Hawaiian slack key guitar, hula, chant, language and culture at the Aloha Music Camp. Now you can experience the same aloha from the comfort of your own home with this online video series.

When you purchase a subscription to any of these lessons, the audio and video will play on your computer screen. Some lessons are audio/video only and some include tablature, music, lyrics and other materials provided as downloadable .pdf documents. Video lessons are streamed, not downloadable. You will be able to access them for three months from the date you are sent a user id and password.

For over thirty years, Keola Beamer's artistry has helped breathe new life into slack key guitar music while remaining true to the soul of its deeply Hawaiian roots. Born February 18, 1951, in Honolulu, Keola grew up in one of Hawai'i's most famous music families. The Beamers can trace their involvement in Hawaiian music and hula at least as far as the 15th Century.
Keola's sixth Dancing Cat album, Ka Hikina O Ka Hau (The Coming Of The Snow), is not a traditional slack key recording. "It poses a simple question," he says. "Can the palette, coloration and tonality of Ki ho'alu add an indefinable something to the interpretation of songs written by truly great composers?" The answer is a wonderful surprise.

Famed Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai joins with Keola in a new album, Our Beloved Land. Nakai, the world's leading performer of the traditional flute with over 3.5 million albums sold, journeyed to Hawai'i where he spent time working with Keola to weave the haunting melodies of his traditional flute into Keola's songs and arrangements. The result is a new music, blending elements of two indigenous American cultures that expresses the cultures of both artists.

Son of the legendary Nona Beamer, descended from an illustrious line of Hawaiian musicians and dancers, Keolamaikalani Breckenridge Desha Beamer was born February 18, 1951 on the island of O'ahu. He spent his childhood alternating between the urban energy of Honolulu, Hawai'i's largest, most dynamic city, and the slower, more culturally rooted serenity of the Beamer family's ancestral home at Waimea on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Similarly, Keola's beautiful music has always expressed an inspired blending of the urban and the rural, the modern and the ancient. He crafts his art from equal parts tradition and innovation.

Magic in the recording studio just kind of happens. You can't predict it or plan for it ... all you can really do is hope for it. We all know that one aspect of the beauty of music is its special ability to touch the human heart, but we sometimes forget that music has the remarkable ability to transcend time. Here is a recording that has magically touched the hearts of people all over the world and continues to do so to this day.- Keola Beamer