Tuning and returning to Aloha Music Camp a special place and time on Molokai's Kaupoa Beach

Under flickering palm shadows, slack key masters Keola Beamer and John Keawe tune their guitars. Onstage, Auntie Nona Beamer, 83, dances hula from her wheelchair.In his garden, Anakala Pilipo Solatorio weaves a story or a coconut basket, while chanter Charles Ka`upu raises a resonant oli.

These are not hidden experiences, thanks to Aloha Music Camp at the Beach Village at Moloka`i Ranch.Twice a year, sands become stages, grass classrooms, and a music-filled wind carries rhythms from the past into the heartbeat of now.

"If we're going to teach the music, we're going to have to teach the culture too," says camp administrator Mark Kailana Nelson. He and co-organizer Keola Beamer both realized that "context is all" when they first had the idea for the camp. "It started as a guitar camp, but we found out we can't teach kī hō`alu, slack key, without explaining where it came from."

Beamer, of course, is the writer of Hawaii's best-remembered hit "Honolulu City Lights" and member of the musical Beamer `ohana with 500 year-old-roots. He met folk music scholar and award-winning dulcimer artist and author Nelsonvia the Internet in 1998, when Nelson was writing a book on slack key instruction.Beamer had written the very first one in 1973 (about the same time Auntie Nona's Kamehameha School students started begging to learn about Hawaiian culture).They decided to collaborate.

Kī hō`alu came to Hawai`i with the guitar, on saddlebacks of Spanish paniolo (cowboys) about 1832.Talented Hawaiians watched, listened, and invented an ingenious way to play by "slackening" the guitar strings in different tunings from the standard EADGBE.

In 1946 the legendary Gabby Pahinui made the first kī hō`alu recording and started a movement.In 2005 a slack key collection by Palm Records won Hawaiian Music's first Grammy.But for many years the technique was a closely-guarded secret. "Slack key almost died," says Nelson. "It was a family thing and if you weren't part of the family, it was not to be shared."

Beamer and Nelson turned it around and made everyone family.

While they were working on the book, "We were at this incredible Beamer birthday party," says Nelson, "just kind of walking around, talking about the book.People were speaking Hawaiian, somebody was working on a lei, practice dancing, playing `ukulele and singing.That was the genesis of camp."

It started in 2001 on the Big Island, and moved to the Beach Village at Moloka`i Ranch three years later.Now, in June and February, a campus of canvas "tentalows" (private two-bedroom suites with solar hot water, real beds and bathrooms) welcomes a student body from everywhere for a week-long immersion into Hawaiian music and culture.For mealtimes and evening concerts, they gather like family in an open-air pavilion under countless stars, far from the routine.

Returning campers Jim and Teri Sugg and son Robbie are a computer consultant, a ceramic artist and a dance student, respectively, from Concord, CA. They're alsopart of the `ohana now.Jim's played guitar for 40 years and Teri is a fiddler and crafter of double and triple ocarinas.She says, "We just thought we'd go one year because Aloha music camp sounded like fun, but we quickly found out it was Aloha music camp."

Says Jim Sugg, "Slack key is so heart-centric.It's the language of the heart; that's Aloha."

They practice side –by side with a group of kids from Kamehameha Schools, New Yorkers from a Rochester halau, (hula troupe), fellow Californians, Europeans and a Japanese family.About 50% of campers are returnees, many bringing back family and friends.Not everyone is a musician; some come just to watch, wonder and wander, maybe find themselves pulled into a class when their toes start tapping too much.

Throughout the week, they learn from some of Hawaii's most-respected kumu (teachers).By the ocean, Kaliko Beamer-Trapp, an Englishman adopted into the family by Auntie Nona, talks story in fluent Hawaiian (with a British accent).Penny Martin shares a sea story of the first voyage of Hōkūle`a and Dennis Lake helps somebody build their own `ukulele.

On the last day of camp, Keola Beamer looks around and says, "Heaven must be exactly like this, except the guitars would tune themselves."

Next Aloha Music Camp is February 4-10, 2007.For more information visit www.AlohaMusicCamp.com, where you'll also find links to the music and books of Mark Nelson, Keola Beamer and other camp kumu.

________________________________________________

"You can't fall back on your old patterns if you're learning to chant or to dance in a different culture or language you have never experienced,says Mark Nelson."Even building an `ukulele changes everything."

"For a lot of people who visit Hawai`i, the reason they study is to get in touch with those deeplyhuman values," says Mark Nelson.We move around a lot.Land is bought and sold.It's pretty rare somebody lives where their family lives.And that answers the question of what brings people here.They come for that feeling, the `ohana.That's what calls them."

Mark Nelson, "Kaliko says these values are universal values, not strictly Hawaiian.In our western world, we have forgotten them and when I'm here, it reminds me who I am."

As a ballet dancer, Robbie Sugg, 19, found hula more demanding than he expected."I had a hard time in the beginning," he says, "Because the kumu said 'If there's anything I can teach you, it's sit down, shut up and no questions.'And I said 'What?Why?' But when you do that, you do sit down and be quiet, it starts coming through you."

"Most people start up in their head," says Jim Sugg."Not in their body where they need to be for this."Terri Sugg places a hand on her heart and one on her back."The chant has to come from here, and here," she says.

From Learn to Play Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, Beamer and Nelson:"I think that my approach to guitar technique is to try and make the instrument as invisible as possible.To get to the music...I would love it if I could just play in my head and still get the music across, because the whole idea is to try to connect with your self, and your soul and your heart."