Hawaii's Keola & Kapono Beamer

Keola & Kapono Beamer

Track List & Samples

(Tracks with sample are bold.)

Album Notes

Keola and Kapono Beamer are two of the most important Hawaiian musicians of their generation. Together they were one of the leading Hawaiian duos of the 1970s and early 1980s. Separately, working as solo artists since 1982, they have achieved stellar solo careers as ki ho`alu (Hawaiian slack key) guitarists, vocalists, composers, and recording artists. Keola and Kapono have each won multiple Na Hoku Hanohano Awards (Hawaii's regional equivalent of the Grammy Awards).

This album -- which was their very first together -- captures them as young men in their early twenties, playing a variety of Hawaiian and hapa haole standards, including one by their famous great-grandmother, the composer Helen Desha Beamer. There are also two of their own originals -- "Kalihi Street Jug Band" and "Sweet Okole".

"Sweet Okole" was one of the most popular and controversial local songs of the 1970s (for reasons explained in the liner notes inside). The brothers' talent as arrangers and song stylists made their version of songwriter Eaton "Bob" Magoon's "Mr. Sun Cho Lee" the definitive version of that song.

Those two songs, and the brothers' interpretations of the others, launched two outstanding Hawaiian entertainers whose careers have helped shape the evolution of modern Hawaiian music.

To put it another way, every story has a beginning...and for Keola and Kapono Beamer, this album is it.