Born on August 25, 1948, Led grew up in a musical family living in the small black sand bay village of Kalapana (mostly destroyed by the 1986 volcanic eruption of Kilauea), where he states there were few distractions. You could go to any house and everybody was playing music" At fourteen, he began performing professionally with his mother, Tina, and his uncle, the rarely recorded slack-key master Fred Punahoa.
He also plays steel guitar, ukulele, autoharp and bass guitar, and is a baritone and falsetto vocalist. "We didn"t have electricity, not television, not even much radio, so we entertained ourselves. Hui "Ohana released fourteen albums, each of which was a commercial and critical success.
He released Simply Slack Key in 1988, and Led Live in 1994 on Dancing Cat Records.
He has performed and recorded with acoustic lap-steel player Bob Brozman, and released several more albums on the Dancing Cat label from the late 1990s onward. One of the greatest living slack key masters, Ledward has deep roots in the older styles, using only index finger and thumb picks to combine traditional musical phrases, some modern influences, and spontaneous improvisation to create beautiful multipart arrangements that are simultaneously old and new.
Nashville great Chet Atkins was so impressed by Ledward"s playing that he paid him the ultimate country music compliment by giving Ledward his guitar. Ledward has played at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, District of Columbia, and made many tours of North America.
His fans frequently refer to themselves as "Led Heads."
Kaapana ("Kah-ah-pah-nah") spells his name without using the modern ʻokina marking that is used to indicate a glottal stop for the proper pronunciation of certain Hawaiian words.
Kaapana has said that his family has always spelled it without an ʻokina and he prefers the traditional spelling (not Kaʻapana)
"Everything you play, every time you play, there"s a mood, an energy. If you plug into it, the music just flows. Even in a simple song, there are so many different ways to play the melody, the rhythm, the harmony.
lieutenant never stops if you stay open to lieutenant".
He is one of the very few Hawaiian recording artists who has received Na Hoku Hanohano from the Hawai"i Academy of Recording Arts (HARA) for work as a member of three different recording entities—as a solo artist, as a member of Ledward Kaapana & I Kona, and as a member of Hui "Ohana. Two of his solo albums, ""Ki Ho"alu: Hawaiian Slack Key" and "Grandmaster Slack Key Guitar" received Grammy Award nominations and appeared on the final ballot in the "Best Hawaiian Music Album" category. In 2011, he received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award.
Quotations:
"Everything you play, every time you play, there"s a mood, an energy. If you plug into it, the music just flows. Even in a simple song, there are so many different ways to play the melody, the rhythm, the harmony.
lieutenant never stops if you stay open to lieutenant".
