various artists / albums

The Dancing Cat label has been the chief vehicle for exposure of Hawaiian roots music on the mainland, particularly of the slack-key guitar style, a virtuosic fingerpicking genre that nonetheless is far more tranquil than frenetic. This acts as a label sampler, with cuts from 11 different albums in the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters Series. With songs by the leading slack-key performers -- including Cyril Pahinui, Keola Beamer, Ray Kane, and Sonny Chillingworth -- it's a good introduction to the style, or a good collection for those who just want one representation of the form. It's surprisingly homogenous for a sampler, but then its serene washes of strings are very characteristic of the slack-key sound. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi