CHIMACUM — The longer Keola Beamer and his spouse, Moanalani Beamer, make music together, the more they discover.
The pair, who will appear at 8 p.m. tonight at the Chimacum High School auditorium, offer their traditional Hawaiian guitar and hula across the globe.
Keola, 61, is a living legend on the slack-key guitar, and he and his wife of 28 years still are traveling the globe, still teaching at the Aloha Music Camp on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Bill Kiely of UpWest Productions is bringing the Beamers to Chimacum for a concert mixing storytelling, hula dancing, chanting and singing.
Festival seating
Doors of the school auditorium lobby at 91 West Valley Road will open at 7 p.m., and festival-style seating will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets to the Beamers’ concert are $25 at Quimper Sound, 230 Taylor St., Port Townsend, and at www.Ticketswest.com and 800-992-8499.
Reached while traveling through Pennsylvania, the Beamers promised a show with plenty of slack-key guitar — plus other Hawaiian instruments not often heard outside the islands.
These give “some interesting coloration,” Keola said.
And besides all of the music, “there will be some foolishness,” quipped Moanalani.
Hawaiian guitar, hula and foolishness are good for body and soul, the Beamers believe.
“There’s a different rhythm in Polynesia,” Keola said. “People forget how empowering this music can be.
“I’ve been looking at some studies on music therapy, on how music can provide healing on a cellular level.
“It really can bring a beautiful quality to your life,” said the guitarist, who started playing 53 years ago when he was a boy of 8.
Guitar heard in movie
Keola’s slack-key guitar is heard in the 2011 movie “The Descendants,” directed by Alexander Payne — an experience Keola said was pleasantly surprising.
Payne and company showed respect toward Hawaiian music, he felt.
“I’m real cautious about working with some companies,” Keola said.
Usually, movies set in Hawaii are about surfing — “a horizontal view.”
“I like to think our culture has a depth to it,” Keola said, adding, “We have a vibrant language” in which “aloha” isn’t just a word for “hello” and “goodbye”; it stands for an ideal of love and compassion.
Payne, Keola added, “really cared about telling a great story. He cared about the music, the water, the mountains . . . it was an honor” to work with him.
Moanalani, for her part, uses hula to share the story of Hawaii.
She started learning to dance at age 4 — “I was hooked” from Day One — and has become a kumu, a master hula teacher.
Hula storytelling
“Hula is storytelling at a deep level,” Moanalani said.
When she dances and everything flows — at home on Maui or somewhere far away like Japan — she feels a sense of connection to her ancestors.
“It feels like our families are around us,” she said, “and they approve.”
As for the secret to marital harmony after so many years, Moanalani says only that she and Keola have grown up together.
It’s unusual, she acknowledged, for traveling musicians and dancers to have such long marriages.
“We’re still working on it,” she quipped.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
