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Does the term "Hawaiian music" conjure up tourist-trap snapshots of Don Ho and his "Tiny Bubbles," a blue Elvis and the Wiki-Wacky hula? The pre-packaged tiki-cheese seen through Hollywood's camera lens belies one of the bright est flowers in this lei of islands. In its contemporary incarnations, Hawaiian music incorporates sooth ing, melodic singing, proud rhythmic chanting and a locally honed acoustic guitar style known as The somniferous slack-key guitar is itself an introduced The annual Na Hoku Hano Hano Awards showcase the genre's best. Recent years have seen performances by Darlene Ahuna, Willie K, Keali'i Reichel, John Cruz, Sistah Robi, and the late Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, to name a few. These artists are an integral part of the 50th state's current cultural survival-revival and influence everything from the hula's resurgence to local hip-hop to the regionally popular Jawaiian (Jamaican-Hawaiian) sound. Sudden Rush combines rap with Hawaiian singing. By mixing styles and influences they reach and teach a broader audience. King Don 1-"The Rappa Nui"-explains: "Though our songs are in English, a lot of parts are in Hawaiian, too, so people can get an interest in, and understanding of, our language." Key elements of Hawaiian music came from the vast collage of cultures and races that arrived during the nineteenth-century plantation era (which brought laborers from Japan, Puerto Rico, Portugal, China, Spain and Korea). Just listen to the 1996 Na Hoku Hano Hano "Most Promising Artist" award-winner Darren Benitez (of Puerto Rican-Hawaiian ancestry), who incorporates differ ent vocal and guitar traditions to continually recre ate an aural melange. "Some of the Hawaiian music," Benitez elaborates, "blends so well with Puerto Rican Uibaro guitar style] strumming." element, which, depending on whom you ask, originated in the 1800s when King Kamehameha III invited Mexican and Spanish cow boys-later called "paniolos," a twisted espanol-to Hawaii's shores. Hawaiians quickly appropriated this gut-stringed guitar, playing the melody (sometimes improvised) on the two or three highest pitched strings, while rounding out the sound by using the thumb to strum and pluck the rhythm and bass on the lower three or four strings. When the Portuguese arrived at the end of the century, they brought with them a smaller, steel-stringed version known as the braguinha. This guitar, after undergoing tuning and stringing alterations, was the prototype for the ukulele. Hawaiians also introduced new tuning formats which, until the mid-1960s, were guarded family secrets, says University of Hawaii staff member and slack-key master Peter Medeiros. Today there are hundreds of tunings. When two or more slack-key guitarists perform together, their melodies work in rich counterpoint. While the islands continue to give rise to an ever-amplify ing legacy of traditional guitarists, most influential of all is the late Gabby Pahinui. Playing solo in the 1940s and reaching his heyday with his 1970s band (which boasted other greats such as Sonny Chillingworth, Leland "Atta" Isaacs and Pahinui's own sons Bla and Cyril), "the father of modern slack-key guitar" has influenced gener ations of musicians. Ry Cooder was a fan and recorded with Pahinui. Instrumental in promoting slack key guitar is pianist George Winston's Dancing Cat Records. It's Winston's favorite type of music and he has set out to record artists who have never been in a studio, as well as put out releases by younger musicians. Dancing Cat's Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters Series is an aural documen tary. Barry Flanagan, who with Kelii Kanealii forms the group Hapa (Hawaiian for "half," used to signify ethnic mixing), believes slack key's continued evolution in today's music will expand its already growing audience: "By bringing in all different layers and threads of contemporary styles, we're making Hawaiian music acces sible to the masses." Indeed, Hawaiian groups already crowd Billboard's "World Music Charts." Locally the scene thrives at events from the "Jammin' Hawaiians" music festival at Honolulu's Waikiki Shell to Hilo's "Big Island Slack-Key Guitar Festival." And performers increasingly gig on the mainland and in Japan. But no matter how far we are from the Sandwich Isles, through our stereos we can travel to our own private Pacific paradise in an instant.