Cyril Pahinui

Born on April 21, 1950, Hawaiian slack key guitarist Cyril Pahinui grew up on Oahu, where his father, the celebrated Pops Gabby Pahinui, likewise specialized in that style and made the family home a regular hub for neighborhood players. Mentored by his father along with close associates Atta Isaacs and Sonny Chillingworth, Cyril began playing guitar at seven and soon found himself immersed in the nonstop sessions held there; roughly five years afterward he turned professional, and by fifteen he and brother Bla had launched the rock outfit known as the Characters. He entered the Sunday Manoa lineup in 1968, served two years in the Army, and, once discharged, appeared with his father on several landmark Panini LPs.

In the mid-1970s Pahinui assembled the Sandwich Isle Band, among the earliest young ensembles to restore the traditional steel guitar while interpreting the jazz-tinged repertoire of the pre–World War II period; he also became a member of the Peter Moon Band in 1979. Following assorted solo projects and a joint recording with siblings Bla and Martin, he joined the Dancing Cat roster in 1994 and delivered the widely praised 6 & 12 String Slack Key, which earned the Na Hoku Hanohano Award for Instrumental Album of the Year; over his career he ultimately collected nineteen such honors. Its successor, Po Mahina, surfaced in 1997. Two years after that he paired with Bob Brozman for the duet set Four Hands Sweet & Hot, while the solo outing He'eia reached stores in 2007.

Admitted to Honolulu’s Queen’s Medical Center in February 2016, Pahinui remained there, battling pneumonia along with additional ailments, until his death at the facility in November 2018 at age sixty-eight. The release of Marketplace, drawn from sessions he had recorded in the 1990s, occurred only weeks earlier.