NPR: Soundtracking 'The Descendants' With 'Real' Hawaiian Music

By Heidi Chang
06:11 am
January 8, 2012

As the Oscar race heats up, one contender has already won over fans in Hawaii, where the movie was filmed. And not just for its story of a family grappling with death and infidelity — but also for its soundtrack. The Descendants has no orchestral score. Instead, director Alexander Payne chose to fill his movie exclusively with music by Hawaii artists — much of it from existing recordings.

Payne didn't know much about the music when he started the project. Then he discovered one of the giants of Hawaiian music, Gabby Pahinui.

"And when I started listening to Gabby, I just fell in love," Payne says. "So much so that I considered for awhile trying to score the whole film with his music. And I wound up not doing that because there are so many other Hawaiian artists to show and discover. But his remains the anchoring voice in the film."

Pahinui is known as the "Father of Modern Slack Key Guitar." In Hawaii, that style is called Ki`ho`alu, which means "loosen the key," which refers to its open tunings.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/01/08/144804932/soundtracking-the-descendants-with-real-hawaiian-music

Anyone go see it? I'm not sure about shelling out for it...