Some of our best steel guitar players will assemble Friday for the opening of the seventh annual Maui Hawaiian Steel Guitar Festival at the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel. The musicians include Alan Akaka, Jeff Au Hoy, Japan’s Kiyoshi “Lion” Kobayashi, Eddie Palama, Owana Salazar, Greg Sardinha, Ed Punua, Patty Maxine, Ross Ka’a’a, Joel Katz, Geri Valdriz and Bobby Ingano.

A protege of legendary Sons of Hawaii steel guitarist David “Feet” Rogers, Ingano has performed and recorded with many of Hawaii’s leading musicians, including the Brothers Cazimero, Amy Hanaiali’i, Willie K, Jake Shimabukuro, Raiatea Helm and the Ka’au Crater Boys.

Featured on three Hawaiian Grammy-winning compilation albums, he most recently earned a Na Hoku Award in 2013 for Instrumental Album of the Year. The winning album, “Steel ‘N Love,” featured Hawaiian, pop and jazz classics ranging from “Aloha ‘oe,” “Pennies From Heaven” and “On a Little Street in Singapore,” to full-tilt rocking on “Ralph’s Blues” with his younger brother Ralph Ingano on electric guitar.

Also in 2013, he was heard playing on the soundtrack of “Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau,” about the remarkable life of the legendary big wave surfer.

“I knew a lot of the family,” Ingano explains. “They wanted steel guitar, something that sounds Hawaiian.”

It was the Santo & Johnny late ’50s hit “Sleep Walk” that first inspired him to seek out the steel guitar.

“I was living on Lanai and I couldn’t really play outside like the rest of the kids (because he had polio), so I had my ear glued to the radio,” he recalls. “I would hear ‘Blueberry Hill’ and “Rock Around the Clock,’ digging on the music until I heard ‘Sleep Walk’ and it became my favorite. I knew it was something completely different.”

After moving to Oahu, he would sometimes hear the mesmerizing sound of the Hawaiian steel walking by local clubs.

“I was drawn to it, but I was a little afraid to try and play it because when I’d see the old timers playing, it seemed impossible,” he says.

After hearing Gabby Pahinui and the Sons of Hawaii’s Rogers, Ingano finally took up the steel.

“I was self-taught,” he notes. “We didn’t have money for lessons.”

Then destiny one day led him to Rogers’ door. “He was my main inspiration, he was just like my dad,” he continues. “I’d go to his house in the evenings and just talk. One evening he told me, ‘Akua is calling me home, I’ve got to go back home pretty soon to heaven.’ He told me, ‘When I leave, I don’t want any tears, as soon as I leave this earth, jump on that steel and carry on.’ “

Ingano says he loves playing the Hawaiian steel guitar because it connects him to the past and, “It’s the most expressive instrument in the world. Whenever I play, I feel like all the old-time steel players are sitting right around me. The old timers made this beautiful music, and if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be doing it today.”

Presented by the nonprofit Arts Education for Children Group and produced by Ke Kula Mele Hawaiian School of Music, the three-day festival will feature performances, presentations, workshops and kani ka pila (jam sessions) focused on the Hawaiian steel guitar and its importance in Hawaiian music. And an ongoing series of cultural activities will take place throughout the weekend.

On Friday, the main stage entertainment begins at 10 a.m. with Kobayashi. And between 4 and 8:30 p.m., headliners Valdriz and Au Hoy will perform.

Then Salazar, Palama, Ingano and Akaka will perform. Kathy Collins will emcee. A kani ka pila jam session will follow.

Throughout Saturday, various free workshops will be offered between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on topics such as “Steel Guitar 101,” “Hawaiian Songs & Slack Key” and “Jazz Technique Ideas.”

Entertainment on Saturday will begin at 10 a.m. on the main stage. Musicians include Na Kanaka, Jack Aldrich, Katz, Shinichi Kakiuchi, Chuck Hughes, Lohi Lohi, Ke Kula Mele Haumana, Keen Ching and Alexis Tolentino.

The festival headliners will perform between 4 and 9 p.m., with a finale featuring all the evening’s steel guitarists playing together as a group.

On Sunday, the resort’s brunch between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. will feature entertainment by Greg Sardinha and Akaka and will close with a jam session.

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To celebrate his 25th year making music, Makana decided to release a double album of 25 songs. Known for his versatility and ability to play a variety of styles, the popular musician assembled two distinct discs – a “Raw” one, which reflects his contemporary influences, and a “Root” disc, which primarily features traditional slack-key instrumentals and Hawaiian lyric songs.

“They’re completely different,” Makana explains. “I have a lot of music. One side is blues, folk and pop, and the other side is roots music, a lot of the slack-key stuff that I grew up with. It’s bifurcating my music, so each album is a cohesive listening experience. It’s not all mixed up.”

The “Raw” album was recorded “underground” in Chinatown and demonstrates his gifts as an original folk-pop artist and an interpreter of other musicians’ material ranging from Leon Russell’s “A Song For You” and Annie Lennox’s “Why” to the Killers’ “Human.”

“Raw” opens with the powerful, original song “Sexy Lady,” which sounds reminiscent of the great British folk-rock band

Pentangle fused with acoustic Led Zeppelin.

“I wrote it on the spot half an hour before recording,” he says. “The stomping on it is just my foot while I’m playing.”

Other original tracks include the Elton John-ish “Manic,” (which he first featured on his last “Ripe” album), where he plays piano, revealing the heartache of “a bipolar manic-obsessive romantic.”

The first disc’s closing track, “Pretty Ain’t Enough,” may surprise some of his fans. Recalling Frank Ocean’s soulful work, it’s his first R&B/hip-hop track and it’s fun.

Makana journeys back in time on “Root” to his early days as a student of slack-key master Sonny Chillingworth. A very gifted guitarist and singer, he demonstrates his love for traditional Hawaiian music interpreting classics like “Pau Pilikia,” “Pauoa Liko Ka Lehua” and Raymond Kane’s “Punahele.”

Tunes with a Maui connection are ” ‘Ahulili,” composed by Scott Ha’i, who lived in Kaupo, and “Maui Chimes,” which was first recorded in the 1920s by Frank Ferera.

“I wanted to let listeners into the world I grew up with,” he explains of the “Root” album. “I found the old song book I grew up with when I first started gigging when I was 13 on my own. I flipped through the book to a page and just started singing. I had the lyrics to (Dennis Kamakahi’s) ‘E Hihiwai,’ but I had never sung it.”

Before closing the disc with Olomana’s “Songbird,” he includes three blues-inspired songs. Interspersed between Johnny Noble’s 1920s classic “Hula Blues” and “Stack O’Lee Blues,” (which Makana was taught by Chillingworth), he launches into vintage country blues territory with Robert Johnson’s “Malted Milk.”

“I was trying to show the linkage between slack key and blues,” he says.

Makana took a unique approach to the project sessions, choosing the warmer feeling of analog over digital recording, and recording live with only a couple of overdubs.

“The ‘Raw’ record was done with monophonic sound with one microphone, and it sounds like I’m singing in the room with you,” he notes. It’s the raw, real deal.”

The album “25” is currently only available at his live gigs. It’s his way of thanking fans who come to his shows.

* Makana will perform a “Moonlight” concert at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s Yokouchi Pavilion at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $27 for standard seating and $47 for premium table seating, and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or by visiting www.mauiarts.org.

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Renowned chanter Krishna Das will present a “Spring on Maui” evening of kirtan and storytelling at 7 p.m. Monday at the Makawao Union Church. The Grammy-nominated artist recently released the compilation CD “Laughing at the Moon,” a collection of popular chants recorded between 1996 and 2005.

In October he released the DVD “Krishna Das Live in New York City, Vol. 1,” featuring more than three hours of live music, including tracks from his latest album, “Kirtan Wallah.”

* Tickets are $30 cash-only in advance at Maui Kombucha in Haiku, Awakening in Paradise in Kihei and Island Spirit Yoga in Lahaina, and are $40 cash at the door.