Hawaii’s music community will celebrate its diversity with a series of workshops that showcase technology, marketing, musicianship and culture at the Second Annual Na Hoku Hanohano Music Festival.

The festival runs from Thursday to next Sunday, but the highlight will be workshops Friday and Saturday at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.

Organized by the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts as a way to celebrate its 34th annual awards ceremony next Sunday, the workshops feature five themes: the business of music, the Hawaiian language, instrumentation, hula, and arranging and songwriting.

The workshops include some of the most respected Hawaiian cultural practitioners as well as an array of cutting-edge mainland experts, said Pali Ka‘aihue, vice president of the academy and a co-chairman of the festival.

"We wanted to create something with an education aspect with some of the top people here and to bring in some of the national leaders in their categories," he said. "We wanted it to become a way for us to bridge our people and national artists as well so they can learn more about our people and our culture and our music."

Highlights of the festival include:

» Workshops on making a CD, an MP3, how to get a song on iTunes and how to use social media to sell a product.

» Discussions of the use of Hawaiian in music, including a workshop by language expert Larry Kimura that will be conducted entirely in Hawaiian.

» Classes in ukulele, steel guitar, drums, bass guitar and slack-key guitar.

The festival is sponsored by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaiian Airlines and Kintetsu International.