Kapena DeLima was 5 when his father, Kelly “Kelly Boy” DeLima, leader and co-founder of the group named Kapena, decided he was ready for piano lessons.

He was 12 when he joined Kapena on stage at the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards in 2000, for a rock-the-rafters rendition of a gospel medley that gave a much-needed jolt of energy to the proceedings.

Today, at the age of 29, Kapena DeLima is a Hoku Award-winning solo artist (Contemporary Album for “Cast Your Cares” in 2014) and record producer (Kapena anthology “30” in 2016), the owner of his own full-service recording studio, and a busy working musician. DeLima received his first Hoku for his work as co-engineer of Kimie Miner’s recording of “Shame on You” in 2013.

Calling from Bu Print Studio during a short break in a recording session, DeLima said he opened Bu Print in 2009 after he returned from California with a degree in audio engineering from the Ex’pression College for Digital Arts.

Among the many projects he’s worked on at Bu Print are Hoku Award-winning albums by Kolohe Kai and Josh Tatofi and the Hoku Award-winning Kapena anthology. The anthology includes the song “Till The Sun Comes Up,” recorded by Kelly DeLima and the Tatofi brothers, Tiva and Timo, founding members of Kapena, and is expected to be the last recording by the original members.

The current edition of Kapena includes Kapena DeLima, sisters Kalena and Lilo, and their father. They appear today at the Hawaii’s Finest Summer Bash 2017, on the lawn at Bishop Museum, and headline Saturday at Mele on the Marina.

Hawaii’s Finest Clothing, also known as HI Finest, started promoting concerts several years ago to celebrate a type of local music that was originally known as Jawaiian but which some prefer to call island music. None of the artists who will be performing today on the twin stages at Bishop Museum have been playing island music in Hawaii longer than the group Kapena.

The original trio was a pioneer of Jawaiian music in the 1980s. Their remake of UB40’s reggae-rhythm take on what had been an obscure Neil Diamond composition, “Red Red Wine,” was one of the biggest island hits of the decade. Kapena, which also included Eddie Teo, a member from 1998 onward, also played everything from Hawaiian standards to country, and from American pop to Polynesian hits.

DeLima says that HI Finest concertgoers are going to hear the Kapena songs they know.

“People want to hear the old songs, they want to hear the classics,” he said. “We don’t have a long set list, so we just try to power-pack as many as possible.”

He was 11 and playing a little Casio keyboard when his father started taking him out on jobs. DeLima says it took him a while to make the transition from playing from sheet music for his piano teacher to “playing along with” his father and the other members of the group. For a while he pretty much faked it — playing a simple “percussion patch” or a one-finger string part. By the time he played the Hoku Awards, he’d found his place.

“When you’re taking piano lessons you’re kinda just learning how to read music, your’re learning how to read what’s on the paper and put it on the keys, but you don’t really have a relationship with the notes or how movements happen,” he said. “It was on-the-job training, training your ear, on the spot.”

Kelly Boy got him started on drum lessons when he was 14, and when Eddie Teo left the group, Kapena moved to drums. When family responsibilities required Tiva to return to Tonga, Kapena moved to bass. There he might have stayed, but after he graduated from Word of Life Academy in 2006, he decided to continue his education on the mainland.

“Dad was kind of excited with me about going to a musical engineering college, but when he figured out that I was really going to go for it, he wasn’t so sure. Our agent at the time, he told Dad, ‘You can’t let that kid leave, we need him here, he’s a vital part of the group already.’ But I put my foot down and told them I was going.

“The amazing thing is that if I didn’t leave we would never have found out that Lilo was a bass genius,” he said. “If I stayed home I would have kept my bass gig with Dad at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and we would have never discovered her.”

“It just goes to show that it was all meant to be.”

At Bu Print, DeLima said he enjoys helping young artists take a rough idea — a few notes of an imagined melody, or a few words of a partial thought — and develop it into a finished recording.

“I actually really enjoy working with the obscure melodies because those are the ones that go off in unusual directions,” he said. “I like to keep it ‘in the box’ to a certain extent but not too far in the box. I like getting really creative with certain things.”

DeLima says his family’s next project is going to be “fresh.”

“It’s mostly original Hawaiian music,” he explained. “We need a little change. We’ve been doing the same songs since we started our musical careers.”

“There’s one song that Ken Makuakane gave to Kalena which is kind of like his follow-up to a song he wrote for Na Leo,” he notes. “It sat in his computer for more than a decade because no one knew really what to do with it.

“Lilo did a song that was one of Grandma’s favorite songs, and Mom’s doing one of her favorite songs, ‘Shells,’ which she won Brown Bags with at Kailua High School.” (Mom is Leolani DeLima.)

He describes some of the other songs as “(Hawaiian) poems that were given to us.

“I just recently discovered that I have a lot of joy putting melodies to these Hawaiian poems,” DeLima said.

“For me, I’m a huge fan of the Kahauanu Lake Trio and Alfred Apaka. It’s kinda weird, you would never guess that’s something I listen to all day. I’ll be blasting it in my car and people will be wondering what’s going on, so a lot of the songs are going to have a nostalgic vibe to it.”

DeLima says his family’s traditions are on track for the next generation. His son, Kapena-Uriah, is 5 — and grandpa Kelly Boy has him starting piano lessons.