this little ukulele, part two

(photo Orin Bassoff Photography)

Douglas Wolk has been serving as eMusic’s alt/punk columnist for the last four years now, writing about everyone from Sufjan Stevens to Swans with remarkable insight and inventiveness. When Douglas proposed a column on ukulele music, we decided to take it one step further: Douglas is a uke player himself, so I asked him if he’d be willing to write about how his interest in the instrument developed, and to talk a little bit about his experiences at Portland’s four-day Uke Fest. The results, which include some choice YouTube embeds, do not disappoint.

You can pretty much fit ukulele players into two categories. The first kind pronounce the instrument’s name the officially correct way (”oo-koo-leh-leh”) and spell it ‘ukulele (meaning “jumping flea,” more or less); they understand themselves to be part of a deep, living cultural tradition of Hawaiian music. The most popular Hawaiian artist of the last few decades, in fact, was the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, a uke player. (Note that his one album on eMusic, Ka’Ano’i, has a full-band recording of his biggest hit–a medley of “Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” — that actually predates the famous voice-and-uke-only version by a few years.)

The second kind of ukers pronounce it the Americanized way (”yoo-ka-lay-lee”), and delight in finding formally inappropriate things to do with this cute, plinky little instrument, especially things that involve mentioning fleas. I fear I’m the second kind.

Both schools of ukers have their heroes–virtuosic musicians who take advantage of its high-speed chord-shifting capabilities. Jake Shimabukuro, for instance, taped a uke rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that has 1/3 fewer weeping strings, and 2.7 million YouTube views to date…

I will never be able to play anything like that, but my idea of fun is figuring out how to squish down a big pop record’s arrangement to four strings. For a friend’s wedding a few years back, my wife and I worked up a ukulele-and-clarinet version of Television’s “Marquee Moon.” As “Professor Heckler” (the name of the man who ran the most famous flea circus in New York City), I used to send my own uke arrangements to the apparently now-defunct site Ukulele Boogaloo; I was particularly proud of myself for figuring out a creditable version of Pet Shop Boys’ “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing.”

But my uke technique had hit a wall, and I wanted to meet more people like me. So, a month or so ago, I found myself at Portland Uke Fest, an annual four-day celebration of all things ukey, held on the Reed College campus in Portland, Oregon: 18 world-class instructors and about 150 students. I very quickly realized that I was at the low end of the age range of students, and definitely at the low end of the skill levels. The second night was an all-student open-mic show, at which Shigeto Takahashi got up on stage and proceeded to drop every jaw in the house:

Again: that was one of the students. The instructors were pretty amazing, too. Everyone seemed in awe of James Hill — check out his album A Flying Leap for not just exceptional playing but an exceptional stylistic range. I had a fascinating class with Del Rey, a blues ukulele player who had me wondering if there was a rich blues-uke tradition I’d just never heard of. (There isn’t, but there ought to be.) Jim Beloff taught a class called “Have a Nice Uke,” where we learned ’70s tunes like “Love Train” and “Daniel.” And there was a lecture on George Formby by his acolyte Ralph Shaw, who turned out at the faculty concert to be a riotously funny performer. (eMusic has three of his albums; try King of the Ukulele.) Here’s a video of him playing a “ukulele banjo” at the previous year’s Uke Fest faculty concert — a deeply silly version of “Viva Las Vegas”:

I came away from Uke Fest chastened, calloused, and itching to get a lot better at the uke. I’ve even got a long-term goal for myself with it: a one-voice, one-ukulele arrangement of the Who’s Tommy. Wish me luck.