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©
2001 - 2005
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THE WORLD IS GOING
UKE-ULAR
Annie Nakao
Sunday, April 18, 2004 San
Francisco Chronicle
Back in 1886, Honolulu newspaper editor Augustus Marques noted that
while Hawaiians turned up their noses at the piano and violin, they
loved "that hideous small Portuguese instrument," derided
as the taro patch fiddle.
Humble roots for the ukulele, the symbol of Hawaiian paradise that
over the past 125 years has become an enduring cultural totem that
has worked its way into the oddest folds of our social fabric. Who
knew, for example, that the first Midwest Uke Festival was hosted by
Indianapolis last year? Or that the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum is
based in that great tropical oasis, Cranston, R.I.?
The uke's appeal has also gone global: The seven-member Ukulele
Orchestra of Great Britain and the L'Uké Club de Paris have huge
followings while Japan has long been a compulsory stop for ukulele
virtuosos.
"It's like 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' -- we're all
struck by the same thing," said "Jumpin' Jim" Beloff,
a former Billboard magazine associate publisher who heard the siren
plunk of the uke six years ago and began Flea Market Music, a
ukulele business in Los Angeles.
It cannot be denied that something uke-like is in the air. Sir Paul
McCartney recently strummed the ukulele to George Harrison's
"Something" at a tribute concert in honor of the late
Beatle. Elvis Costello played his uke as a tribute to Sting. And
open up the latest issue of Ukulele Occasional and you'll learn that
actor William H. Macy is a uker (careful viewers of the film, "Seabiscuit,"
would have spied that uke propped up behind Macy's character, Tick
Tock McGlaughlin, in the announcer's booth), and that the Oracle of
Omaha, Warren Buffet, owns a Martin ukulele and often plays it at
business meetings.
It's no wonder there's a four-day uke-a-thon gearing up in the Bay
Area. The first UkeFest West, co-sponsored by the Santa Cruz Ukulele
Club and the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum, kicks off Thursday at the
club's monthly meeting and moves on to the Santa Cruz Beach
Boardwalk's historic Cocoanut Grove on Friday and Saturday. Then all
day Sunday in Hayward, the 11th Annual Ukulele Festival of Northern
California will offer food, crafts and music at Hayward Adult
School.
To "Uncle" Hollis Baker, 77, founder of the Hayward fest,
the melodious tones of the ukulele are "the language of the
soul."
"The music is what keeps me going," he said.
He's not alone. Bill Tapia, 94, said to be the oldest ukulele player
still strumming, will be honored at both events. Tapia was only a
teen when he dazzled opening night crowds at the famed Pink Lady --
the Royal Hawaiian Hotel -- in 1927.
By then, the ukulele (pronounced oo-koo-lele) was synonymous with
Hawaii, where Madeiran contract workers disembarked in 1879,
bringing with them the four-string machete. Hawaiians took to the
diminutive instrument. By one account, it was renamed ukulele
because nimble fingers on the strings resembled a bouncing flea.
Once King Kalakaua and his royal family, all accomplished musicians,
took to playing the ukulele, its popularity soared. What's more, the
ukulele was now made of koa and other native woods, lending to it a
pride of things Hawaiian.
Uke historian John King, a noted St. Petersburg, Fla. ukulele player
(whose campanella style of Bach is haunting), wrote an early history
of the instrument with Jim Tranquada, the great-great grandson of
Madeiran immigrant and ukulele pioneer Augusto Dias.
"You're actually in the place where it started on the
mainland," King said, noting that San Francisco's 1915 Panama
Pacific International Exposition ignited a ukulele craze when folks
visited the Hawaiian Pavilion and heard it played for the first
time.
Tin Pan Alley songwriters soon churned out "hapa-haole"
(half white) tunes like "Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula," and the
ukulele helped forge some of the biggest stars in vaudeville, like
Cliff Edwards, or "Ukulele Ike." Hawaiian virtuosos,
including Ernest Kaai and King Bennie Nawahi, also mesmerized their
fans.
"It was the world music of its day," said Michael Simmons,
a Mountain View freelance writer who co-edits the Ukulele Occasional
with Seattle letter press publisher Jason Verlinde.
(The second ukulele craze hit in the 1950s, when Arthur Godfrey's
on-air promotion of Italian immigrant Mario Maccaferri's plastic uke
was a sensation.)
"Many people who remember the 1950s have memories of the
plastic ukulele, " said Beloff, who wrote the book, "The
Ukulele, a Visual History."
Beloff said we are now in the third revival, thanks to the growing
number of collectors and luthiers, a new appreciation for vintage
music and millions of lapsed guitarists who find the uke easier to
play.
The ukulele has also been rediscovered by young musicians in Hawaii.
They've followed in the footsteps of virtuosos like Jesse Kalima,
Eddie Kamae and Herb Ohta but have added their own wizardry.
The hottest player in Hawaii now is Jake Shimabukuro, whose sizzling
style of classical music, jazz, rock and blues is "taking the
uke world by storm," Beloff said.
The uke has also been taken up by Pearl Jam's lead singer and
guitarist, Eddie Vedder, who writes songs on it, and Carmaig
deForest, who does solo punk shows with his ukulele.
Vedder, incidentally, told the Ukulele Occasional that "you
can't write a dark song on the uke."
That's no surprise to Beloff.
"It's hard not to walk into a roomful of ukuleles and not
smile," he said.
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UKEFEST WEST will be held Thursday through Saturday at the Cocoanut
Grove, 400 Beach St., Santa Cruz. For information, visit
ukefestwest.com or call (831) 688-3540. The Ukulele Festival of
Northern California will be held next Sunday at the Hayward
AdultSchool, 22100 Princeton St., Hayward. For information, e-mail
Hollis Baker athollisnakea@sbcglobal.net or call (510) 793-1165.
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